Category: Leadership

Sam Allardyce, leadership and why personal values matter

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

This week has seen the dramatic fall of Sam Allardyce, Manager of the England football team, after allegations by undercover newspaper reporters posing as businessmen that he offered to help them to get around FA third party ownership rules, provisionally agreed a £400,000 contract, and made disparaging comments about a number of high profile personalities both in and outside the game.

The FA publicly cites that its priority is to maintain the highest standards of conduct in football “on and off the field. Nothing less is acceptable.” With widespread corruption claims within FIFA still echoing loudly from the last 12 months, not to mention a litany of controversial departures by previous England Managers over the years, it’s not surprising that the FA, seeking to uphold a clean image of authority and leadership, has taken swift action to eliminate further controversy and ill feeling associated with key figureheads who have demonstrated less than acceptable standards of behaviour. Into ‘errors of judgement’ we might read ‘poor personal values.’

Leaders will only engender trust and followship if their personal values match up to the expectations of their teams and the values of the organisations for which they work. Edelman’s 2016 Trust Barometer shows that 79% of those questioned felt that a CEO’s personal values are important in building trust: a higher score than ‘the obstacles they’ve overcome,’ ‘their personal success story’ or ‘their education and how it’s shaped them’.

Our personal values are integral to who we are and what we want to become. They affect the decisions we make, the success we achieve, cement our belief and commitment in what we need to overcome together and foster strength and unity. In leadership roles, they shape how people perceive and evaluate their leaders and influence how they themselves act and behave. Leaders need to understand that they set an example through their own actions and behaviours, which in turn can have a positive or negative impact on both the culture and reputation of their organisation, and the performance of individuals within it. Even when their own values are not shared by everyone, not being consistent nor adhering to their personal principles may encourage others to mimic their behaviour, create fear, ambiguity, confusion and recalcitrance, and engender a sense of mistrust and uncertainty. This can compromise effective teamwork, create low morale, divide teams into factions and drive siloed behaviour – not conducive to high performance in any organisation.

Being a senior leader in any organisation isn’t easy. Tough decisions and compromises frequently have to be made, which is when a leader’s personal values or ethics can be challenged.  Business results can of course still be achieved unethically in the short-term, but this is likely to have a negative impact on culture which will be far more damaging (and potentially costly) over the long-term. So it’s not just about what you achieve, but how you go about achieving it that matters. And the higher the leader climbs up the corporate ladder, the availability of peer-to-peer support and mentoring can become less obvious, in which case those personal values become a valuable mental check-list for tough decision-making.

Organisations should create a clear set of corporate values and ensure that in nurturing and developing their leaders they encourage them to clarify and be true to their personal values (which, ideally, will have some synergy with the corporate values). If, like Sam Allardyce, they result in some regrettable choices which clearly conflict with the values of or standards set by their organisation, the consequences can be dire – on both a personal and a corporate level.

“It has changed the way I think”

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

“Sometimes when a blind man is walking around, there is a hole in front of him. It takes a person with eyesight to stop him from falling in that hole.”

Those are the words of a Nigerian former miller, former religious radical, describing the deradicalisation programme he is participating in in jail. He gets training, education and religious counselling.

The gist of the story, reported today in the FT, is that leaders of radical religious groups attract a following of lonely, frustrated people, desperate to escape the monotony of their lives, by offering them a sense of purpose. The narrative empowers them, is intoxicating, and leads them to do appalling things with utter conviction.

The counselling programme is attractive because it recognises the existence, and power, of the inner narrative. And it realises that to shift behaviour, counsellors need to shift their subject’s inner narrative – to change the way they think and perceive the world around them. Even members of Boko Haram see that one way to bring the organisation down is for members to “sabotage it from the inside”.

Turning to the more pleasant climes of leadership in the workplace, you increasingly see this approach in action. Dr Steve Peters helps us to manage our inner chimp; good managers seek to coach their people, rather than direct them; and the current generation of visionary leaders are replacing autocracy with an approach based on inspiration and context.

Better environment, better outcomes, more human.

Enjoy your weekend.

Can politicians teach business about leadership?

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

The Storytellers were featured in an article in Forbes magazine this week.

Whilst many will be relieved that the media spotlight on the General Election is now focused on other news stories, and the debate over party politics has subsided, there are some aspects of the party leaders’ Election campaigns which are worth remembering and learning from. In short, how they came across as leaders.

