IIM ROHTAK H U M A N E - R CLUB P re s e n ts
H R BULLETIN VOLUME 104
humane.r@iimrohtak.ac.in
H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E104
HR BULLETIN
Embrace hard truths to develop effective leaders Leadership development is a multibillion-dollar industry, but it is often a waste of enterprise resources. Most often, we hear corporate leaders say they need a more "inspirational" presentation on leadership to motivate their senior management team. According to them, content based on the realities of organisational life and related social science research isn’t uplifting enough. Such views are common in the leadership development and training industry. Many leadership development programmes feature well-known speakers telling compelling life stories about overcoming various physical or economic challenges. Some events feature engaging speakers narrating examples of leaders who “apparently” are modest, authentic, take care of others, tell the truth, and build trust, among other virtues. We say “apparently” because leaders are often quite successful at creating public personas that differ significantly from the reality of actually working with them.
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As a power leadership expert, Jeff has established how power and influence skills are essential to getting things done. Power is the organisation’s last dirty secret, but it is also the secret to individual and organisational success. Telling inspiring fables doesn’t develop either the knowledge or the skills that help people become more effective in getting things done. Examples galore all around, whether in politics, MNCs, SMEs or the unorganised sector. The pervasive “feel-good" approach to leadership development may explain why it is not effective. According to a Gallup study, on average, just 30% of employees are engaged at work. 17% are actively disengaged and the rest (53%) are in the “not engaged” group. A 2018 survey reported that 80% of employees could do their jobs without their managers and only 53% thought their managers cared about their well-being, while an Edelman report found that 63% of executives felt their CEOs were somewhat or not at all credible. Another study found a mere 7% of senior managers think that their companies develop effective leaders. Leadership development is a few billion-dollar industry, but quite often it is wasted enterprise resources. Isn’t it time to change this and do things differently? Inspiration will not necessarily create lasting change The big problem is that inspiration is a goal of many leadership development agenda but it is a poor method to achieve lasting change. The temporary motivational high wears off soon. Social psychology research evidence shows that social environments affect behaviour. Changing behaviour, be it in a 12-step abstinence programme or any other effort, requires altering the people in one's social network. Moreover, changing the physical cues that influence behaviour is another important intervention. And as the quality movement taught us, the measurements that provide people feedback about what they should be doing and how well they are meeting their objectives is a third potent way of accomplishing behavioural change. Inspiration—not so much. A new venture is designing applications to push people to engage in “better” (based on the evidence) leader behaviours, under the theory that cuing appropriate behaviour will drive productive change. At the lowest level, leadership development efforts should stop measuring how much people enjoyed the programme —a process that reinforces edutainment – and instead assess the programmes against important objectives such as increasing engagement, decreasing turnover, and ensuring sufficient numbers of leaders, and so forth. Most leaders don't walk the walk The qualities that leadership programmes relentlessly advocate, albeit wonderful, are frequently absent in contemporary political and corporate leaders. Modesty and many contemporary political or business leaders, including Narendra Modi, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, and even Howard Schultz – don't seem to go together. Decades of research show that narcissism, not modesty, is correlated with being hired, being promoted, job tenure, and even sometimes group performance. The disconnect between what leadership development programmes advocate and what people see, often in their immediate environments from their own senior leaders, produces a high degree of cynicism and a reluctance to accept the lessons being proffered. All leadership development efforts would be well-served to change the emphasis from aspirational qualities that are not only rare but often not helpful to a focus on pragmatic skills such as the ability to exude presence, build useful networks, create valuable resources, and tolerate not being liked that are associated with many success metrics. Isn’t "leadership" as a term ambiguous? "Leadership" remains too ambiguous. There are many dimensions to leadership effectiveness: employee engagement, employee health and well-being, productivity, ethical compliance – the list goes on. These aspects are far from perfectly correlated with each other. Leadership development initiatives would benefit greatly from more focus. Organisations need to decide what the most important aspects of leadership are and recognise the realities of trade-offs…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/leadership/embracehard-truths-to-develop-effective-leaders34506?media_type=article&subcat=strategic-hr&title=embrace-hard-truthsto-develop-effective-leaders&id=34506
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E104
Which work model works for your organisation? At Fynd, the leaders and teams can themselves choose the model basis their nature of work. For example, the engineering team requires extensive collaboration to build new technology products, hence they follow the office-first hybrid work model. What works for your organisation? Evolving talent demands are challenging traditional workplace practices, requiring leaders to redesign existing work arrangements to make room for flexibility. MSMEs, start-ups and fast-growing organisations need to gear up for this change as hybrid becomes the new normal and organisations are looking to drive better performance. The evolving models of work With Covid, almost every organisation went through continuity planning due to the remote working. “Two years hence, hybrid has evolved as the most feasible working model”, shares Kshitiz Sachan, Process Strategist, Keka. Several reports have indicated that employees are favoring a hybrid working with some days work-from-office, and some days work-from-home. Aligned to employees' demand, many companies are operating in a hybrid model. With shifting employee choices, HR leaders are compelled to strategise hybrid models to make it a win-win for both employee and employer. Hybrid boosts productivity, lowers office costs, and drives more efficiency. This demands a readiness for hybrid, which means organizations need to deeply understand the nature of the workforce and learn how to connect people to the culture and purpose of the organisation. The Future is Hybrid “The old normal will not come back, hybrid will stick as a sustainable solution”, shares Kshitiz. Fynd’s six-monthly survey evaluates what people think about working models: •Work-from-office (33.3%): A young workforce prefers work-from-office to socialize and experience the office culture. •Remote work (33.3%): People who moved from metros to their hometowns and are continuing working from there…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/strategic-hr/whichwork-model-works-for-your-organisation-34493
