Lose Your Just-Good-Enough Managers(7223)You can't build a great company by tolerating mediocre leadersA Q&A with Raad Al-Saady, managing director at Abdul Latif Jameel"It's better to have a terrible manager than a good-enough one," says Raad Al-Saady, managing director for more than 7,000 employees at Abdul Latif Jameel, one of the biggest companies in the Middle East. "Leaders are very quick to make decisions on bad or ineffective leaders."But managers who are just good enough, he says, seem to linger forever. They linger because they don't do anything really wrong -- but they don't do anything really right either. That leads to mediocrity, which Al-Saady calls a slow poison. In the following conversation, Al-Saady shares how to detect the poison and teach, move, or lose good-enough managers before the damage of mediocrity spreads.Gallup Business Journal: What's so bad about good-enough managers?Raad Al-Saady:The difference between a great company and an average company is how it deals with barely sufficient managers. If you continue to infect your organization with people who don't drive excellence, you drag your company down.Mediocrity kills companies. Organizations are quick to take action on bad leaders or ineffective leaders. Those, you can spot. But what stops a company from moving into greatness are all of the mediocre layers. People sort of accept that companies will have some great leaders and some average leaders -- and that, as a starting point, is deadly. No company wants to be mediocre. I don't think that people wake up every morning and aim for mediocrity; they fall into it.How do you determine who's a poisonously adequate manager?Al-Saady:At ALJ, we base it on two factors: performance and potential. We use Gallup's Executive Leadership Interview and some other tools to assess potential. But the biggest difference between a great leader and an average leader is that great leaders are engaged, and they can lead an engaged team to optimum results.Average leaders generally have mediocre engagement and don't have much sense of ownership of their organization. Their team is not motivated, and they tend to deliver whole periods of not terrible but not great results. They basically keep going, not pushing boundaries and not raising the bar. They don't get obsessed with improving results and performance and creating an atmosphere where people can perform at their best. But they don't get much attention because they're not messing up.When you identify a good-enough manager, what do you do?Al-Saady:Make sure there's a real leadership problem there. We use a clear set of performance criteria and objectives to measure leaders' performance and potential. We measure the engagement levels of their teams, their 360-degree feedback scores, and many other things and then categorize leaders on a potential/performance axis.With high performance/low potential people, you make sure they're in roles that get the most out of them while continuing to recognize their contribution. The high potential/low performance managers are your future gems, and you need to know why they are not delivering today. See if it's a fit issue or a mentoring issue or an engagement issue. Whatever it is, that manager's leader needs to start working on it.But the tricky ones are the low performance/low potential folks. Even if you want to be benevolent or avoid rocking the boat and keep them in their current management role, their teams and your company will continue to underperform. You want to give these folks roles they can shine in, maybe on another team or in an individual role. And you should mentor, coach, and train them to greatness there. I've known a lot of good-enough managers who became fantastic individual contributors. You should give them that chance. But then you must monitor their results closely. If they're not going to hack it, the next time you make changes, maybe they can be part of a different organization. Have exit strategies.But there are only so many people who have the talent to be a great manager. How do you stock the management ranks when the resource is scarce?Al-Saady:That's a fair question. First, decide how quickly you want to do this. You don't have to do it all in one day. This approach has to be pragmatic as well. But if you don't start the process because you don't think you can, then you're defeated from day one. You'll find that as the quality of your leadership improves, it becomes easier to recruit more great leaders and to retain high-caliber leaders in your organization.One of the items on Gallup's Q12employee engagement survey is "My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work." That is a very important item. I watch that one closely. When people believe everyone is committed to quality, you recruit higher quality workers in every category.I take all [the Q12items] seriously. But that item can change everything very quickly. If your company is the enemy of mediocrity, it becomes an organization that ambitious, high-caliber people want to be part of. Recruiting becomes much more effective, and then you really get quality work. That begets more success because as you get higher quality applicants, people within the company start upping their game. Then you're on a roll.But it all starts with assessing people properly. Then you motivate and engage them, mentor and coach them toward success. Not all of them will be great leaders, and the ones who aren't shouldn't be put in that kind of position. If you only put great leaders in leadership positions, you'll root out mediocrity before it can spread.

