Look forward to leadership

Written by Lander Associates

Written by Lander Associates

Contents

Content Page Importance of developing future leaders 1 Are your employees truly engaged? 2 Successful leaders need self awareness 3 Leadership for the new decade 4 - 5 Top tips for new recruitment leaders 6 - 7 Developing business minds 8 - 9

About this e-book We have put together a collection of articles and blogs from the past year that look at current leadership challenges. Please visit our blog for further posts and advice on leadership. We hope you find them interesting. The Lander Associates Team

Development programmes such as internal leadership academies in conjunction with management skills training will also give your people the opportunity to gain essential skills and knowledge. It’s also important to give them actual exposure to leadership.

This way, they can gain experience, you (and they) can assess their skills, they get a sense of direction and both can evaluate the types of opportunities available to them. This approach can be invaluable in giving future leaders new opportunities to grow.

There is always a risk that the talent you are developing may be headhunted by competitors, which can deter some organisations from implementing full development programmes, but the consequences of not investing in this type of training are potentially far more damaging. By creating leaders first and then training them subsequently holds the risk of both de-motivating and frustrating the individual. Disillusionment can quickly follow and they could be put off taking positions of responsibility or they could look elsewhere for opportunities in companies that offer more comprehensive training and support. The most successful companies recognise that it is vital to give future leaders the resources they need before and throughout their leadership roles.

Strong leadership development will result in your organisation being seen as a real employer of choice. It’s a great attraction (and retention) tool – people who see themselves as future leaders will want to work for you and stay with the company. But if you don’t have a leadership development strategy in place – your potential future talent is likely to be lost to your competitors.

In boardrooms across the country, “G2” or second generation leadership is high on the agenda. One organisation we work with is even looking ahead to G3 leadership and giving early insights into leadership and management competencies to those who are at two to three years away from their first formal leadership role. We see this as a very encouraging sign, as identifying talented individuals, who could be taking your business forwards in the years to come - and ensuring that they are developed into leaders - will be vital to the continued success of your organisation.

Attracting, retaining and developing raw talent in order to reach the company vision for the future is key and a multi faceted strategy is needed. To develop your future leaders effectively, you’ll need to use mixed mediums of learning. Individual academic study could be combined with internal and external training, coaching and mentoring by senior managers and giving people exposure to a variety of roles - and this should be done over a period of years rather than months to get the full benefit of the scheme.

The importance of developingfuture leaders

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Are your employees truly engaged?

I came across a great piece on engagement in the Guardian. The article discusses the implications of the downturn on employee and employer relations – the strain it can cause and whether organisations are now starting to listen to their people or if they are purely putting engagement policies in place which are not having real benefits.

More and more companies, particularly large organisations claim to be working very hard on their engagement strategy to ensure the views of their teams are taken on board to improve relations and ultimately employee satisfaction and productivity.

The article gives a few examples of such companies doing just this:

BSkyB have implemented a ‘Joining In’ scheme to encourage employees to volunteer for community work and they have a Forum of elected individuals to put across the views and concerns of the employee population to management.

Lloyds Banking Group conduct quarterly engagement survey to capture attitudes and concerns

HSBC runs a childcare scheme with the aim to get women back to work following the birth of a child and in turn increase the satisfaction and feeling their female employees have towards the organisation

British Airways also run quarterly surveys of team members

Clearly then, companies are doing things to engage with their employee community and are happy to tell the world this. But are they truly engaging or merely trying to prove that they are doing so? We would imagine that staff at these organisations would shed light on this question – in fact British Airways staff may have something to say about the company’s engagement strategy given the recent increase in industrial disputes!

We know only too well how important employee engagement is to the success of a company; organisations need a strategy in place to keep their staff motivated and connected as it is key to retaining staff. We have blogged and written articles before about onboarding and what companies can do to attract the talent staff and retain alongside your existing team.

The article is well worth a read and can be found in full here. And don’t forget – you don’t have to be a large corporation to have an engagement strategy, it’s something that SME’s should do too!

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Successful leaders need self awareness

What are your biggest strengths and weaknesses?

This question is an interview favourite, but it’s often quite difficult to assess your own skills. And evidence shows that this is particularly true when it comes to leadership and management.

The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) surveyed over 2000 bosses to assess what they thought of their own management skills. The CMI then assessed over 6000 managers using their own self-diagnostic tool;

Did their own definitions match up with the measured CMI results? No:

19% said managing themselves was their key strength; this was only true in 8%

44% said they were excellent people managers; only 14% proved to be

Around 20% said they were target busters; 41% actually excelled at getting results

14% said they were born to lead; 37% proved to be strong leaders

Perhaps the most surprising statistic of all though, was that 63% received no management training before taking up a senior post.

This survey shows that no matter how much of a natural leader someone is, or how good they are at getting results, managing other people and even yourself is challenging. Identifying these areas of development really is key and is the only way that improvements can be made. The fact that almost two third of managers have received no training to prepare them for the role is concerning – being a high performing employee is one thing but being a strong leader is a very different ‘kettle of fish’. With less than one in five bosses being great people managers, the outlook for staff retention rates and business success looks less than positive unless you arm new managers with the skills, and with that the confidence, they need to succeed.