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E104
The power of an online-first mindset The pandemic changed how knowledge work is being done and forced an overdue shift to placing higher value on productivity and performance measurement. While the days of swiping a keycard every morning to sit in the same cube may not be completely gone, most agree the current (and future) work environment will not resemble that of our past. While COVID sped this evolution, an Online First approach has been brewing for quite some time. As with any unexpected change, great organisations find opportunity from chaos. Most already learned it’s important to structure work, assemble teams and manage organisations with an attitude of being able to work in an Online First environment (i.e. operating effectively regardless of whether we commute to an office, meet in person, connect to a local network). Understanding productivity and team dynamics at a fundamental level in a fully remote, secure and digital environment is the key to Online First success. Add 'online-first' to the list of historical business evolutions The concept of Online First resembles the early days of offshoring. Frank D’Souza, co-founder of Recognize and former CEO of Cognizant, talks frequently about that pivotal workplace shift. “I was graduating from business school in the early 90s when offshoring started to go mainstream; that’s when we launched Cognizant,” said D’Souza. “We faced similar challenges to the Online First movement: namely, convincing customers that work could get done securely outside their four walls, miles away.” Cognizant’s approach was to replicate a company’s onshore campus (work environment) offshore with physical infrastructure to address issues like security and to optimize environments based on the physical spaces people collaborated in. Online First is similar in that the same concerns persist (security, quality, communication, productivity), but the world is no longer solving them with physical infrastructure…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/technology/the-power-ofan-online-first-mindset-34481
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E104
Are employee engagement initiatives working - at all? Organisations across different industries know what employee engagement can do for them - from getting access to better talent to their retention but continue to face challenges like unclear definitions and goals for employee engagement strategy, lack of knowledge of apt tools to use, lack of resources to devote time to the process, and other pitfalls/deficiencies. Since the onset of the pandemic, the importance of employee engagement has skyrocketed with changing needs among both employees and employers. The hybrid work model, which has become the norm across many large enterprises, requires organisations to adopt tools and practices in line with this evolution. Numerous HR teams today are trying to find the right way to implement, analyse and act on employee engagement in the hybrid workplace, which will, in turn, help their organisation meet larger business goals. However, 40% of the organisations say their employee engagement initiatives are failing due to a shortage of people who can devote time to the process, according to a survey by Leena AI, a technology solution transforming the employee experience. Nearly 27% of organisations said that there was an inherent lack of interest from the leadership towards employee engagement initiatives, and thus, no clear goals were set out for its strategy, it added. The report, Employee Engagement & Hybrid Workplace Report 2022', sheds light on employee engagement across 250 plus enterprises globally, including in India and the US, and highlights the challenges organisations face in terms of employee engagement like unclear definitions and goals for its strategy, lack of knowledge of which tool to use, lack of resources to devote time to employee engagement, and lack of knowledge of how to measure the ROI of employee engagement…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/technology/the-power-ofan-online-first-mindset-34481
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E104
Multimodal management: Expectations in the hybrid workforce When teams are spread across multiple locations and on modalities, leaders can be challenged to ensure that everyone has the same information, especially when frequent updates or changes are common. Many organisations have adopted hybrid models of work that allow employees to perform their jobs remotely for portions of the work week. These new “Hybrid” practices allow flexibility and have quickly become the new normal in some industries. Recently, I joined a gathering with several emerging managers in California to discuss trends associated with hybrid work-life. Like many industries, the tech, bio-tech, professional services, and other sectors have embraced new flexible work practices. My interactions quickly uncovered that firms, especially those that rely on young professional talent, are dealing with intuitional management memory gaps – along with two years of management development disruption. What that means in real terms, is that in some organizations 25% of the workforce has no idea what the workplace or people management was like in the pre-pandemic world of work. As I delve into the emerging research finding, I note that this institutional memory gap takes different forms. For some of these young professionals who graduated from university during the pandemic, the concept of going to the office for physical meetings seems a bit odd. This is a stark contrast to the 20-year veteran leaders who expect employees to flock back into the offices and fill conference room spaces just like 2019. On the other hand, supervisors with five to seven years of experience are caught in the middle trying to blend the best of both worlds and are forced to develop their own approaches to managing multiple modes of working across physical and virtual locations…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/strategic-hr/multi-modalmanagement-expectations-in-the-hybrid-workforce-34449
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