ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE
leadership i n s i g h ts MARCH-APRIL
KNOTTY PROBLEMS AND LONG-TERM CAREER SUCCESS An Essay by Mathew Sheep, Ph.D. Effective leaders usually take some degree of pride in their ability to make good decisions, but sometimes those decisions backfire, and we wonder why. Likely, a “knotty” problem is lurking beneath the surface, hidden from plain view. What is a “knotty” problem? I can almost guarantee you that you experience such problems in your organization on a daily basis—whether you call them “challenging,” or “tricky,” or “wicked.” We call them “knots” because that is what my research colleagues and I have found that they are. That is, our intractable problems (those that won’t go away) are really made up of complexly interwoven tensions in organizational systems. As Peter Senge (2006) observed in The Fifth Discipline,
“Business and other human endeavors are also systems…bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other….Instead, we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get solved.” Let me share a story. Several years ago, I was invited to join a research team that was
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VOLUME ONE
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ISSUE ONE
LEADERSHIP VIEWS
This issue: Vern McGinnis
Vern earned a B.S in Agricultural Industries and his M.S. in Agricultural Economics, both from the University of Illinois. He spent 42 years in the GROWMARK system and was serving as VP of Corporate Services and Strategic Planning when he retired in 2007. Vern has also served as the National President of the American Marketing Association, and has held numerous other community and professional leadership roles. Currently, Vern serves as Chair for the “Illinois Committee for Agricultural Education.” As you reflect on your leadership roles and experiences, what events were critical in your development as a leader? In other words, how did you learn to be a leader? I watched and studied others and learned from them as well as reading about leadership. This helped to shape my views on what worked and what didn’t. I was fortunate to have management roles early in my career (even though small) that gave me a learning laboratory. Involvement in outside organizations (community and industry) gave me the opportunity to work with and learn from other volunteers. Perhaps one of the best experiences was my involvement in the American Marketing Association. I started at the local chapter level and worked my way up into the national organization. Serving as national President of the AMA was a real growth experience for me in many ways. Who did you learn from? That is, did you model your leadership after others? How? I’m sure I was impacted by many others. Growing up my role models outside of family were teachers, coaches and school administrators. Dr. Robert Bone was president of ISNU when I arrived as a green freshman. I likely didn’t realize it then, but he was a positive role model because I still have vivid memories of seeing him around the campus. The CEO of FS Services (now GROWMARK), my first employer, was a strong influence on me as well. He was regarded then as a great leader and is still held in that regard in company history. I have had others in the company who were good role models as well as many from my experiences outside the company. I learned as much about what isn’t good leadership as I did on the positive side from these experiences. What would you say are the most important attributes of an effective leader? That is, what makes a great leader? Honesty, compassion and a caring for those you lead, communication skills and an understanding of and a passion for the vision that you are championing. A leader must be able to communicate the vision to others in terms that they can understand and commit to.