Are your managers fully equipped?

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Recruitment businesses need to look closely at their leadership models if they are to succeed in the next decade

There is no doubt that the recruitment industry has been through some pretty turbulent times during the last eighteen months and unfortunately conditions remain, at best, unpredictable. Historically, periods of economic change and uncertainty have meant that organisations have to evolve but the difference this time has been the pace of change. No sooner has a structure to cope been put in place, economic conditions change again. Consequently, leaders do not have time to really take stock and can become more interested in solutions rather than why things went wrong in the first place. Additionally leaders may demand innovation from their people – but can then be unwilling to let them experiment. The resultant emphasis on short term results rather than looking at longer term strategy can mean that the organisation gets driven by the structure rather than by the talent.

More and more we are hearing that one of the keys to success and survival is innovation. If we are to truly innovate then we have to give our people the permission to experiment - and sometimes get it wrong. And as leaders we then have to accept that any failure is a shared failure – not the fault of an individual. It’s about being brave enough to allow people to have their voice – it may not work – but in the words of a delegate at a recent leadership forum I hosted, it may also result in ‘the next big thing’.

Leaders should be thinking differently about motivation. No-one would argue that recruitment is a competitive sales environment but against a backdrop of attraction, engagement and retention challenges, does survival of the fittest really work as a strategy? Can the ‘my way or the highway’ leadership approach really work? What do our Generation Y employees really want? Research and anecdotal evidence tells us that they want to work in a community. And this will only become more acute – just look at the way a large number of secondary school students collaborate on Facebook to get homework assignments done. They don’t see it as cheating, they are not interested in who gets the best mark – they just collaborate to get the job done.

Extrapolate that forward and we have a real opportunity to develop a whole new generation of recruiters – recruiters who will be equipped to deal with the new and increasing demands of our clients.

There are already are some interesting examples of recruitment consultancies who have a no commission culture or who have developed more holistic approaches to performance management which take account of softer skills such as customer service, problem solving and team work.

Leadership for a new decade

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And to take that innovation even further, Aquent, the global marketing recruiter has taken the innovative step of only taking business from clients on an exclusive basis. They have also taken all jobs off their website and encourage clients and candidates to engage directly with a consultant. And they are rewarding their consultants based on customer feedback. Are you brave enough to try something completely different?

In essence, it seems there are four main challenges facing us as we begin this new decade: change; innovation, engagement and emotional intelligence. Change is not just a challenge though; it’s also an opportunity – an opportunity to innovate. Because change drives innovation just as innovation can lead change. The current market conditions are imposing change not only on our businesses but on the way we interact with our customers. Evolving technology for example can swamp an organisation if it is not ready to embrace the change that it brings. How change ready is your organisation? With tighter budgets, increased competition and reduced resources, our only option is to be more creative – but that means taking risks and creating an environment where innovation is actively encouraged.

So if we do become more innovative how do we communicate that to our teams so that they can engage with our aims? And how do we engage with not only our existing teams – but our future talent? The whole nature of the workplace is changing.

Research tells us that gen Y and baby Boomers want informal frequent feedback; Gen Y want a community not a company; gen X expect structure - and what of those born after 1997 – what will they want? We will need to tune into all this emotionally as well as pragmatically, so developing emotional intelligence is a must. It is clear that we will need a much broader leadership toolkit in the future.

But let’s look back for a moment. During the recession you may have had to make some very tough decisions around headcount – and you may have had to spend a lot of time with people who you ultimately had to let go. What is crucial now is that those who remain are fully engaged – you don’t want to end up with unhappy stayers, particularly when CIPD research tells us that one in three of your workforce will move on unless you fully engage them.

We need to really push our thinking as leaders. The businesses that will succeed will be the ones that are willing to take risks and create new paths for others to follow – they won’t simply respond to change – they will drive it. All this being said, these are exciting times, rife with opportunity to learn and grow as leaders. A recent 2 year study by the Work Foundation shows us what makes leaders outstanding and then focuses on what differentiates them from ‘better than good’ leaders– there is plenty to aspire to… and many of the examples given demonstrate the need for highly developed emotional intelligence.

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Top tips for new recruitment leaders

Taking the first steps into leadership is exciting and challenging. Managing personal billings is one thing, taking on the responsibility of developing and maintaining a team of consultants another and really puts time-management and organisational skills to the test. Many recruitment firms are back into hiring mode and in some cases dramatically increasing their headcount. Most of us would agree that this is a welcome sign after the past 1-2 years, although for new Team Leaders trying to train new people in the business, individually deliver, be a role model to their teams and get to grips with a leadership role can be difficult and in some cases feel overwhelming. Recent research into the priorities and concerns of new Team Leaders highlights a range of challenges:

How to keep myself and others motivated

My work seems to get pushed back to the end of the day/outside hours as team constantly asking me questions, need training or are asking my advice

Pressure from senior management to bill as much as before

Unsure how to manage underperformance and difficult situations

My one to one meetings are all about the team

No planning time

Is my leadership style ‘right’

This is not an exhaustive list or ranked according to importance, however does give a ‘flavour’ of Team Leadership ‘thinking’.

