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In This Issue

Welcome to the October 2009 issue of Vanguard, the Cymtrix Training Systems member newsletter. Vanguard is published once a quarter. Looking for previous issues? Visit the archive .

In this issue:

Inspirational Leadership

Cymtrix Training Systems

www.cymtrix.co.uk

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Inspirational Leadership

The Inspiration Gap

It is now accepted that for any country to maintain its competitiveness there is a growing need for business enterprises to adopt strategies that will enable a greater level of innovation and the provision of higher value goods and services.

As a direct consequence, there have been significant changes in the position and role descriptions for our great business leaders. Indeed, those organisations whose leaders do not respond to these required new ways of working will undoubtedly face serious problems in an ever more uncertain future.

The raft of published research clearly shows that high performance and innovative organisations require:

Inspirational leadership
Stronger management skills
A highly-trained and motivated workforce
A flexible labour market that promotes diversity and fair treatment
and workplaces that recognize environmental issues and the need for greater resource productivity

Unfortunately, this combination of attributes that result in successful workplaces is all too rarely in evidence. In particular, there are significant shortages in leadership skills that relate to:

Creating a sense of vision in a fast changing environment
Motivating people and leading them through change
Being innovative in products and services and ways of working

Research undertaken by Cymtrix Training Systems has identified significant inspirational gaps in leadership practices across a variety of industry organisations. The single most important factor most people would like to see in their leaders was the inspiration factor. Only 11 per cent actually identified the "ability to inspire others" in their existing leaders. The research also identified the top two attributes which were actually observed from their leaders. They were having "knowledge and information" and "personal ambition".

Addressing the Gap

The Cymtrix Training Systems research has allowed the development of an inspirational leadership index that is critical in bridging the inspiration gap identified as being entrenched in the majority of organisations. Bridging the inspirational leadership gap ensures that the enterprise will be better equipped and ready to tackle:

Competing in the global economy
Being innovative
Providing optimum employee engagement
Having consistent high levels of motivation and performance

The index will enable chief executives and directors of boards to identify and assess their own key leadership behaviours and values that have a significant impact on inspiring the followers in their organisations.

Resultant Pointers

The Cymtrix Training Systems research provides a number of powerful pointers as to what consists of inspirational leadership. The research also examined a number of best practice case studies. The following top six elements are viewed as crucial to providing inspirational leadership:
They are:

Genuinely care about people
Involve everybody
Display lots of appreciation and recognition
Ensure that work is fun
Show real trust in subordinates
Do far more listening than talking

In order to discover how these elements can be better realized in practice, it was decided that a more detailed examination of the qualities of inspirational leaders was needed. The focus was to explore whether there is a clear pattern in the way exceptional leaders behave, act, and inspire others. The approach chosen was to examine the values of those leaders who had been successful in creating exceptional results in their organisations together with the perspective of followers who were best placed to describe how such leaders motivated and inspired them on a day-to-day basis. The following assumptions were made beforehand:

Effective leadership is a pre-requisite for successful change and innovation
Many organisations do not recognize the cost of failing to address a leadership deficit
Leadership is about what leaders do in relation to others, as well as who they are as individuals

Leadership Viewpoint

A series of in-depth qualitative survey questions were posed with leaders who had been selected by their peers as having achieved exceptional results. The results revealed common themes in terms of their most prevalent leadership characteristics. They were:

Strong communication skills- storytelling and listening
An intense passion for continual learning and curiosity
Had a focus on developing other people
Having fun and being very energized
Strong self-belief, coupled with humanity and humility
Committed to giving something back and a commitment to making a significant difference
Clarity of vision and ability to share it with their people
A dogged determination and often were relentless in pursuit of their objectives
A very strong focus on priorities
Not afraid to show some vulnerability
Regular use of reflective examination periods
Almost a universal dislike of the use of jargon
A passion for and pride in what they do

Followers Viewpoint

Many of the leadership qualities desired and sought by the followers surveyed also reflected the views of both exceptional leaders and confirmed the findings from other best practice case studies. They are:

Having a genuine and shared vision
Having real confidence and trust in their teams and members
A high respect for employees and customers
A commitment to developing people
Clear and demonstrable standards of ethics and integrity
A willingness to take risks

The Thirst for Inspiration

The headline findings from the followers' survey clearly demonstrated that the majority of enterprises are still not fostering a culture that is truly engaging the hearts and minds of their employees. On the following questions asked, the survey revealed the following worrying results:

Leaders are genuinely in touch with how people are feeling (62 per cent strongly disagreed)
We work hard but senior management makes sure we have fun (54 per cent strongly disagreed)
There is a good buzz and a positive energetic feeling about the organization (50 per cent strongly disagreed)

The Cymtrix Training Systems Research

The Cymtrix Training Systems' research is based on the results from e-survey questionnaires examining three critical areas. They were:

The undertaking of a comprehensive review of specific personal drivers and characteristics of inspirational leaders who had been nominated by their peers as having achieved exceptional results. The number of leaders involved in the e-survey was 42.

An e-survey questionnaire of 612 respondent followers and managers designed to explore in more detail some of the key issues raised by the quantitative research.

Conclusions

For the past 30 years there has been increasing amounts of data to suggest that leadership has a lot more to do with inspiration and vision, rather than straightforward technical competence. Leadership is now recognized as a transferable skill, it can be developed by continued learning and development throughout a person's career. This latest Cymtrix Training Systems research report confirms that today's workforce is more diverse, informed and sophisticated than ever before. Ultimately people are still looking for something different and better in organizational leadership. The research found that managers demand visionary leaders who achieve not only good results, but also the trust and respect of their teams. It is the relationships between people that results in successful and positive actions. Followers will respond to leaders who let them know what they do is important and what they do makes a difference in the bigger picture. Most organisations are not the stable, predictable structures of the past. Maintaining follower motivation and commitment in an era of unrelenting change, means that leaders must be able to create organizational cultures that foster not only high performance, but also a sense of pride and fun. Because cultures evolve over many years and are usually deep-rooted, they can be difficult to change. Some commentators have observed that it is easier to change behaviour by changing processes and systems in an organization than it is to change peoples' attitudes. While goals change in the course of a person's life, values tend to remain constant and help determine an employee's attitudes to their employer. The Cymtrix Training Systems research results suggests that over half of managers are working for organisations which have apparently not yet fully evolved to meet the needs of today's high performing workplaces. Too many experience excessive bureaucracy along with ineffective command and control behaviours. These behaviours have a tendency to inhibit, rather than improve, individual and organizational performance. Bureaucratic and authoritarian command and control structures are still too prevalent in the majority of organisations.

Vanguard Volume 1, Number 4