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LEADERSHIP VIEWS (continued) What are the most important “things” a leader does that contributes to the success of an organization? Communicate the vision and strategies for areas for which they are responsible in ways that are clear, understandable and credible to the team. This includes “building a case” and helping others understand why the strategy and direction are important. Building and securing engagement and “buy-in.” This means leaders have to exhibit passion for the cause and vision. • Provide ongoing communication and monitor progress. • Assure necessary resources are available. • Make changes as needed. • Celebrate and reward progress and results. What can organizations do to help develop future leaders? Provide a program of employee development through training and continuing education and challenging work assignments and experiences. Some of this can be accomplished by encouraging and supporting employee involvement in outside organizations as well. What are organizations not doing now (or enough of) that they should be doing more of? Recognizing the value of committed and engaged employees. Seeing employees as valuable assets worthy of support and investment for the long term. What were some of the mistakes that people make in their leadership roles? Leadership takes you outside your comfort zone—that means you have to believe in yourself and be willing to take chances. You should strive to be effective, not to be “liked.” Leaders have to be willing to make the hard choices. Finally, your leadership style must be compatible with who you are in order to be credible. What are the biggest mistakes people make that “derail” them in their leadership roles? An unwillingness or failure to demonstrate interest in new things and new roles. Failing to do your best on what might seem like a minor assignment. Everything you do in your career becomes a part of your portfolio. It is hard to get rid of the “bad baggage” later on. What mistakes do people make that keep them from being noticed as “potential leaders” earlier in their careers? One mistake is avoiding doing things that get you noticed. There are steps people can take to build their visibility. Volunteer for team project assignments. Get involved in things outside work that may be important to the company. Build new skills. Seek out mentors. What advice would you give to someone just starting out—assuming he/she wants to take have leadership responsibilities at some point? Be positive. Make your interests known. Be willing to accept small assignments. Always fulfill your commitments. What advice would you give to someone who is already in a leadership role, but wants to continue to move up? The same as above only at a higher level. Be open to changes in job assignments. People who do really well at what they are currently doing are the ones who get noticed and are given the chance to do more on a larger scale. Work to demonstrate skills that are transferable to other roles. Some of the readers will be college students. What advice would you give them (not necessarily related to leadership)? Build your college resume outside of the classroom. Seek internships. Volunteer. Have some involvement in student organizations. Be cautious with social media, so you don’t leave something behind that you might have to explain in the future. As you look at the local, state, and national political/economic environment, what concerns you? What role do organizations (and their leaders) have in addressing these concerns? These are challenging times for a variety of reasons. Both the political and economic environments are difficult and fraught with problems. The need for leadership grows as the magnitude of the problems escalates. Society and organizations are faced with multiple issues to resolve. Our ability to deal with this multitude of threats and opportunities will shape our future and the desirability of the outcome. Looking forward, how might the roles and responsibilities of leaders change? The basic responsibilities of leaders will remain essentially the same. How that role is fulfilled changes over time. Technology impacts how we interact. Communication is now real time. Society looks for results more quickly. There is more pressure on leaders to produce and less tolerance for how long it takes.
RESEARCHUPDATE Dr. YongMei Liu
IT PAYS TO HAVE AN
EYE FOR EMOTIONS Can you explain the research and, in general, what the research suggests?
We conducted two studies in Germany with a diverse group of participants, and we found in both studies that employees who are able to accurately recognize emotional expressions of others tend to earn higher annual income. In our main study we found that the relationship between emotion recognition ability and annual income can be explained by two intervening factors, political skill and interpersonal facilitation. That is, those who are good at recognizing emotions also tend to be skilled at navigating the social environment at work, and they are cooperative, considerate employees who are willing to help others.
Many of our readers will be familiar with the general idea of Emotional Intelligence, or EI. Your research, however, addresses a more specific concept that you call “Emotional Recognition Ability” or ERA. Can you provide some detail on what is meant by ERA and how it is related to Emotional Intelligence? EI has multiple components, including accurately perceiving emotions, being able to understand emotions, using emotions to facilitate thoughts and actions, as well as managing emotions. Many researchers believe these components of EI are hierarchically related to each other, and that perceiving emotion, or emotion recognition ability, is the most basic and fundamental component of EI.
