Leadership - A Formula for Success

LEADERSHIP – A Formula for Success

David Sykes

Copyright: © 2016 David Sykes

Published by Lulu.com

ISBN 978-1-326-60865-1

The Author

David Sykes is by profession a chemical engineer but has spent most of his career in man management and latterly as a Business and Training Consultant.

When making the transition into management, he found it difficult to understand that whilst he could predict the outcome when adjusting the temperature of a distillation column, when dealing with people, the outcome was anything but certain.

No ‘laws’ seemed to exist that might predict their behaviour, and this frustration was the cause of many anxieties and mistakes in his early career.  Thankfully, through training, coaching and mentoring, he began to understand human behaviour and how to use this knowledge wisely to build and motivate successful teams.

After over 35 years in man-management, David founded Vanilla Training Solutions in 2005, a business committed to helping organisations excel through the strategic use of the training process.  He lives in Somerset with his wife Judith and their cat Flo and dog Rosie.

He can be contacted at david@theleadershipformula.uk

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a number of people who have been influential in my career and helped in my enlightenment.  I would like to thank Chelvin Hibbert who introduced me to Transactional Analysis many years ago and showed me the way forward.  To John Barnacott whose advice and training expertise inspired me on my learning journey and to Ian Jenner for showing me a new horizon and for his significant contribution to the Vanilla Project.  I would also like to thank Pam Sneddon, now no longer with us, to whom this book is dedicated.  Also, my gratitude to Bernard Wynne for his advice whilst I was setting up Vanilla Training Solutions Ltd and for giving me the confidence to step into the ‘horseshoe’.  Finally I would like to thank my daughter-in-law Tetyana for her excellent work in proof-reading the book and for preparing some of the training material it is based on.

I dedicate this book to two people without whom it would never have been written. The first, Pam Sneddon, was my assistant on the Vanilla Project and is sadly no longer with us.  Without Pam the project would have fallen at the first hurdle.

The second of course is my darling wife Judith, my soul mate and my best friend.  Judith has been a source of inspiration throughout my career and has constantly given me honest and constructive feedback, helping me never to settle for second best.

Contents

The Author

INTRODUCTION

MODULE 1 – LEADERSHIP & BEHAVIOUR

Our Challenge as Leaders

A Formula for Success

Understanding People

Behavioural Styles

Adapting to Other Styles

Practical Exercise – Behavioural Styles

The Power of Behaviour

Practical Exercise – Behaviour Breeds Behaviour

MODULE 1 – NUGGETS

MODULE 2 – INTERACTING WITH PEOPLE

Interacting with People

The Importance of Stroking

Conditional and Unconditional Strokes

The Importance of Strokes and the Stroke Balance

Practical Exercise ‒ Stroking

Transactional Analysis

PAC Exercises

MODULE 2 – NUGGETS

MODULE 3 – CHANGING OUTCOMES

Changing Outcomes

Mental Models

Reframing

It’s as Simple as A-B-C

Communicating Effectively

Body Language

MODULE 3 – NUGGETS

MODULE 4 – COMMUNICATION

Effective Communication

The Listening Process

The Listening Pyramid

Setting up an Active Listening Session

Verbal Communication

Revealing Ourselves to Others

The Johari Window

Opening the Window

Building Trust and Rapport

Exercise – Opening the Window

MODULE 4 – NUGGETS

MODULE 5 – GIVING AND RECEIVING FEEDBACK

Mental Models Revisited

A Charter to Lead By

How to Give and Receive Feedback

Motivational Feedback

Formative Feedback

Exercise – Situation – Behaviour – Effect

MODULE 5 – NUGGETS

MODULE 6 – BEING ASSERTIVE

A Definition of Assertiveness

Our Rights

Types of Behaviour

Picking and Planning our Battles

The Assertiveness Toolbox

Dealing with Passive Aggressive People

Exercise 1 – Assertiveness

Exercise 2 – Assertiveness

MODULE 6 – NUGGETS

Answers to Assertiveness Questions

MODULE 7 – MOTIVATING YOUR TEAM

Motivation

The Carrot and the Stick

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The Practical Application of Maslow

Herzberg

The Practical Application of Herzberg

Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne Effect

Motivating Team Members

The VANILLA Effect

Confronting Constructively

Case Study

MODULE 7 – NUGGETS

MODULE 8 – LEADERSHIP & TEAM WORKING

Leadership

Early Leadership Theories

How Leaders Behave

Situational Leadership

Action Centred Leadership

Setting SMART Objectives.