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What can help? 1. Focus on You the Role Model – the quickest and easiest way to influence the perform-

ance of others (in terms of results, activities and behaviour) is to take care of your per-formance. Don’t underestimate the extent to which people in your team will look up to you and copy you.

2. Re-organise your time-management – rather than adding the Team Leader role on top of a recruitment consultant role, work with your Manager to clearly define your role and then prioritise your time around that job. Clarity around your role and how it fits with your manager’s as well understanding the vision and key business objectives for the business as a whole will also help to define priorities.

3. Protect your time – your team need you but not all the time. Most of us want to develop teams who can think for themselves, have ideas and take responsibility for their contribu-tion to the business. Being too available, can become a habit for everyone and can end up being counter-productive. Give clear direction to all your team regularly and set aside ‘surgery time or team time’ at least once/twice a day to help answer questions/give ad-vice/plan. Help your team to understand what is urgent and important and to develop in the business rather than reacting to everything as it comes up.

4. Meet with your manager very regularly particularly in the early days of becoming a Team Leader. This is when you are developing your style and approach to leading peo-ple, building your confidence and trying out new things. Having a ‘sounding board’ to re-flect and plan your leadership will be invaluable.

5. Finally, enjoy the buzz of leading a team and watching people grow and become suc-cessful. Beware of becoming so bogged down in the day to day business of running a team and your own desk that you forget to celebrate the wins and have fun.

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Developing business minds

We are in one of the toughest markets the recruitment sector has ever experienced - not just because of the prevailing economic conditions but because no-one knows just how long this recession is going to last. Developing and sustaining survival techniques is probably the biggest challenge that the industry faces today.

As leaders, we have a responsibility to provide our consultants with the tools that they need to succeed - that’s a given whatever the market conditions. But while consultants are often given training in core competencies such as sales and recruitment - how many of them are given training on how to be better business people. Simple business thinking at desk level can make a real and measurable difference to success - and we’re not talking about huge changes here - less can be more. Small changes to thinking can create really positive changes in results. This can’t happen on its own though and if your consultants are going to be equipped to make the right decisions on the desk then leaders have to provide the reasons why changes have to be made so that the consultants can provide the how.

Having worked through three recessions during my recruitment career I have numerous examples of working with organisations who have discovered how making their consultants better business people at the level where it matters most - at the desk - can lead to a real voyage of discovery.

Quality not Quantity

In this market, creating and winning new business is obviously key. Let’s take the example of an SME recruiter who undertakes a project to improve vacancy flow - an obvious and sensible tactic. The project is seen as a great success bringing in over 40 new vacancies - however only seven are filled. So what was the problem? No-one was actually looking at these vacancies from a business perspective. Quantity does not equate quality and if a consultant is targeted to bring in new business then that has to be qualified with more than just numbers. There is no point on working on 40 vacancies if half of them are not viable business propositions. One of the main problems in this scenario was that questions such as: ‘What are the benchmarks for a good vacancy?’ and ‘What makes a vacancy fillable?’ were just not being asked - let alone answered. Until issues such as these were resolved how could the consultants possibly begin to analyse why so many vacancies were left unfilled?

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Were the vacancies of poor quality? Was too much time being spent on too many requirements? Or were they short of candidates? (unlikely!). Basically, no-one knew. The answers were found by establishing a whole range of measurements and acceptable standards to help ascertain which vacancies were the most viable. This involved a completely new qualification system and resulted in a priority list of criteria for ‘hot jobs’ on which the consultants spent the majority of their time. The result? They reduced the number of vacancies they were working on and radically increased their hit rate.

Finally, they were looking at the vacancies not as recruiters but as business people and asking themselves ‘What do I need to do to ensure that this vacancy earns me revenue?’ They also learned that although the business development project was a good idea, nothing should be done in isolation without planning for the success - or failure - of any activity and its implications on other areas.

Business Development needs a business mind

Let’s look at another example - a specialist player with very experienced recruiters on board who have never worked through a downturn. The leaders of the business know that they need to develop their existing client base and bring in new clients - but it just isn’t happening. What had to happen here, was that the consultants needed a completely different mindset for a completely different economic landscape. The first thing was to decide what sort of client base they needed and then benchmark and measure those potential clients against set criteria - in this case by profiling existing top clients. Again, the consultants at desk level were shown how to look at the problem as business people rather than just recruiters - because basically this was not an operational recruitment problem - it was a business problem.

In this market it’s about working smarter - good recruitment skills in isolation will never be enough to ensure survival and success. What today’s consultants need is the ability to apply business thinking - develop that skill and they can succeed.

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For more information visit www.landerassociates.co.uk

Written by Lander Associates