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Knotty Problems (continued) studying a spin-off of a global corporation (Sheep, Fairhurst, & Khazanchi, forthcoming). The spin-off had been “liberated,” so to speak, from the more hierarchical structure of its parent firm in order to develop highly innovative products. After it had achieved a measure of success in doing so, the spinoff was then re-acquired by the same corporation in order to commercialize the new products and to profit thereby. However, this did not go as simply as expected. Once the spin-off had become accustomed to the “freedom” to be autonomous, creative, and nimble in what some members called their “Wild West” culture, it was not an easy transition to move back in “with the parents.” There were rules, procedures, chains of command, all sorts of resource constraints, too many projects, highly constrained financial and human capital, and so on. These constraints formed multiple tensions that members in the re-acquired spin-off had to find a way to navigate and manage every day. In analyzing our interview data for this study, we found that members frequently talked about the various tensions they faced in ways that were entangled and mutually amplifying of one another—they had become “knot-like.” We also discovered that people are very different when it comes to how they “manage” knots. Some members argued that tensional knots were a justification for “giving up” or “giving in” to paralysis of further innovation—“it’s just not doable.” However, other members saw knots as an opportunity to be increasingly innovative so that knotted tensions could be handled simultaneously. The latter approach was clearly more beneficial and resulted from “integrative thinking” or “systems thinking,” both subsumed under a larger umbrella of what is known as a “design thinking” shift in management. (See references below). Closer to home, we all face such “knotted tensions” every day at work, regardless of where we are positioned in our organization (from entry level to top management). Thus, we all could benefit by becoming more adept at a “systems” view of solving tension-riddled problems. For many problems we face in our organizations, knotted tensions can be made worse when we insist on short-term gains or overly simplistic “solutions.” These undermine long-term system viability and sustainability for competitive advantage. For example, we too often read headlines like those of the recent oil industry glut, VW’s emissions software scandal, GM’s
ignition switch scandal, BP’s “Deepwater Horizon” disaster, financial travails of Detroit, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and formerly innovative industry giants now faced with massive layoffs and restructuring, at best, or bankruptcy and threat of demise, at worst. There are big problems, yes, but their magnitude is deceptive. They started with and will wind up as smaller decisions made at all levels of the organization—decisions that are either narrowly short-sighted by superficially considering only one’s own little slice of time and space, OR those that take a long-term view and are broadly interdependent with other parts of the system. Your successes depend on how effectively you can approach complex problems by seeing them for what they are—multiple tensions and constraints that we call a system of “knots.” In her book referenced below, Donella Meadows quotes Russell Ackoff, an operations theorist: “Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes… Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes.” Want to know how to manage a mess like a pro? Enter systems thinking, which Senge (2006) defines as “a body of knowledge and tools…to make the full pattern clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively.” Want to be a better leader and decision-maker in challenging situations when problems are ill-defined? Learn to think in terms of interdependent systems and how your actions will impact related parts of that system. Also ask the “what if” sorts of questions that will help you to unearth possibilities. As Roger Martin (Dunne & Martin, 2006) put it, “What is something completely new that would be lovely if it existed but doesn’t now?” Finally, refuse to settle for false “either-or” choices and look for “both-and” opportunities that lead to win-win solutions. Your decisions, even amidst complex “knots” and “messes,” may lead to systemic successes that take you and your organization further (for longer) than you had initially imagined. Dr. Sheep is an Associate Professor in the Department of magagement. He may be contacted at msheep@ilstu.edu. He will be presenting more about this topic on Friday, June 10th (see page 5) To learn more about Dr. Sheep, please visit: Business.IllinoisState.edu/Management/Faculty_Staff/Sheep.shtml
WANT TO KNOW MORE? • Dunne, D., & Martin R. (2006). Design thinking and how it will change management education: An interview and discussion. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5: 512-523.
• Kolko, J. (2015). Design thinking comes of age. Harvard Business Review (September 2015 issue). (See three other feature articles on design
thinking in this issue). • Martin, R. (2008). The opposable mind: How successful leaders win through integrative thinking. Harvard Business School Press. • Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. • Senge, P. (2006). The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (Revised Edition). New York: Currency Doubleday. • Sheep, M., Fairhurst, G., & Khazanchi, S. (forthcoming 2016). Knots in the discourse of innovation: Investigating multiple tensions in a reacquired spin-off. Organization Studies.