TEAM WORKING

What Makes a Team?

How Teams Form

Team Roles

Supercharge Your Team

The Power of Vision

Creating a Vision

The Ten Skills of Leadership

MODULE 8 – NUGGETS

MODULE 9 – METRICS & THINGS

Metrics & Key Performance Indicators

Metrics

Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Scorecards, Dashboards, and Reports

Efficiency

Productivity

The 7 Wastes

Elimination of Waste

Flowcharting

Standard Operations

Dealing with Difficult People

MODULE 9 – NUGGETS

MODULE 10 – PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Before We Begin...

Simple Rules of Success

Individual Success Plan

The Ten Key Actions to Becoming a Successful Leader

MODULE 10 ‒ NUGGETS

APPENDIX

Arrival...

INTRODUCTION

Oh great, another book on leadership.  Whoopee do!  Just what the world needs to add to the thousands already out there.  My father - had he been alive today - might have said, bluntly, ‘Son, there are leadership books to cobble dogs with.’

But wait a minute, maybe it’s written by an acknowledged and acclaimed great leader?  Richard Branson perhaps?  Dynamic, successful and loved by all his staff.  (Unlimited holidays, Richard, what’s that all about?)  Or maybe it’s by Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, tamer of organised crime and a great motivator, his reputation cemented following 9-11?  Could this be the sequel to his great book on leadership?  Useful, perhaps, if you are planning to tame Merthyr Tydfil. No, you’ve just checked the cover; it’s by David somebody or other.  Never heard of him!  (Perhaps, more worrying, you’ve read somewhere that he’s a chemical engineer whose musings, no doubt, might be useful if you ever decide to buy an oil refinery)

So, it has to be that someone has finally discovered a different, unique theory of leadership, the veritable philosophers’ stone.  Could this be the Holy Grail to solve the age-old dilemmas and frustrations of getting others to do even the simplest of things that you’ve asked of them?  A paradigm shift, a guaranteed way of herding cats!  Perhaps now is the time to flick through the book or check the table of contents?  You have?  OK, so it’s just the same old chestnuts; McGregor, Adair and the other great thinkers on Leadership.  Sorry!  As King David said, over two millennia ago, there’s nothing new under the sun.

What, therefore, would possess anyone to write another book on leadership and, more importantly, why would anyone want to read it?  Or, since you are reading this, to put it more bluntly what’s in it for you?

Well, the good news is that I have discovered a way of weaving the perceived wisdom on leadership, management and inter-personal skills into a proven methodology that delivers success.  Initially designed and delivered as a ten-week training programme, I have transferred it to a modular format.

Who is it written for?  I have written this primarily for managers, supervisors and team leaders who have a similar career path to myself and have suffered the same frustrations.  For someone whose technical skills have served them well and brought them to the attention of the ‘powers that be’ who decided that since you were the best ‘widget fitter’ you were adequately equipped to lead the team of ‘widget fitters’.  Maybe you took to it like a duck to water and were successful enough to make the second rung on the ladder, where the technical content of your job is less and the ‘leadership’ element increasing. This was perhaps when you realised that un-jamming the ‘widget’ machine or compiling the monthly accounts is a damn sight easier than sorting Billy Boy out who is riding you and finding every good reason not to do the unpleasant jobs.  Luckily, Emma always sorts them out without a word of protest (at least not to you!)

