Tuesday 19 June, 2012
Effective leaders provide clear direction. They look ahead.
Their vision and direction generate progress. Clear vision enables
clear, positive and constructive action, progress and development. And
that requires that the leader habitually and intentionally looks up,
looks around and looks ahead - and does not become buried in the
activity of the moment.
The
first line of organisational leadership is often the role of the
supervisor. It's typically a very hands-on and connected role. It's also
sometimes referred to as the "hardest transition". This is because it
typically demands that the new supervisor make significant and initially
difficult changes - from "head-down doing" to "head-up managing"; from
doing things themselves to a high standard to supporting others to do
those same things ... sometimes initially not to the same standard.
Effective supervision requires a "step back and a step up" - actions that don't always come naturally. And they are actions that can continue to challenge throughout a manager's career. Of course, vision or overview is not an end in itself. "Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality", said respected leadership writer Warren Bennis.
"Supervision" is an interesting and descriptive word when it comes to describing the work of most in people management roles, at whatever level. The word breaks into two parts: super, meaning above or over; and vision, indicating sight or view. Hence, we can describe supervision as having an "over-view".
The responsibility of maintaining an overview is one of the great challenges for many supervisors, team leaders and managers. It's often easier and more satisfying to just put your head down and do things yourself than it is to observe, support and manage the performance, needs and potential of those in your team. It's why effective delegation is such a challenge. But it's essential for the team, for productivity, for growth, and for the organisation that leaders actively and consciously maintain an overview - that they regularly operate with their heads up rather than developing blind spots to what's going on around about and up ahead.
If you like, it's a practical and everyday dimension to "the vision thing" so often described as the task of leadership. And it encompasses many aspects, including monitoring the internal and external operating environments; observing and analysing patterns; and identifying individual, team and organisational opportunities.
Beyond the various aspects of vision highlighted earlier, consider the following four practical dimensions of managing your "over-view" - four dimensions that can encourage progress and performance development:
- Group performance
How effectively and productively are team members working together? How clear and aligned are your team(s) with organisational objectives? Where is performance strong and weak? How sustainable is current performance and what are you doing to support and develop it?
- High performers
It's easy to unintentionally ignore those who perform the best. "Set and forget" syndrome is understandable when there's little immediate or urgent demand for attention; but it's an expensive problem when they move on through lack of challenge and/or new opportunities elsewhere. Maintain an overview of your high performers to ensure you stay in touch with their aspirations and look for new opportunities for them to develop and contribute.
- Under performers
Performance problems rarely fix themselves, because poor performers typically don't know how. And you can't help if you can't see the problem. Effective overview enables real-time evaluation of performance and supportive, specific and constructive intervention. Under performance doesn't have to be a fatal problem - unless it's ignored and unaddressed.
- Your own performance
How well do you "super-vise" your own development? Just as your overview gives you vision of others' performance, so you need to occasionally get "up in the balcony" of your own role and take a look at how things are going. If you are going to progress and develop - and if you're going to model those things - it's essential that you take some time for reflection.
Source:ceoonline.com
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