Questions of a Leader

I had not been on Twitter all day and typed a quick tweet before I rushing out the door to pick up the kid:

lisarosendahl I am the bug on the windshield today. Ahhhh, tomorrow is another day.

What does that tell you about my day? I was having a tough one. I was out two days last week with a sick little girl, and the e-mails, phone messages and requests for my assistance piled up. We were facing a national credentialing deadline coming due today and a bunch of employees not yet finished in the credentialing system. There were more meetings than I had expected, and every one of them ran  longer than they were scheduled for.

Meanwhile, I was reviewing staff actions that were not in line with changes I had requested, discussing appropriate responses to employee misconduct, planning for a meeting Wednesday morning (I am out again Tuesday), preparing an employee message about the upcoming holiday schedule, and trying not to think about the to-do tasks in my right hand drawer.

All in all, it was a typical day in a busy HR office. But the way I worked through the day was not typical at all. It was more than typical for me. Typical tasks, yes. Typical insights, no. I don't like the way the day went today. I was delegating tasks to staff at the end of the workday, while heading out the door to get my child to guitar lessons on time. My first reaction is to look to see where others are not measuring up to my expectations but then I stop myself from that line of thinking. I look back over the past 5 1/2 years in my role as an HR Officer. I see where we started, and I see how far we have come. Even more clearly, I see where we are going and what we can be.

I have to wonder, why are we not there today? Did I get in the way? Have we stepped off the path that would lead us to our objectives? Should it be taking this long? I don't know. I do know that I am not moving the department as fast as I'd like enough for me and I have a hunch that it is because of the work that's piling up on my desk.

My department runs the way that is does in large part because of me: my decisions, my interactions, my communications, my staffing selections, my priorities, my shortcomings, and my strengths. What can I do differently to provide leadership to my staff to get us to where we need to be? 

I will be asking that question to Abigail (my executive coach) tomorrow when I see her.

Comments

[Sarah]

I can't wait to hear what your coach says.

I hope she tells you that it is normal to have the same expectations of others that we have for ourselves.

[Jackie Cameron]

"What can I do differently to provide leadership to my staff to get us to where we need to be? "

If all leaders regularly asked this question the world of work could be a very different place!

Thank you for writing this post, Lisa. Personal insights can be enormously helpful to others.

[HR Maven]

<i>Tyranny of the urgent</i> is what gets in my way. Other people's poor planning makes it my crisis (think immigration). It keeps going.

We are in the process of outlining next year's projects with timelines and due dates. I schedule uninterrupted time out of the office to get some it done.

I wish we could be like Google and keep 20% of time for projects of interest. Think what that would be like!!

[Lisa Rosendahl]

Hi Sarah, I did not make my meeting today - bad roads so we are rescheduled in January. Darn!

Thanks Jackie, this morning I was feeling like I may have shared a little too much.

Ah the tyrants! What are we going to do with them HR Maven!

[Dr Bruce Hoag]

You asked, "What can I do differently to provide leadership to my staff to get us where we need to be?"

There are three issues in your question: 1) what you need to do; 2) leadership; and 3) where you need to be. I'm not restating these things just to be pedantic, but in order to provide a structure for my comments. That said, I'll admit straightaway that by not knowing the facts, it will be much harder for me to discuss your situation.

Let's start with last one first. You probably know that where you are now is the result, in large measure, of your past actions. Your question implies that where you are now, however, is not where you need to be. I would like to suggest that you have inadvertently lead them to a place other than where you need them to be. This may not be entirely true. It is also possible that they were not capable of being led to that point. Again, it's difficult to know with so few facts to hand.

Let's consider the second point - leadership. For my money, the evidence of leadership is always that there are willing followers. Coercion is not leadership. So, if people have followed you thus far, then you have led them to this point. If you've arrived where you need to be on your own, that is those who should have followed have ended up somewhere else, then whatever else you were doing, it was not leading.

This brings us to the third thing, which was at the beginning of your question: what do you need to do differently? That really depends on whether they followed you or not. If they followed you, but you ended up somewhere other than where you needed to be, then you need to examine your own path to see where you deviated from the goal. If they didn't follow you, then you need to recall the point at which they stopped following you. Go back to that point and find out what happened. Why did they stop following you? Why did they go their own way?

If you want to provide the specifics behind your question, then I would be happy to continue this discussion.

Cheers, Bruce