Maybe you’re at the stage when you decide that knowing the ’ins’ and ‘outs’ of the processes you’re responsible for, the appropriate ‘knobs and levers’, aren’t enough.  Perhaps you would like to discover the equivalent ‘knobs and leavers’ that make people work the way they’re supposed to.  Chances are that you’ve tried your own methods and some of them brought you initial success, but now perhaps you’re at the stage where you’ve seen their limitations.

It could be that your boss has already sent you on a training course to help you make the next step.  Let’s be honest, we’ve all been there.  The brochure looked good, the course content was particularly relevant to your current ‘challenges’.  (Whatever happened to problems?) The price per head was ‘reasonable’, and more importantly, the venue was attractive, particularly the buffet lunch!

The course, as you rated it on the ‘happy sheet’, completed before you left, was ‘excellent’, particularly the impressive folder which now resides on your book shelf, next to all the others.

Your glowing praise to anyone who asked (or didn’t ask) back at the ‘Fun Factory’ seemed at odds with the observations of your boss/colleagues/subordinates/casual acquaintances who one week later were unanimous in their verdict: nothing has changed!

Don’t worry, this programme is different. 

If you have no experience of leadership training, maybe you are just looking to get ahead of the game.  This is particularly relevant if you are considering your first step into management or supervision.

Whatever your reasons, this course will give you a practical, proven step-by-step methodology that will help you build the strong inter-personal skills needed to become a successful team leader.  It is ‘waffle-free’ and contains a formula for success which I have practiced for many years.  It is written by someone who has been where you are and has the T-shirt and battle scars to prove it.

So, that’s what’s in it for you.  Read the modules, do the exercises, take on board the actions, apply the learning within twenty four hours of discovering it (since that’s how training works) and you will begin to realise that leadership is not only as easy as making widgets, but it’s more fun!  Trust me, I’m an engineer. 

For a moment I thought you might have missed the word ‘proven.’  Perhaps I should have written it in capital letters.  The reason I say proven is that I have used the methodology on which this leadership programme is based since 1997, with measurable success.  If you want an explanation, read the Appendix where I give a short resume of my career and how I came to put this programme together.  Originally delivered as a ten-week training course, I have condensed it into ten modules, and here it is.  So either read the Appendix or get straight into the programme by reading Module 1.

Are you with me?  If not, put the book back on the shelf (the shop assistant is watching you, you’ve been pondering it too long) and as God said to Moses, ‘Keep taking the tablets’.  Just remember, however, the old adage ‘if you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always got!’

If you’re with me, let’s start by understanding that leadership isn’t something inherent in a person’s genes but a set of behaviours that can be learnt, applied and delivered to produce the results demanded of you by yourself and your organisation.

It only remains for me to welcome on board the good ship ‘Enlightenment’ and to introduce you to a formula that will transform your life, as it did mine, forever.

May 2016

MODULE 1 – LEADERSHIP & BEHAVIOUR

Our Challenge as Leaders

What are we here for, why do they need us?  Before we plough into the ‘how to’ part of the book, it is worth pondering as to our role as leaders. Whatever our title; director, manager, supervisor, charge hand or team leader, there is an expectation from our bosses that we will deliver a result.  This is their sole reason for employing us.  I remember unkindly telling a poor performing manager, as we stood in the production hall, surrounded by chaos, that I could have chaos for free, I didn’t need to pay his exorbitant salary!  We are paid to get a result, so how do we define our role as leaders?

The simplest answer might be that we are here to get things done.  Is it that simple? 

In the late 80’s I was the manufacturing director responsible for the operation of two factories in Lincolnshire.  One day as we were struggling with a bottleneck in the main factory, an urgent order came in from our largest customer. I decided to send it to the smaller factory where the works manager, a German ex-prisoner of war, I shall call Klauss, had a reputation for delivering his orders ahead of schedule.  As a manager he was very effective in running his factory, but in a very Germanic way; he was the boss.  Everyone understood they had to do things his way, he didn’t ask for or need advice and his word was final.  The job in question was a tub for containing moisturiser, an injection moulded base and lid.  It comprised two different colours.  He brushed aside my concerns, when I asked whether he could do it, by saying he had first run the job ten years ago before they transferred it to the main site, and it would be a piece of cake.  There was much rivalry between the two sites and Klauss took great delight in bumping out other work to ensure that the order would be produced in record time and delivered within the week.  My congratulations to him went sour as a major complaint soon came in from the irate customer.