7 Characteristics of Women Leaders(5412)Sally Helgesen

Web technologies, shifting demographics, and deregulated global markets now require leaders who are comfortable being at the center rather than being at the top, exercising intuitive and collaborative skills and making their words consistent with their actions. Women have an advantage in a world that values authenticity over positional power. The ability to lead effectively derives from self-knowledge.

Women are particularly well suited to the new dance of leadershipand yet many stumble as leaders. Zoe Cruz and Sallie Krawcheck were the most powerful women on Wall Street. It was speculated that both would become CEOs of their powerhousesMorgan Stanley and Citigroup. Instead, Ms. Cruz was ousted and Ms. Krawcheck demoted, leading to hand-wringing about how women seem be losing ground as leaders.

Having studied female leadership for two decades, this "women flounder as leaders" narrative has a familiar ring. While the progress women have made as leaders has not been rapid or smooth, the impact women are having on what we perceive to be desirable in our leaders continues to grow. The real story is about influence.

Women are comfortable with direct communication, relationship-building, diversity, and emotional intelligenceskills best suited for leaders today. I prefer to focus on what women have to contribute, rather than how they need to change or adapt.

For decades, women were urged to conform to a masculine leadership styleto start using football metaphors in meetings, take up golf, and pull rank on subordinates in order to keep them in line. Leave your values at home and play the game was the message.

This conventional wisdom was based on three assumptions: 1) organizations wouldnt change simply because women had entered them in massive numbers; 2) changes wrought by networked technologies wouldnt change organizational structures or reshape peoples expectations of their leaders; and 3) womens handicaps as leaders would outweigh whatever advantages they might confer.

I saw these assumptions as false. As organizations undergo rapid changes as demographics, technology, and economics of work shift, women face a historic opportunity to influence if they will honor and develop their distinctive strengths.

Characteristics of Women Leaders

In my research, I find that talented and confident women leaders have seven characteristics in common:1) they place a high value on relationships and judge the success of their organizations based on the quality of relationships within them;2) they prefer direct communication;3) they are comfortable with diversity, having been outsiders themselves and knowing what kind of value fresh eyes could bring;4) they are unwilling (and unable) to compartmentalize their lives and so draw upon personal experience to bring private sphere information and insights to their jobs;5) they are skeptical of hierarchies and surprisingly disdainful of the perks and privileges that distinguish hierarchical leaders and establish their place in the pecking order;6) they preferred leading from the center rather than the top and structure their organizations to reflect this; and7) they ask big-picture questions about the work they do and its value.

Such skills and strengths of women leaders are now highly desirable. Networked technologies, the knowledge economy and demographics of globalization all support the skills, talents, and presumptions that women bring.

Twenty years ago, relationship building was considered a soft skill that a leader, who had to be tough, could not afford. Now, as leaders seek to connect more directly with customers and stakeholders and motivate employees, an ability to nurture strong relationships is essential.

Technology today facilitates and demands direct communication while undermining hierarchy, a plus for those who enjoy leading from the center rather than the top. And in a global economy, comfort with diversity has become essential. As work and home become harder to separate, compartmentalizing becomes a liability.

Also, the tough-guy approach to leadership is in disrepute these days, as tyrants and bullies are brought in for censure. Organizations today feel compelled to state how they value relationships and support diversity. Leaders compete to take a greener, more holistic approachemphasizing sustainability and contribution and acknowledging the need to nurture the human spirit.

As more women are reaching positions of authority and influence, they are having a profound impact on how organizations are led and on what leadership qualities are valued.

