Just like athletes, company managers and professionals, they put too much energy into the wrong things-because they think what made them successful in the past will continue to play a role in the future. But in the end, we will find ourselves in a dilemma, that is, our previous daily work can no longer meet the needs of the new environment.
How to let yourself fall into the ability trap?
We are happy to do what we are good at, so we will keep doing it, and eventually we will always be good at those things. The better you do, the more willing you are to do it. This cycle can let us gain more experience in this field. And it is like a drug, we are deeply attracted by it, because our happiness and confidence come from it. It will also make us misunderstand and make us believe that what we are good at is the most valuable and important thing, so it is worth our time to do it. As a very honest manager once told me, it is very difficult to get out of this cycle. He said: "I have offended many people because I often argue with them about what needs to be dealt with first." Then I gradually understood that you are busy doing what you like and what you think is important. That's the problem. Because it will make people think that you don't respect them. You ask yourself, do I want to do this? I should, but I may never want to. "
When we allocate our time to those things that we are good at, we can only spend less time on other equally important things. The problem we encounter is not what we have done, but what we have neglected (that is, what we have not learned). Because experience and ability are usually a benign (or vicious) cycle, when we (often) need that ability, we can make further use of it. So, on the one hand, our leadership ability is very strong, but on the other hand, our leadership ability is far from enough.
Over time, you need to spend more time learning new things. The better we are at something, the less chance we have to spend time doing other things. It is more definite and closer in time and space to use what you are good at to get rewards than to explore new areas (weak but potential areas). This self-reinforcing nature of learning enables people to maintain their current attention in a short period of time.
However, when we are working hard for our own results, the ability trap appears. If we can complete or exceed the tasks given by the boss, they will let us stay in our present position, because we can perform well in this position, so this position needs us. But they often use the excuse that we have not shown enough leadership potential to cover up the real reason.
Past success will create an ability trap. When the following three situations happen, we will fall into the ability trap:
You like your job, so you will do a lot of it, and you will become better and better at it.
When you allocate time to what you are good at, you will spend less time on other important things.
Over time, you need to pay more for learning new things.
A few years ago, researchers conducted a classic study. They compared the differences between managers who were considered efficient by the team and managers who were successfully promoted. They find that the biggest difference lies in how they arrange their time. Efficient managers will spend time working with group members, while managers who are successfully promoted will spend more time establishing contacts with other departments or higher-level leaders.
There have always been many differences between management and leadership. In essence, management requires us to accomplish daily goals, procedures and organizational structure efficiently; Leaders are constantly changing what we want to do and thinking about how to do it, which is why as leaders, we should jump out of the limitations of daily work and take the time to explain the importance of change to others, even if the reasons for change are clear.
When we do our daily work, we will ask ourselves: "How can we do our work better (such as how to achieve low consumption, high quality and high efficiency)?" We spend time with our team and existing customers, or we implement the plan ourselves to achieve the set goals. Usually, we will clearly know what kind of return we can get by investing time, energy and resources. According to past experience, we are confident to achieve the set goals.
And when we are leaders, we will ask ourselves, "What changes should we make?" Will spend all his time doing things that have no immediate benefits (or will never be profitable). For example, we may expect a different future beyond our functions. Because the uncertainty of change is often far greater than the uncertainty of profit (or loss), choosing a new direction requires great confidence. When we are in deep-seated changes, we should not only understand what leaders need to do, but more importantly, understand who they are and what they represent, so that we are more likely to become real leaders. In other words, to behave like a leader, we need to spend time on the following things:
Let's take a look at how traditional methods can effectively lead a team: setting clear goals; Assign clear tasks to each member; Manage the internal dynamics and norms of the team; Regular communication; Pay attention to the psychological status of team members and give them recognition; Wait a minute. These are all very important things, but they may not have much influence on whether you can become a good leader.
There has been a lot of research on this topic for more than twenty years. Deborah ancona, a professor at MIT, and her colleagues have been conducting research to reveal that these traditional leadership methods are not so effective. The study found that leaders with outstanding achievements do not spend time on various internal affairs. On the contrary, they will act as a bridge between the internal team and the external environment, so they spend most of their time on external activities. They visit outside to ensure that the team can get the correct information and resources, and then report to everyone selectively. When there is a dispute, make sure that the team you lead can be recognized by your superiors. In addition, successful leaders will pay attention to what other teams, such as potential competitors, are doing and what they can learn from them, so that they don't have to waste energy on repetitive work.