The complaint concerned the colour of the two components.  The specification required it to have a green lid and yellow base, but unfortunately it had been manufactured in the opposite way a yellow lid with a green base.  When I questioned Klauss as to how this could have happened, he said he couldn’t understand; it had always had a yellow lid and green base.  Unknown to Klauss, the customer had reversed the colours a few years before and this was clearly stated on the works order.  Klauss hadn’t bothered to read the works order thinking he knew what needed to be done - he had done it ten years before!  Since he wrote the instructions to his supervisors, no one would have thought to question him.

So getting things done isn’t enough.  We need to do the right things.  I would like to broaden the definition at this stage, since leadership is more than just about getting things done.  We can get things done by being a competent administrator, following the standard operating procedures as we might a recipe in a cookery book.  I would prefer to think our role is ‘making the right things happen’, since this may require thinking outside of the current ways of doing things.  But again, this isn’t the end of the story.

In the eighties I attended a course by an organisation called Career Track.  As I wrote this I decided to Google it and it was no surprise to find that it is still in business.  The courses were developed in the USA and are very intense, powerful learning sessions.  This particular course was designed by Jimmy Calano and Jeff Salzman.  I know this because in those days I kept a Filofax and whenever I attended a course or read a book that gave me new insights into how to be a better manager, I wrote down the key elements in my Filofax.  I have continued to this day, although I am more likely to record it on my iPad.  I encourage you to do the same.

The Core Beliefs that underpinned the course were:

- Success is the process of overcoming obstacles (and all are overcomeable)

- There are no victims

- Success is simple (not easy, but simple)

- All business is people business

- There has never been a better time to achieve success.

These principles are as valid today as they were then and, as such, underpin the leadership programme in these 10 Modules.  The one particular belief that resonated with me is that all businesses are people businesses. 

So for the sake of this leadership programme, let us define our role as leaders as:

MAKING THE RIGHT THINGS HAPPEN, THROUGH PEOPLE

I have known many managers who made the right things happen, mainly by ignoring their staff and doing it themselves, usually working 16-hour days whilst their staff looked on incredulously!

Many books on leadership are written by leaders who explain what they did to become successful and assure you it will work for you.  Very few look at leadership through the eyes of the followers, yet from our definition, people are the key to our success.  So what do followers want from their leaders?

In 1999, the Industrial Society, now renamed the Work Foundation, conducted a survey asking 2,000 ‘followers’ what they wanted from their leaders.  They were given a list of 39 statements and asked to rank them in order of priority.  Perhaps you are thinking of your boss at the moment, and what you would like to be his or her top priority.  When I ask that very question in training sessions, I inevitably get some very common themes.  People want their bosses to recognise when they have done a job.  As important, people don’t want their leaders to take the credit for their work, yet how often is this the case?  Maybe you’ve come up with a good idea or a new way of working, and the next time you look, your boss is claiming the credit.

Interestingly, high on the list is that we want our bosses to work on their own learning.  I recall a manager I once worked for who came into my office one lunch time when I was reading another new management book over lunch.  "I don’t know," he laughed, one day your head will burst with all that knowledge.  I learnt my skills in management at university, they called it ‘management by objectives’ and that’s all I need to know.  Needless to say he was one of the worst bosses I have ever worked for!