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EYE FOR EMOTIONS - RESEARCHUPDATE (continued) Your research suggests a link between higher levels of ERA and higher levels of income. That is, individuals with “stronger” ERA will tend to make more money that those with lower ERA. Why, do you think, that relationship exists? The relationship between emotional intelligence and financial success is an indirect one. According to our research model, those who are high on ERA are able to better understand and navigate the social, political environment at the workplace, which allows them to more effectively get things done, which eventually leads to higher annual income.
Is this, at least somewhat, an issue of personal likeability? Perhaps. Through enhanced political skill, those who are emotionally intelligent will be able to better understand others’ motives and thoughts, to deal with awkward interpersonal situations more skillfully, and generate greater liking and trust of others.
You reference “political skill”—and some of your other research also explores political skill in organizations. But, don’t most of us consider political behavior in organizations to be a negative? We often hear complaints, or offer our own complaints, about people who are too political. Could you comment on that and offer some insights on the actual positives of political behavior and political skill? You are right! Many people have a negative view on political behavior in organizations. We tend to associate organizational politics with “office politics.” And we think of scenarios like back stabbing, gossiping, and brown-nosing the boss when we talk about organizational politics. But organizational politics is in fact a much broader concept that includes both positive and negative politics. Political behaviors can be considered simply individuals’ response to workplaces where resources are scarce, and where decisions have to be made where divergent interests are involved. Yes, self-interest is oftentimes part of the driver of individual political acts, but such actions do not always go against organizational goals. Oftentimes the rules and structures in the organizations are obsolete and can’t be changed quick enough to adapt to the changing environment. In those situations you almost have to fall on unsanctioned behaviors to gain power and influence and do so skillfully to get things done. And that is why political skill is so important. In today’s organizations, individuals increasingly have to collaborate with each other, and the organizational structure is getting less and less hierarchical. That means not only do employees have to rely on others to get their goals accomplished, but they also have to be able to get others’ assistance without formal authority. Because of the increasing interdependence among employees and their general lack of formal authority over one another, those who are equipped with political skill are at an incredible
advantage. Because they understand others’ intentions and desires, they influence others’ thoughts and actions skillfully, and they show a sense of sincerity and trustworthiness, they are able to motivate and inspire.
Okay, assume I’m a mid-level manager. Still pretty early in my managerial career, but I really want to be successful—for all the right reasons. That is, I am appropriately ambitious. How does this research apply to me? What should I take away? Middle managers who desire to add value to their organizations, need to understand the importance of emotional intelligence and political skill at the workplace, and continue to horn their skills in these areas. Emotionally intelligent managers create a pleasant work environment for their subordinates, where people feel seen and understood. And political skills can be used to gain valuable developmental opportunities for subordinates, and shield them from bad politics and undue challenges and pressures from the higher ups. For middle managers themselves, tremendous influence and power can be gained from doing politics right, which not only helps their own career growth and success but helps make the organizational change processes more effective as well.
Is ERA, or emotional intelligence overall, something that people can develop or strengthen? What specific advice would you give people who need—or would like—to develop their emotional intelligence? Because EI is a competency and can be developed and strengthened. The literature has developed some evidence that EI can be enhanced through training. I think the development of EI starts with awareness. The more we start to pay more attention to emotions, consider them a valid and valuable part of our personal and organizational life, the more we will be able to understand, respond to and make use of them.
Your study took place in Germany. Any reason to think that the results don’t apply in the US or North America? That’s a good question. The two cultures are similar on a number of cultural dimensions. Both are individualistic, masculine and low power distance cultures, but Germany has a higher uncertainty avoidance and a stronger long-term orientation. Individualism versus collectivism and power distance perhaps are the culture dimensions that are most relevant in the relationships we examined in the study, because they influence the way individuals relate to each other at work. Considering the similarities between the two cultures in these two aspects, I would think that the results of our study are generalizable in the US setting, although this remains an empirical research question that needs to be answered in future studies.