Making Your Organizations Business Plan A Reality(6743)Husein Panju

In this exclusive interview, HRIQ speaks with Husein Panju, Director of Human Resources at the Hilton Kuwait Resort. He has been in the Learning & Development and Human Resources field since the past 14 years. He has headed Human Resources & Training functions at various locations, 6 countries, working with a diverse team of individuals from over 40 nationalities, his experience includes opening, brand exit and running hotels successfully in the Human Resources and Training functions.

At your organization, how do you use HR to drive business in all areas? What steps do you take to align HR strategies with organizational goals and deliver value to stakeholders?

A successful recipe for an HR function should have one primary objective at the epicenter, which is turning business strategies into HR priorities.

It is all too easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, the effectiveness of HR is not in creating spectacular standalone HR plans, but in making the organizations business plan a reality.

It must be understood-- irrespective of all the different hats HR professionals wear, all the numerous roles they play and the countless wonderful things they do on a daily basis-- that being successful depends on creating value for your customers. Delivering value to customers, both external and internal on a consistent basis for every occasion can make or break organizations.

The indisputable fact of any enterprise is that customers have always and will continue to always create wealth and serve as the reason for existence. Logically, every business is in the rat race of creating organization capabilities, and putting it very simply, asking and finding answers to the question what are the capabilities that my organization requires in order to create value for my customers?

Value is created through a combination of important organizational resources and each of these are areas of opportunity for HR functions to shape their plans around and ensure they drive the business forward and build all around capability.

Take the example of the hotel industry and more importantly an undoubtedly global hospitality leader, Hilton, one that I am extremely proud to be part of. We strive to color our guests experience into a positive memory by combining three main ingredients:

Simple guest friendly processes & work flow policies, scalable technology and the best people. This does not merely happen on its own and takes commitment and engagement of every single aspect of the guests journey, all these resources should operate to their optimum in a seamless manner and equally importantly on a consistent basis, leaving the guest with a sense of value and fulfillment. If its Hilton, I know exactly what Ill get and they wont let me down.

Finally, leverage HR activities in order to create and sustain organizational capability.

How you would identify the way to move your strategies forward by evaluating the progression of training and development programs?

Best people are imperative in the value creation chain and learning/development is an essential part and parcel of building their capabilities. In my view, a well-rounded training function should complement HR strategies and unarguably contribute to the success of the business at large. Effective L&D should not be restricted to the run-of-the-mill classroom existence: on the contrary, it should focus on the following priorities: playing a major role in building and shaping organization culture; driving change; focusing on building competency in Front line supervisors and leadership development; being an ambassador of employee empowerment and advocate for customer biased workflow procedures, quality standards, enhanced employee awareness, engagement in the organizations business goals, and retention.

What are some of the core strategies that have transformed your HR department into a business partner?

If you are not already there, then focus on getting yourself a seat at that table where strategies and business goals are formulated and worked upon. This involves a self evolution and changing the perception of internal customer from viewing HR as a traditionally administrative function to a commercially driven strategic business partner. Some helpful things to consider that will get you and help you stay there are : Contribute in every way to be perceived as a strategic partner and an organizational consultant. Build credibility and demonstrate integrity in the way you work. Devise HR plans from the organizations business goals. Go out of your way, stretch yourself beyond the HR role in order to partake in business and commercial activities. Act and ensure your team is perceived as strong role models when it comes to upholding values and culture within your organization. Leverage HR priorities to align with building organizational capabilities in procedures, technology and people. Use a balanced scorecard and seek to enhance HR contribution in the areas of people, profit, quality and customer satisfaction. Participate in continues professional development through L&D for your organization and yourself. Ensure that you evaluate your actions in terms of return on investment and make informed decisions utilizing budgetary information when planning HR activities. Strive to enhance team member experience at every opportunity. Create a learning and recognition culture throughout your organization, recruit best talent, reward and retain. Quantify the value of your department. Use analytical information when developing and presenting HR objectives and business plans.

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