Most people, not having the list to choose from, do not get anywhere close to the number one priority that followers want from their leaders.  When they see it, however, they usually agree.  Let me tell you what it is.  They want their boss to:

DEAL EFFECTIVELY WITH BREACHES IN STANDARDS OF BEHAVIOUR

In other words, when someone continually comes late to work, and you’re slaving away having come on time, you want your boss to say to them, Excuse me, why are you late? If others can get here on time, so can you.  Or if someone in the office spends half their time on the internet looking for cheap holidays, you want your boss to confront them instead of turning a blind eye as he or she walks past.

Nobody wants to see their colleagues dismissed, but they do want us, as their boss, to enforce the same standards with everyone.  It is probable that perhaps 20% of our team are self-motivated and in fact need little from us other than praise and recognition.  Another 20% may be quite difficult and have set ideas as to what they will or will not do.  These are the ones the rest of the team are looking to us to deal with.  The other 60% will follow the norms of the group and will accept the standards we set, provided that we enforce them fairly.  So when MAKING THINGS THE RIGHT THINGS HAPPEN THROUGH PEOPLE, we have to be considerate that all member of our team are being treated equally and any breaches in standards of behaviour are being addressed. 

As I said earlier, it is possible that 20% of your team are selective in what they will or will not do.  The other members of the team are aware of this, even if you are choosing to overlook it.  If we asked them directly what they want us to do about these people, it is unlikely they will use the words above.  They are more likely to say they want us to SORT OUT THOSE TEAM MEMBERS WHO AREN’T PULLING THEIR WEIGHT.

Before we start with the details as to how we can achieve this, let me share with you the thoughts on leadership of a great philosopher who wrote this over 2,000 years ago:

‘Go to the people, live amongst them,

start with what they know,

build on what they have,

but with the best leaders,

when the work is done,

the task accomplished,

the people will say….

We have done this ourselves’

Lao Tzu

This is our challenge as leaders.

A Formula for Success

Before we explore the challenge of leadership further, let us consider for a moment the process of ‘Making the Right Things Happen through People.’  I have spent many years analysing success and failure in a business environment and could fill a book with all the memories of well intentioned, apparently sound decisions that went badly wrong.  The cause of the failure is usually not the idea itself, but in the execution of the idea.  One of my mentors, the managing director who helped me understand people, introduced me to a formula that is as profound in its own way as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.  You may recall in his theory that E = mc2, giving the interrelationship between energy, mass and the speed of light.  The formula he introduced me to is:

E = Q x A

In this instance, ‘E’ has nothing to do with energy, so let me explain.  The formula states that the EFFECTIVENESS of any decision we take as leaders is a function of two things.  The first is the QUALITY of that decision.  Most leaders think that this is enough.  All we have to do is come up with high quality decisions and the right things will happen.  If only!

The ‘A’ is for the word ACCEPTANCE, for the right decision will only be effective if everyone involved in its implementation accepts it and makes it work.  The formula is quite profound and explains, for instance, the success of many Japanese companies.  The culture in the most successful Japanese companies is that everyone has a responsibility to improve the way the company works.  When they have a problem therefore, they will form a Corrective Action Team (CAT team) and brainstorm it until they develop a robust solution.  Because everyone who has an insight into the problem is involved, the quality of the decision is high.  Let us say 100%.  Since everyone who is affected by the decision has also been involved in the brainstorming sessions, the acceptance is also high.  Let us say 100% also.  The effectiveness of the decision, therefore, is 100% of 100%, which of course is 100%.

In German companies, (I was once the manufacturing manager of a joint German–Dutch company,) they strongly believe in the principle that the leader will decide.  In manufacturing companies, the leader is usually an engineer, so the quality of his or her decision, in manufacturing matters at least, is high.  Let’s say 80%.  In Germany it is very much a cultural norm that those required to implement the decision will accept it, so acceptance will be high at 100%.  Overall, therefore, the effectiveness of the decision will be 80% of 100%, that is 80%.  Still a good result.

In the UK, we make some brilliant decisions, sometimes with group involvement, other times by the leader.  Whether it is our spirit of independence or some might say, eccentricity, I am not sure, but often when we announce the decision to those who are to implement it, it is carried out half-heartedly.  Perhaps