Two opposite types of leaders: the central type and the bridge type. If you play a central role, your team and customers will be the focus of your work; And if you play the role of a bridge, like Cox, your job is to connect your team with relevant external organizations. Both roles are dangerous. What role does Jeff play? Obviously, he is the central role. But if people blame the efficiency of the leader, guess which role will be at the top? Is a leader who acts as a "bridge". Because "central" leaders can do almost everything better than "bridge" leaders.
The external perspective gained after redefining your work from a broader perspective is the decisive factor for whether you have good strategic suggestions. More importantly, these abilities can help you turn your ideas into a beautiful vision for the future of your team and organization.
Looking to the future and passing this vision on to others is an important ability to distinguish leaders from non-leaders. A large number of surveys conducted by James Kutz and BarryPosner, leaders, confirmed this point. Most people can easily tell what they lack, are dissatisfied with or have no meaning in their current job, but without a good "visionary" idea, their work will stagnate.
Almost everyone thinks that imagination creates an attractive future scene, that is, what the future will look like. More importantly, what kind of person do you want to be as a leader in the future? But the vision that can lead the progress and development of the organization is not as simple as inspiration, nor is it that Moses (Jewish prophet) came down from the mountain with a note recording the commandments. Of course, it's not some typical boring and far-sighted remarks.
Various studies show that foresight is one of the decisive characteristics of leaders. But how can we take practical action? The following abilities are some concrete ways for excellent leaders to develop their vision:
Many leaders will simply think that the idea itself is the ultimate selling point, but experienced leaders understand that the process is the more important factor. How to show your ideas and how to communicate with the audience in this process determines whether people are willing to cooperate with him.
Summarize three important factors in the process of successful transformation of leading companies with a simple formula:
Idea+process+self = lead the company to successfully transform.
When my students and I analyzed a written case about the effectiveness of leaders, I found an interesting model, from which the above formula was summarized. My students seldom discuss what leaders actually need to support, let alone the results of their ideas.
Just because the process is important doesn't mean that the result is not important, because many changes have a long-term effort process, and it takes some time to get results. When the proposal is in progress and the audience has not yet participated, people will decide whether to adopt the idea more quickly. Unconsciously or consciously, they will look for clues to prove whether the proposal will succeed and consider what the proposed result means to them, which will help them make a decision whether to accept it or not.
So many people are concerned about the process of the leader putting forward and displaying this idea, because it can let them know: is this leader inclusive or exclusive? Is it participatory or imperative? Did he or she find enough suitable people to participate in this project? What methods did they use? Is this method correct?
The performance of leaders in these styles or steps will have an impact on people's doubts about leaders, and will also increase (or decrease) people's confidence in leaders. In other words, people create a vision of self-satisfaction: if they have confidence in the leader, they will cooperate with him to increase the possibility of success. Inexperienced leaders not only pay too much attention to the quality of their own ideas, but also often jump directly from their own ideas to another new conclusion to support their ideas without going through some necessary steps to explain what their ideas are and what their most satisfactory results may be.
Recently, two diversified managers were observed and studied. Both of them work in financial services companies, and both of them have moved from business departments to diversified departments, and both of them have no relevant experience.
Nia Johnson-Romanzina, the first manager of the global diversification department of Swiss Reinsurance Company, decided to find out how the company thought about diversification and how to think from another angle. First of all, she went to the executive Committee and board members to communicate with them. "Our company is clearly divided into two camps," she told me in an interview. "One side wants women to hold more leadership positions, while the other side says,' If this is about women, don't count me in.' I soon realized that this was a polarized issue. "
But the diversity of ideas revealed from her conversation is the only thing that brings everyone together. She explained: "They let me know that gender differences are polarized, but the concept of ideological diversity is acceptable to everyone. It naturally developed into a discussion about tolerance. "
When discussing within the team, she also ensures that important external meetings, working groups and thought leaders may influence her methods. After summing up, she concluded that although our company is already a diversified company, some unconscious prejudices still exist, which makes employees unable to continue their promotion or unwilling to include others in the group.
The new CEO is very innovative. He believes that although the company's business is progressing smoothly, it still needs a new environment with more diversified talents. At this time, Niya's opportunity came. The new CEO makes public all senior management positions and encourages everyone to apply for them. Paying more attention to customers and putting forward diversified ideas such as gender, culture, education and skills are all important factors for success.
