Iaroslav Popov

Modern Leadership. Communication and organisational models.

Web scienceDecisions and Management Project

Cologne University of Applied Science

2015

Agenda❖ Leadership and communication

❖ Conversational styles

❖ The power of good questions

❖ Conflicts in organisations

❖ Organisational conversation

❖ Befehlstaktik vs Auftragstaktik

❖ Self-management

❖ Holacracy

Leadership and communication

❖ “Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group to achieve a common goal.” — Peter Nordhouse

❖ “A leader - a person who influences individuals and groups within organisation, helps them in the establishment of goals and guides them towards establishment those goals, thereby allowing them to be effective.”— Afsaneh Nahavandi

❖ “Leadership is human communication that modifies the attitudes and behaviours of others in order to meet shared goals and needs.”— Michael Hackman and Craig Johnson

Leadership and communication

❖ Communication professors James McCroskey and Virginia Richmond developed the “Willingness To Communicate (WTC)” scale.

Conversational styles

❖ Communication isn't as simple as saying what you mean.

❖ Using language is learned social behaviour

Conversational style is a set of culturally learned signals by which we not only communicate what we mean but also

interpret others' meaning and evaluate one another as people

Features of conversational styles

Topic(a) preferred personal topics, (b) shift topics sharply(c) introduce topics without hesitance(d) persistence (reintroduce topics which were not pick up)

Genre(a) tell more stories(b) tell stories in rounds, in which

(i) demonstrate the point instead of lexicating (ii) omit the abstract

(c) preferred point of the story is the emotional experience of the teller

Pace(a) faster rate of speech(b) pauses avoided (it is taken as a lack of rapport)(c) faster rate of turntaking(d) cooperative overlap (back-channel responses )

Expressive

paralinguistics

(a) expressive phonology(b) pitch and amplitude shifts(c) marked voice quality(d) strategic pauses

Humor individual, culturally different and perhaps sex-linked

The power of good questions

❖ Create clarity and help to think critically (Why do you think this happened?)

❖ Inspire people to reflect and see things in fresh and unpredictable way (What if the customer will do this?)

❖ Encourage breakthrough thinking (Can this solution be improved?)

❖ Challenge assumptions (Why do we always choose this method?)

❖ Creates ownership of solutions (Basing on your experience what do you think we should do here?

Asking rather than telling has become the

key to leadership success

The power of good questions

❖ Why are you late in delivering this product?

❖ Why you can’t implement this program within a budget?

❖ Who is not doing his part?

❖ Don’t you know any better way then that?

What not to ask:

questions that focus why a person

did not and can not succeed something

Conflicts in organisations

❖ Avoiding (Lose - Lose)

❖ Accommodating (Lose - Win)

❖ Compromising

❖ Forcing (Win - Lose)

❖ Collaborating (Win - Win)

“Most people recognise conflict as a form of tension, frustration, verbal or physical abuse, disagreement, incompatibility, annoyance, interference or rivalry.” — Gregg Lee Carter

Approaches for conflict resolution

Conflicts in organisationsThe Principled Negotiation Approach to Conflict

Organisational conversation

Globalisation, increased complexity of business process, modern customers relations.

Directive model of leadership

Series of commands from on high

Conversationalprocess

Person-to-person conversation

Five long-term business trends are: Economic change, Organisational change, Globe change, Generational change, Technological change

Elements of Organisational conversation

Auftragstaktik

Auftragstaktik – is a principle of management in the army. It is based on mutual trust and require all soldiers to execute their duties. The commander provides them his intentions, declares clear and reachable goals, supplying with required resources. He provides the details of execution only in case if actions for achieving the goals must be synchronised with other groups or in case of some political, civilian or military restrictions.

Befehlstaktik vs Auftragstaktik

❖ Detailed orders in terms of actions

❖ Employee executes orders with “reasonable” initiative

❖ Focus on execution of the order (precisely, unquestioningly and in time)

❖ In case of failure we check how precisely employee followed the instructions

❖ Employee gets a mission — issue that should be resolved. He develops and executes the solution by himself within given resources and skills

❖ Employee is guided by his own vision and intention of the manager.

❖ Inaction is worse than actions according to the vision but led to mistakes

Morning Star Farms

❖ No one has a boss

❖ Employees negotiate responsibilities with their peers

❖ Everyone can spend the company’s money

❖ each individual is responsible for acquiring the tools needed to his or her work.

❖ No titles or promotions

❖ Compensation decisions are peer-bases

Case: The MorningStar Farms - 400 full-time employees produce over $700 million revenues a year. The largest vegetarian food producer in the United States.

Self-management organisation❖ Personal missions

❖ Colleague Letter of Understanding

❖ Anyone can issue a purchase order

❖ Freedom

❖ Competition for impact

❖ Transparency

❖ Conflict resolution

❖ Elected compensation committees

Zappos

❖ founded 1999

❖ 1500 employees

❖ $2 billion annual sales

❖ Acquired by Amazon.com for $1.2 billion in 2009

❖ Was ranked sixth on the Fortune magazine's list of "Best Companies to Work For" in 2011

❖ In December 2013 announced move to Holacracy government model.

Case: Zappos.com - is an online shoe and clothing shop based in Las Vegas, USA.

Holacracy

❖ Roles

❖ Circles

❖ Holacracy vs Team-based management

The idea is to structure the company around the work that needs to be done rather than the people who do it.

Thank you!