Ken Blanchard – „the third tenor” has been researching the secret of efficient leadership for several decades. He has published numerous successful books, about the one minute manager, situational leadership, time management and empowerment. What I recommend here is a light 150 paged book, in which the writer follows an imaginary mentoring process, which is quite an easy read. I myself red it once during a sleepless night, picked it up and didn’t put it down until I had finished the whole book in a matter of few hours.
Ken Blanchard highlights in the preface, he believes that performance is dependent on the leaders!
In his story Debbie, a newly appointed leader is terribly disappointed. Nothing seems to be going as smoothly in her department as year earlier, whe she was appointed, enthusiastically acquiring her new position. She registers to the company based mentor programme, so her development is taken over by the president of the company.
After a long conversation, she gets an insight into the meaning of „servicing leadership”, an atmosphere of empowerment where actually a hyerarchical pyramid is turned upside down, in which the customer is „the boss”, and all other functions are held by the subordinated „servants”.
Indeed she becomes aware of the power of both listening and being heard, she learns why leaders’ tasks are crucial in forming the image of positive future prospects, and why recruiting new employees is such a tough, multi-staged selection process which demands great attention.
Regarding selection, Ken Blanhard states that people will have to pay a very high price for making a bad decision. Correcting a bad decision requires time, and demands both mental and emotional energy, not to mention other incremental costs, declining perfomance, the price of missed opportunities, in addition to the fact that in such situations leaders find it hard to face the responsibility for bad decisions, regarding a misjudgment of bad recruitment. Nevertheless if they do not face it, they may lose their credibility, which indeed may have a demoralising impact on performance. He is highlighting that recruitment is a double sided process, as it also gives the candidate the opportunity to ensure that the right decision is made if joining the company.
People follow leaders whom they can trust and respect, they must interpret consistently the company values, in other words they have to represent these values in a congruent, credible way.
Rarely do companies have the necessary, substantial internal resources of the executive leaders’ surplus capacities to support talented, yet in certain circumstances helplessly struggling, sometimes underperforming middles, to develop their leadership skills.
This is when business coaches may step in, bringing the external resources, when because of other business priorities, such resources are not at available within the company.
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