Before the application closed, the CEO found that the candidates lacked diversity, because few women applied for these positions. When he was in trouble, he discussed the problem with Niya, who told him to consider something outside his existing network. She explained: "Women often feel that they are not qualified for these positions, even though they are qualified." "You need to tell everyone clearly that they are qualified to apply for the position. No one can guarantee that you will get the job, but at least try to apply. "
He did as she said and extended the application deadline so that more people could apply. Such a diversified recruitment team is trying to introduce talents and eliminate those unconscious prejudices. Niya was also invited to participate in the discussion of the recruitment team. They want to challenge unconscious prejudice to ensure that everyone has a fair platform.
Finally, the CEO formed a more cross-functional and balanced leadership team, and the female members increased from the original 17% to more than 40%. For each position, he is the best candidate and passed unanimously without objection.
This remarkable achievement laid the foundation for Niya's vision and strategy to emphasize the lack of diversity and enhance employee inclusion. When many companies are setting many performance goals, she concludes that focusing on performance will only create resistance and interference to fundamental long-term changes. "It's about changing your mind," she said. "First you improve your endurance, and then your performance will naturally improve."
Another diversity manager took a completely different strategy. She wants to put forward a correct vision from the beginning. This means that she needs to list all the places in the current organization that are suitable for diversified reform, and connect this list with the topics discussed in this study. As expected, she found that there were many contradictions and inconsistencies in what the company was doing.
So, the first thing she did was to create a model and combine different parts into an overall framework. She convened a project working group to do it. Finally, they established a five-part model, including the overall diversification reform, from business cases to a series of basic principles, all human resources departments have carried out this reform. When the final model is formed, she will show it to all shareholders. Although many shareholders appreciate her efforts, they are not very clear about what her goal is or what role she should play.
In my formula, a great part of being an excellent leader needs to recognize three important factors (idea+process+yourself). The "self" part is often more important than the "idea" and is a "filter" for people to evaluate you.
What is this very important "self" factor? Many people think this refers to your management style. However, management style is only one aspect, and many management styles are effective in some similar situations. On the contrary, people are judged by your enthusiasm, your belief and the consistency of doing things. In other words, these three points are your "charm"-a word used to describe the mysterious charm of future leaders but difficult to define.
Many years ago, Jay Conger, a professor of management, began to uncover the mystery of "leadership temperament": he first asked people to name the leaders they found attractive, and then observed their behavior. The leaders they listed are completely different in appearance, personality and leadership style. Some leaders are despots, and some leaders are more willing to cooperate with others; Some people are charming and elegant, while others, such as Steve Jobs, are not so charming. The final research results show that compared with other characteristics, few people can express the characteristic of "leadership temperament".
Conger and other researchers have found that people are considered "leaders" when they come up with some ideas that attract attention at the "right time". Because charismatic leaders tend to build bridges inside and outside the organization, they are good at discovering market trends, crises and opportunities, so they can put forward some attractive ideas. But as we saw above, the idea is only a part of the formula, and it is often the least important part. The study found that charismatic leaders have other qualities. These characteristics are related to how and why leaders attract followers, and how leaders know themselves. More specifically, charismatic leaders have the following three things in common:
◎ Rich life experiences have produced firm beliefs.
Ability to communicate well with others by telling personal stories.
What they think and actually do is very consistent with themselves.
Simon Sinek's talk on leaders at TED is one of the most visited. In his conversation, he called this kind of behavior "golden ring work". He explained that many of us convince others by discussing what needs to be done and how to do it. The secret of persuasion is to show your strongest argument. It is not very useful to impose our ideas on others according to our own logic and advantages, because we will eventually follow those who can inspire us, not just those who are capable. On the contrary, successful leaders inspire people by explaining "why"-explaining their deepest beliefs and purposes. In this way, they are more touching. So "why" is at the center of "Golden Circle".
How can junior leaders enhance their perception? Salem used to be the assistant manager of a large department of a multinational commodity consumption company, and now he is the general manager of a small company in an emerging economy. His successful transformation is attributed to his ability to locate the situation:
When I asked Salim how he got the job, he said that "enhancing the sensitivity of finding trends" gave him an advantage:
For us whose past experience is limited to one function or one business department, the next task is to find projects that can broaden our horizons and enhance our ability to contact various points.