Dr. Liu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management. She may be contacted at yliu2@ilstu.edu. To learn more about Dr. Liu, please visit: Business.IllinoisState.edu/Management/Faculty_Staff/Liu.shtml
e. g d e l w no k e m o ns i a G . . t T s a H f k G a I e R br Y e A m o D s I R F Grab R U O
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Y T R A ST
IL L INOIS S TAT E UNI V E R SI T Y
ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE ssions Friday Breakfast Se 8:00am - 9:30am Breakfast: 7:30am | Session:
GET IT DONE: ILL INO IS STATE UN IVE RS ITY p i h s r e d a e l l a n o i t a z Principles of Project Management organi institute
MARCH 18, 2016
in most organizations. This session will focus on the Projects and project management are a way of life and provide participants with the tools to effectively, most impor tant elements of project management and optimistically, manage projects.
WOMEN PROMOTE!
Strategies for Authentic Self-Promotion
APRIL 8, 2016
ive self-promotion and negotiation for women. This session will address the impor tance of effect riate strategies for their own self-promotion and approp y emplo and Participants will learn to identif y negotiation. “
THAT’S NOT CHE ATING!
”
Creating an Ethical Climate for Millennials
MAY 13, 2016
may be on the rise. This session will explore why Recent research suggests that academic dishonesty esty may impact organizations. dishon that is occurring and how the growth of academic
WOULDN’T IT BE LOVELY…?
ons and Persistent Problems How to Thrive in the Midst of Your Most Knotted Tensi
JUNE 10, 2016
even after we think we’ve solved them? If so, you’re Does it seem that some problems keep resurfacing, introduce participants to the idea of “systems and issue very not alone. This session will address that y” and always reemerging problems. thinking” as an approach to addressing those “knott
To register or learn more, please visit: Business.IllinoisState.edu/OLI/BreakfastSeries
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book reviews by Andy Schuster and Danielle Miller-Schuster
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful
THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: A Collection of Interesting Items on Leadership. (Note: Some links may be behind paywalls.)
Managing Two People Who Hate Each Other
(Harvard Business Review Blogs) https://hbr.org/2014/06/managing-two-people-who-hate-each-other/
The Neuroscience of Effective Leadership
(Fast Company) http://www.fastcompany.com/3025219/leadership-now/the-neuroscience-of-effective-leadership
by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
A Faux Pas Recovery Plan
A must read for anyone that is moving up the corporate ladder or taking on new (and more) responsibilities. What got you promoted won’t work in the new role. The book is a must read for anyone in a management role or aspiring to be a manager. This book lays out simple to understand concepts and arguments for the reasons WHY the old work place rules simply aren’t applicable once you reach a certain level.
Leadership Suggestions – Taming the E-mail Beast
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
A classic that needs to be re-read every few years. At the core, this book is about relationships and trust. In today’s incredibly busy work environment, relationships and understanding what is important is critical if you want to move ahead and becoming a person of consequence. This is a relationship, time management, priority management book filled with nuggets of gold.
Love is the Killer App – How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders
A must read that is really about generosity. Sanders argues that “love is the selfless promotion of the growth of the other” and carefully defines and illustrates how to be generous with sharing your intangibles with others— that is, our knowledge, our network, and our compassion. The quality with which we invest in others can lead to extraordinary potential and infinite opportunity.
Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times by Donald T. Phillips
Lincoln’s leadership style remains amazingly relevant. Phillips illuminates Lincoln’s leadership characteristics through four lessons: People, Character, Endeavor, and Communication. I have used the lessons from in this book to engage others in professional development workshops; participants really appreciate the practical advice shared throughout the book. Andy Schuster is the Manager of Leadership Training and Development at GROWMARK. Danielle Miller-Schuster is an Interim Assistant Vice President in Division of Student Affairs at Illinois State University. They are married.
(Wall Street Journal) http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-faux-pas-recovery-plan-1450821565?tesla=y (Wall Street Journal) http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-i-tamed-the-email-beast-at-work-1457921533
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