Leadership

Leaders and pseudo-leaders

In the Danish reality show Robinsonekspeditionen this year there was a guy who said that he had been watching the show in the last 13 years preparing his strategy for when he would be on the show one day. The strategy seemed pretty simple – be a leader. However, it seemed that being a leader was not equal to shout the highest and regard others opinions as useless and unnecessary. He finishes his stay on the show the very first time the others had a chance to vote somebody out.

The lesson here seems pretty simple. And yet somehow it is not. As we all have witnessed some individuals in the hierarchy – higher or lower – trying to act as leaders. In doing so they might disregard others, insult them, demonstrate way to high self esteem, take the credit for others’ work, or act in one of thousands different ways a pseudo-leader might act in.

Pseudo-leaders are people who have made their way up in the system not because they have the qualities and qualifications for it but because they have made a career out of leeching of others. They are good leaders in the eyes of their superiors and very destructive leaders for those underneath them. It is simply because they know how to play the role of the carrying leader without necessarily being one.

If we concentrate on what kind of damage pseudo-leaders can cause it sums up to several main consequences:

v  Employees who are not willing to cooperate with the leader for the company’s success

v  Employees who do not trust their superior

v  De-motivated employees who do not work at their maximum as they do not see a point in doing so

v  Employees who try to silently fight the system which might seriously damage the company

v  Angry employees whose reaction cannot really be accounted for

Then one should wonder why and how it is possible for pseudo-leaders to be given the leadership? And why they themselves do not see the damage they cause?

From one point of view it comes down to competences. The pseudo-leader has also some competences, it is just not the right ones. From another point of view it is all about intentions. The pseudo-leader is egoistic whereas the real leader concentrates on the common success.

As it is essential for every company which honestly strives towards excellence to employ the right kind of people, especially when it comes to leaders, it might prove to be a very good idea to never forget the “low layers” of the organization. It is not that difficult to recognize the real leader who helps the organization from the pseudo-leader but you need the help of your employees in order to do that. Some companies have therefore found practices as motivation level research and other evaluation tests as being helpful in order to identify issues. However, what happens if those evaluations land into the hands of a pseudo-leader?

Dealing with those issues is not easy as their identification might sometimes be almost impossible. However, an option for management should be education. It has always been considered that education is the path towards best practices.

If you today want to figure out how much of a pseudo or a real leader you are, you can take a look at the table here and decide for yourself whether maybe also you need a leader education. It is after all only admirable to become better at what you already are good.

Pseudo-leader	Leader
Talks	Listens
Orders	Discusses and advices
Requires obedience	Grants freedom
Disregards others opinions	Has an open mind
Takes credit for others’ work/ideas	Gives credit
Does not allow employee advancement	Encourages employee advancement
Destroys self confidence	Nurtures self confidence
Principle: separate and rule	Principle: lead to consensus

 

The list can be continued almost indefinitely as the different situations offer different possibilities to demonstrate leadership. However, what is more important is to highlight the benefits of being a good leader. Among them are:

v  Loyalty

v  Higher productivity

v  Innovation

v  Respect

v  Company growth

v  Better working environment/lower employee turnover

v  Less absence days

Normally, if it goes downhill for a company the leadership is the first to take the blame. And normally if the company is driven by pseudo-leaders, it will go downhill. Maybe not straight away but in the long run. Therefore it is good for everybody that pseudo-leaders are rooted out of the organization.

Most companies nowadays use personality tests as tools in the recruitment process which should keep the right people in the right position. However, every now and then a mistake is made or somebody’s dominating side is underestimated and pseudo-leaders are found many places and even worse – it seems they are impossible to remove from the hierarchy.

That is why with the warning that bad leadership carries more than one threat with itself, companies are advised to control the quality of leadership by regularly going down to the lowest organizational layers and trying to ensure the organizational image is the same from bottom to top. Most companies state that their employees are their greatest asset and there is a good reason for that.

Take care for your employees and they will take care for you.

Misusing CSR

CSR as we know it and CSR of the future

 

The concept of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is not new. Some link its birth to the middle of the 20^th century and the attempt of tobacco corporations to remedy their public images and to shift the focus of attention from the harm they cause to the good they claim they do. However, the concept has been developing all through the past years and has come to mean incorporating philanthropy and responsibility towards stakeholders and community at large. A definition of it could sound as “doing business by doing more good and trying to avoid harm”.

The way CSR is been practiced also differs greatly from country to country (explicit and directly marketed in many countries and implicit and promoted by earning recognition of third parties in other countries). For this reason any generalization about the concept cannot be feasible.