Many people are unwilling to do extra work. After all, we are all trying to buy some time for our private lives, and these projects often become the primary objects of our daily tasks. But when it comes to being an excellent leader, it is a better choice to gain experience from some cross-functional businesses than to continue to develop skills within the function. One of my students gave her classmate a good suggestion: "All of us can study and work at the same time. So when the study project is over, don't let our daily work take up our study time, make time and use this time to expand your work scope. "
The new skills you gain from various extra tasks, such as visionary thinking and establishing contact with people outside the organization, are worth your time to further improve.
In such a world where "vertical promotion" is replaced by "climbing career" that can move horizontally, people have to participate in some "hot projects" to make progress and development.
Career Plateau: put forward by American psychologist Frans, it means that at a certain stage of personal career development, the possibility of further promotion is very small.
From antigone to Casablanca to Star Wars, all good stories follow the structure of "beginning-climax-end" and the following other basic elements:
Many years ago, John Kotter, an unknown management scholar, followed the lives of a group of general managers with a hand-held camera to see what they were actually doing every day (contrary to what everyone thought they were doing every day). What surprised him most was that the most successful manager seemed to be the least efficient.
Many times, their work place is not in the planned meeting, or even in their own office or conference room. Many times, their jobs don't look like real jobs. They will walk around, appear in various offices from time to time, have long discussions with important customers in the waiting room and so on. These "casual" meetings are usually short and casual. But every manager can get necessary information from these short meetings, discuss important things, or strengthen contact with partners (usually men). These seemingly unsystematic things are the daily work of successful managers compared with making reports or formal demonstrations.
In addition, Kurt also recorded a manager's schedule. As you might expect, the schedules of efficient managers and inefficient managers are obviously different. But it's not exactly what you think. The most efficient managers have a lot of free time on their schedules: a lot of unplanned time. An inefficient manager's schedule is full of meetings, business trips, conference calls or formal reports.
Therefore, to be an excellent leader, we need a very scarce resource-time to make changes. If you are like most of the students I teach, it means that your daily work and immediate needs take up your time, leaving you no time for informal leadership.
For those leaders who want to make progress, the best starting point is to expand your scope of work and improve your expressiveness outside the scope of work, so that you will have some new ideas about what you will do.
No matter what your current situation is, the following five things can start to turn your work into a platform that can enhance your leadership:
Dekheel Mullainathan, an economist at Harvard University, and Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology at Princeton University, co-authored Scarcity, which makes an interesting contrast between lack of money and lack of time. They pointed out that both can imprison you in a "tunnel", and people can only see things in the "tunnel". Although this can bring us short-term benefits, it will play a restrictive role in the long run.
Mulainasan and Shafir used the story of a hospital to prove this point. Wards in this hospital are often fully booked in advance. Because the ward is full, when there is an emergency-which often happens-the hospital can only postpone the operation plan "So medical staff are often performing surgery at 2 o'clock in the middle of the night, while doctors often have to wait for a few hours to perform surgery for about two hours, and other staff often work overtime from time to time." Because the operation in the hospital often lags behind, it is often necessary to constantly rearrange the work, thus forming an inefficient and high-pressure work form.
Like most companies with problems, the hospital hired a consultant from outside, and he proposed a surprising solution: vacating an operating room to deal with emergency patients. Like most of us, the hospital manager said, "We are all very busy. He asked us to vacate an operating room, which is too much."
Just like many people who are too involved, they can't imagine stopping to reorganize what they have been doing for a long time, let alone giving up valuable resources that are useful or useless. Hospital managers have the same doubts. But the way to vacate the operating room worked. With an empty operating room, medical staff can deal with some emergencies more effectively without having to re-plan everything. In this way, their overtime hours are also reduced, and the efficiency of surgery is also improved.
When allocating time, you may encounter two completely different problems. First, take time to do what you think is really important, not those very urgent things. Although this problem is difficult, it is still relatively easy to solve, and it can be solved by some reliable technologies. The second problem is more difficult, that is, how to change your view of so-called important things.
The only way to deal with the second problem is to take part in more activities that you haven't participated in before, so that you can learn to think from different angles and think about what you should do and why: cross-functional roles can help you adapt to the external environment more easily and be familiar with projects outside your professional field and various activities outside the company. These investments may not be immediate, but you just need to add this part of the investment first, and you don't have to reduce too much investment in what you did before.
Start changing jobs.
This is the tail.
Reverse management. Chapter two redefines your job.
Reverse management. Chapter 65438 +0 Break your cognition: act first, then think.