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The most effective leaders are those focused on people instead of just goals. Goals are important but many think of people as instruments to achieve them. You can categorize leaders in two big groups. The 'hard' ones are those who remain distant to obtain respect and compliance with their directives and frequently resort to a rewards and punishment strategy to manage people. And there are those who think that this way of thinking is obsolete. They promote closeness, support and flexibility.
According to a two year investigation (250 samples in the UK) conducted by The Work Foundation, contrary to what is commonly believed, those who have a leadership style highly centered in people and relationships are the ones who exceed expectations and perform better during crisis. These leaders have a holistic approach, considering situations as a hole (people and goals) instead of analyzing (dissecting) problems into its basic components.
Being a 'hard' leader will most probably get what you want done but at a very high price. You'll never build synergy in your team. And except for a few isolated cases, forget about your crew going above and beyond.
There's a good anecdote that I read years ago from Dale Carnegie. There was this guy who owned a plane (I'm awful with names). One day he took it for a ride and almost died because the person (awful with names!) who did maintenance to it had made a fatal mistake while servicing the plane. The next day, flyer guy went to his hangar to talk to his mechanic. He was terrified and knew his days fixing planes (at least for this guy) were over. He tried to apologize and resign but was interrupted by flyer guy (highly successful and bright lad he was, since he made it to a Dale Carnegie book). He told him that he had made a terrible mistake but he was confident that he had learned the lesson -the very hard way- and would never make a mistake like that again. They worked together happily ever after.
The moral of the story is that being punitive won't get you a spot in the Leader's Hall of Fame. Understanding peoples' motives, mindset and attitude towards work is the first step to articulate individuals with goals. It's a systemic way of viewing organizational relationships and their interaction with the organization's vision, mission and job duties.
Sometimes performance issues are not caused by negligence, but for personal factors that precipitate the unwanted outcome. Understanding and addressing these factors is one sure way of keeping a team motivated and comfortable. We need to realize that the workplace is perceived as a very contextualized setting. Your mind (life) is not. The workplace is a "confined" environment; separate from other spheres of life and which often plays with its own rules. Despite this, we carry ourselves wherever we go and even when our job is in a "different world" it's still "contaminated" with our personalities. Leaving this out of the board is negligence.
Fernando Tarnogol is an Argentinean psychologist, currently working as Program Coordinator at the Devereux Foundation in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
He has studied Psychology at the University of Buenos Aires and Human Resources Management at UADE (Argentinean University of the Enterprise). His professional experience includes work in HR for HSBC Bank Argentina and in two mental health facilities performing psychological evaluations and other clinical work.
Visit his blog at http://fernandotarnogol.com/
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