However, it cannot be denied that many companies use the CSR flag as a marketing tool. Dorfman, Cheyne, Friedman, Wadud and Gottlieb give a great example of that in their article “Soda and Tobacco Industry Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns: How Do They Compare?” (www.plosmedicine.org). They be a few CSR campaigns run by soda corporations. Pepsi’s RefreshProject turns out to be the perfect example of misusing CSR.

The problem about doing that is not only ethical. What happens is that corporations use the consumers’ desire to do business with responsible companies to turn them into loyal users of their products. The biggest question here is about the consequences of such an act when we talk about companies which produce health endangering products as sweets, fast food, soda, alcohol, tobacco and medicines.

This issue is highlighted further by the ever greater use of social media in consumer relationship building. Using social media allows for constructing consumer realities and boosting consumer brand involvement by participation in causes, games, initiatives. When CSR activities as a part of marketing become viral through social networks the motive behind, thus the real goal of the campaign gets blurred into the mass excitement. In campaigns as the Pepsi Refresh Project results are expected to be more sells and not so much philanthropic projects, confirmed by a Pepsi official, cited by the authors.

Even though business of business is business and this will never change, with the appearance of greater tools for managing (not to say manipulating) consumer behavior it is necessary that companies take the responsibility accompanying such great power.

Many researchers argue that regulation agencies are too slow in following progress in technology. Thus the consumer is left at the mercy of companies employing ingenious marketing campaigns designed to shape behavior. Therefore something more is necessary. That could be the next CSR direction which would allow companies to master responsibility in close consumer contact.

That could be done for example by engaging in social marketing and reshaping businesses to reflect the needs of society. That is of course idealistic, the realistic approach would be to either focus marketing efforts on adults only, to increase the amount of health information freely available to users or to avoid creating unhealthy habits by using social media involvement of consumers.

Even though there is no active reaction by the public concerning social media and CSR efforts of companies at the moment it is certain that with mounting research on the topic public awareness will soon be raised and the issue will be faced. That is why it is a good investment to rethink your CSR strategies and social media appearance so that they reflect the values your company stays for. This is the surest way to avoid a crisis and go ahead of competition when many are going to face the anger of the public.

 

DIDI

Motivating or demotivating employees

Internal Communication and HR: Employee Motivation

Many companies nowadays focus on innovation or customer contact or competitors and often forget to take care of their most valuable asset: their employees. It is not a secret that without employees no company could ever exist. Yet we have to keep in mind that an employee present does not equal employee contributing.

In order to research what would drive employees to contribute maximally in the work process several scientific fields have been developed, some of them adopted by HR-specialists, some of them – by marketing and communication professionals. One of the most salient fields is concerned with motivation and in this case – employee motivation in particular.

Employee motivation is very important because it not only helps enhance performance; it also contributes to image management, prevention of and reaction to a crisis. Employees are essential when it comes to productivity and innovation. But employees can just the same popularize your company as a company with a great working environment and standards, etc. The stand of employees is also critical when it comes to overcoming a crisis. Keep in mind that the media will be more than happy to find that one unsatisfied employee ready to trash you and be sure they will find them.

Those reasons seem more than enough to stress the importance of keeping employees happy. Whereas there is a whole field researching different employee satisfaction factors, motivation is that factor which more or less encompasses every perception connected to work and translates it into readiness to work harder tomorrow than today.

Given the number of studies and the importance of the issue recognized by scholars it is difficult to understand how come so many companies overlook this crucial element of success. Sometimes mistakes in that area could be so big and with such visible results and still nothing happens.

In my experience, most often and biggest mistakes management can make are excluding employees of decision making, not recognizing and rewarding efforts and results, allowing disagreement in goal setting (the set goals are not supported by employees), being dishonest or trying to play employees when it comes to salary or benefits, and creating a stressful environment where the stakes are too high and the efforts are not enough or not channeled correctly.
 

The results here can vary from zero motivation to conscious sabotage of the company. Management should not make the mistake of underestimating the seriousness of the issue. Therefore it is crucial to monitor employee motivation and to work proactively for its enhancement.

Monitoring employee motivation is usually responsibility of HR as they have a whole toolset for that starting with surveys and personal dialogues and including monitoring results, number of days off work, sickness, taking initiative or part in discussions, etc. HR has also the ability to create a diverse and complex motivation program fitting the need of most employees.

However, there is still that element dependent on management: management should allow for inclusion of employees in decision making and should ensure fair employee management before starting to think about HR.

Communication professionals in most of the cases are educated in management and HR. Their role is to be connecting link between departments, between employees and management, between the organization and the outside world. They will be the first to notice problems in the organization and that is why you should take their warnings into consideration and act accordingly and timely.

DIDI