Whatever your views on their manifestos and political stances, there is no doubt that ‘statesmanship’ belongs more to some party leaders than others. It’s questionable whether any of them inspire trust (!), and of course business leaders are not quite as exposed to the bashing they get from their opponents, including the media, which no doubt influences our perception of them. Yet their ability as convincing orators, and the way in which they deliver their messages, is certainly something we can learn from.

Have a read. We’d be interested to hear what you think.

How great leaders inspire action: start with ‘Why’

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

We subscribe heavily here at The Storytellers to Simon Sinek’s ‘Golden Circle’. If you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, take a look at this picture which articulates it pretty well. He also does an excellent Ted Talk on the subject

The principle of this is that what inspires people is not just your brand, product and service, and the attributes and benefits of these. It’s more about Purpose: why we are here. Beyond making money, why do we exist? What’s our ‘raison d’être’? How is our organisation contributing to a higher purpose in society at large? As humans we are sociable beings who seek to feel that we add value to people’s lives, not just plugging away in a vacuum to service an organisation’s bank balance. Our customers, customers’ customers and colleagues can make us feel inspired or proud about our company through the way we act and behave, but equally feel bad when we don’t do the right thing. That matters to us.

And in a saturated market, where businesses offer the same products and services, something beyond price, value and brand will be the key differentiator. Consumers are savvy, with a wealth of information at their fingertips. Switching brands can be done at the click of a mouse and the decision to do so well-informed. After all, a brand’s reputation isn’t what you say about yourself; it’s about what others say about you, and social media and the internet has made this highly transparent. Twitter and TripAdvisor are just two examples. Sure, for many businesses there’s an argument that the differentiating factor is about their people: their consistency in providing excellent customer service in delivering the brand promise and the relationships they build with their customers to build the trust and loyalty that’s so hard to retain. For Gen Y,Z and the millenials especially though, what an organisation actually stands for is the Big Deal. And if they don’t experience this, authentically, on joining an organisation (business practices, behaviours and so on), they will quickly become disillusioned and leave (HR Directors, take note how honest you are when articulating your EVP!)

Leaders can build trust, confidence and pride in their teams by impressing why we are here at a macro level, but so too at a micro level. Telling their personal Story: ‘why am I, as a leader, here?’ is a way of building personal trust and authenticity, which are important elements of followship.

This reinforces the need for a clear corporate narrative that links together the Why, How and What in a really compelling way. Those businesses which have this in place and live by it every single day typically attract and retain key talent, have a clear and compelling brand proposition, more effective leaders, manage change better, a more engaged workforce and are more productive as a result. And as a result of this they will enjoy greater success.

Simon Sinek, we salute you.

People may soon be leaving their jobs in droves. What can be done?

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

The accreditation body Investors in People recently released their annual employee sentiment poll, and the results should be at least a little alarming for all UK employers. The number of workers who are actively seeking a new job at the moment has risen by 10 percent over last year.

You’d be right to attribute some of this increase to a greater sense of confidence in the labour market. People who were unhappily stuck in their jobs because they felt they couldn’t find a new one are now feeling increasingly able to move on. And this is good for employers and employees alike, since neither side benefits when employees’ hearts and minds aren’t in it.

But that only partly explains it. While 10 percent more—now almost a quarter of all employees—actively seeking a new job, and 34 percent (up 5 percent from last year) “considering” a new job, the proportion of employees who feel the job market has improved from 2014 has risen only by 6 percent. In other words, the number of people looking for a new job has risen faster than the number of people who feel confident in their ability to find one.

This is most true in professional services and telecoms, and particularly true of workers in London.

Why is this happening?

Not surprisingly, one of the major drivers of dissatisfaction in work is pay. But there’s one even greater reason employees are looking for new gigs: the quality of management. Almost half, 46 percent, of those unhappy in their job cite poor management as a key reason, while only 44 percent cite low pay. And a similarly large number of people, 38 percent, complain they don’t feel valued as a member of staff.

 

Investors in People are calling this a “job exodus time bomb”, and they’re right.

Clearly, companies can do better. And unless they want to suffer the cost and turmoil of massive staff turnover, they will need to. And there’s an strong connection between feeling valued as a member of staff and feeling positive about the quality of management. As psychologist Dan Pink has argued, and as these statistics confirm, three key drivers of satisfaction of work are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Good-quality leadership will allow all these to flourish within the organisation.

Leaders must give their people a sense of where the organisation is going, what it’s accomplishing, and how individuals play a crucial role. That way they will come to feel they are heroes of the journey, rather than passive victims of it.