Leadership lingo and mindset – the most common faux-pas

A job well begun is half the job done. If the leadership mindset is incorrect or its messaging is unclear, it puts at risk the entire task at hand. Right posturing and positioning, they say, is the all-important first step to a product’s success. Putting together a winning team to work towards organizational success is no different.

I am attempting to call out some of the most obvious leadership mindset and messaging faux-pas that one comes across in routine day-to-day corporate lives. I know there would be countless others, more commonly used and starker in their incorrectness. I am just attempting to kick-off the topic with a small list of five – would really appreciate if readers could contribute their own observations and stuff they have experienced or come across, that are along similar lines.

So here goes…

Employee engagement – I am sure the original semantics of the phrase was centered on the concept of making the entire process of running a business, participative, by involving more and more people that make up the organization from ideation to implementation. However, the latest interpretation of this phrase is akin to co-curricular activities in academics. Employee engagement in most organizations has become the generic buzzword for cultural, social, sporting and similar activities involving a cross-section of employees.

Inclusive growth – This is another classic case of trying to convey the participative culture and that the employee is a key stakeholder in the business and its growth. It is all very well till you start contemplating the corollary - what would non-inclusive growth mean? That your contribution is not seen as worthwhile or that you contribute and I grow!

The 30-60-90 day plan – There are some who would have us believe that if there is no 30-60-90 day plan attached to a piece of work, independent of it being creative or demure and routine, it cannot be meaningful and relevant to the organization. More often than not, if you can put something into such a plan, it is likely to be something that ought to have been done anyway, plan or no plan, because you could think through every bit of what needs to be done!

Empowerment – Another term used in leadership messaging which means everything and nothing all at once! You constantly hear that you must feel empowered to make decisions and conduct your business in your own way. Well the only catch is, you have to keep the leadership ‘informed’, you should ‘operate within the set boundaries’, you should seek ‘approvals for exceptions’, et al. The operating word in actual empowerment is ‘trust’. If trust is at a premium and found lacking, there is no real empowerment. It is like ‘you can decide alright, but you can act only after I have approved’!! Empowerment, in such a scenario, would be the delegation of decision-making and not the delegation of work. Real empowerment would be to provide the flexibility to influence process changes, at times even work around them on ‘exception’ basis without compromising the goals, values and the fabric of the organization.

The Comfort zone – You would often find leaders propagate the mindset and message that when folks get into a comfort zone, their productivity and creativity would suffer. Hence the mantra for organizational efficiency and effectiveness is to prevent anyone getting into a comfort zone – the corollary being everyone should operate in a zone of discomfort. This is the biggest faux pas you would come across. It is a simple law of nature that resonance is constructive and has the characteristic of enhancing the combined output beyond the sum of individual outputs. This is true with humans and teams in resonance as well. Put folks in a comfort zone and you are likely to find greater productivity and enhanced outcomes.

   

Note: The views expressed here and in any of my posts are my personal views and not to be construed as being shared by any organization or group that I am or have been associated with presently or in the past.