ANSWER TO QUESTION 5. If You Cannot Answer These 5 questions Correctly, You Should NOT Be a Leadership Manager!
Greg "GW" Weismantel
Mentoring a portfolio of 3,200 managers, we teach irrefutable hard-skill tenets of Strategic Management for the company; operational development for executives, departments and leaders through digital resources & courses
What’s the Most Accurate Answer??Knowing this means you also understand the processes of leadership management for your position.?I will explain the answer to these questions each day of next week via email, on my LinkedIn Post, as well as on my website, www.highgrowthllc.com.
?Answer to Question 5
Our firm’s workload surveys with high-growth companies show that leadership managers use hard-skill competencies over 90% of the time, and soft-skills only 5-10% of the time. That said, the soft skills are still very critical to a leadership manager who has any sized staff.
?Mastering the hard skills goes a long way to eliminating the need for using soft skills on an overwhelming basis. We’ve already mentioned how mastering accountability and metrics, two hard skill competencies, resolves a lot of conflict.
?The problem with coaching is that the level of competency of a coach is usually not stellar throughout the profession. How many outstanding coaches do we have in the NFL today? Maybe 10% of the 32? Maybe less? Well, what about leadership coaches?
?We estimate that we have over 3,000 leadership coaches in the US alone. Every leadership coach has a program on the latest soft skill in leadership. How often do they show how great leadership managers like Carly Fiorina, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and others managed M&A, Advanced Decision Making, or Transforming an organization’s business model? Those are all hard skills, not the focus of leadership coaches.
?All the other consultants and coaches specialize on the soft skills, which are also important in executive management. We have identified 34 soft skill competencies and 14 Axioms of success in our coming book, “Axioms of Success,” and those 8 shown below have been determined to be used by leadership managers the most.
?What a great honor to communicate with Steven Kaplan on his outstanding research on what it takes to become a CEO and executive. Steven is the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.
Kaplan’s research reveals that charisma is also a potent ingredient in his research on candidates who were being considered for a CEO position. He says, “…although it might help you become a CEO, it might not be a factor of your success.”
?Recently I bought a book written by the superstar Gary Vaynerchuk entitled “Twelve and a Half” which claims to “leverage the emotional ingredients necessary for business success.” Gary Vee, as he is called, does a great job of identifying 12 soft skills from Gratitude to Ambition, and you will appreciate his free style.?
Here’s what he says in his book: “The word ‘curiosity’ is underrated in our society. It feels fluffy, academic, and childish, but I believe it is one of the most important characteristics for success in business.”?
?So you might feel differently, but these two experts on soft skills chose b. Charisma & Curiosity as the two most important soft skill competencies to a leadership manager.
?5. The two most important “soft skill” competencies to a leadership manager are:
???????????a. Empathy & Innovation.
???????????b. Charisma & Curiosity.
???????????c. Honesty & Humility.
???????????d. Resilience & Tenacity.
?So that concludes our 5-question quiz that each of you, as a leader, should be able to answer correctly. There were four questions based on hard skill competencies, and one question based on soft skill competencies, and the response from LinkedIn contacts has been overwhelming.
?I plan to do this again in the future. Thanks for your responses, and I have included the first four questions and answers below. Revisit the ones you got wrong and send me an email to ask any questions. ([email protected]).
?gw
?Answer to Question 1
?1. The most important ingredient to proper delegation of work to others is:
???????????a. Responsibility
???????????b. Empowerment
???????????c. Control????
???????????d. Communication
?This answer comes directly from our Vista Management Development Platform in the Success Series of management tenets. https://www.screencast.com/t/yGYP6qlS????????????
?Yes, the most difficult function of high-growth management is Control, because it is essential in achieving objectives and allowing an individual to evaluate themselves.
?We will work with Tunnel To Towers to bring these key management courses to each of you while supporting our veterans and first responders.
Gw
?Answer to Question 2.
?2. Since “change” is no longer an acceptable term in leadership, the difference between Transformation and Reformation is:
???????????a. They both relate to the scope of the project.
???????????b. They both impact the business model.
???????????c. They both include restructuring.
???????????d. One impacts the business model, and the other impacts the
??????????????scope of the project.
The terms “change” and “restructuring” are taboo in today’s dialect of leadership managers because it infers that there will be layoffs and job switches, and that is always based upon a leadership manager’s competency for continuous improvement.
领英推荐
In today’s world of leadership management these two terms, reformation and transformation, have themselves been streamlined, and for good reason, because they both provide a distinction within the function of Organizing. They have meaning where “change” does not.
Yes, both transformation and reformation are competencies within the high-growth management function of Organizing, as “they both impact the business model” of the company.??
?This answer also comes from our Vista Management Development Platform, in the Success Series of management tenets under Organizing.
?The term “change management” has less meaning in today’s leadership management environment while “reformation and transformation” relate directly to organizing. Change does not.
?Answer to Question 3.
?When I am asked the difference between a leader and a leadership manager, there is nothing as obvious as how each looks at a best practice.?
?The leader usually holds that a best practice is the only direction that a company should take, similar to the validity of an ISO rating. That’s because a leader believes that the only competency for success is standard operating procedure.
In order to become a leader, there are 18 key, hard-skill competencies that a leader must master. To become a leadership manager and move on to executive of the company, you must master 71 competencies. That explains why a CEO isn’t just looking for a leader.?
What I have observed in over 40 years of working with high growth executives and companies is that a leadership manager is far more challenging of the status quo, and less reliant upon what the “uncritical many” profess. From what I can tell, that’s a key reason we see leadership managers shoot through department manager status into the executive role.
3. The difference between a “best practice” and an “axiom” is:
?a. The best practice is the most reliable of the two terms.
?b. The best practice is objective;?the axiom is subjective.
c. The best practice is used the same by all respected units of
?????the company.
d. The best practice is subjective in nature and changed by
?????the company as it sees fit.
This answer to question 3 is a good example. What leader would ever select “D” as the correct answer above? And yet that’s the correct answer! What leader would think that a best practice is “subjective and changed by the company as it sees fit?” After all, if a company takes a best practice and changes it to fit its own requirements, is it still a best practice?
Yes. And high-growth companies always modify a best practice to fit their own requirements! It makes it their own best practice.
I’ve seen it where one division of a company has a different best practice than is used by a sister-division. That’s because a best practice is driven by a small group of experts, and not the critical few specialists, and it often must be tweaked in order to be followed. Let’s look at this from what Guy has placed into the Success Series.
Answer to Question 4
?4. The two most important “hard skill” competencies to a leadership manager are:
???????????a. Communications and Delegation.
???????????b. Accountability and Metrics.
???????????c. Decision Making and Problem solving.
???????????d. Evaluation and Appraisal.
?The answer to question #4 should be a no-brainer, because we mentioned it in the answer of question #2. The most important hard skill competencies to a leadership manager are Accountability and Metrics!
?In question #2, Guy spoke about the difference between Responsibility and Accountability, with responsibility being the work or job description of the responsibilities of an individual. That says nothing about having the authority to make decisions on that work, and that’s where the rub lies.
?Responsibility and Accountability are competencies of the function of Leadership, and they go a long way to support other competencies as well. For example, we find that conflict resolution is a competency of the function of Teamwork, but whenever we see two departments or individuals in conflict, you can depend upon one or both of them do not know who have the authority to make decisions. Thus, nobody knows who is accountable.
?In today’s work environment, particularly with working from home, strategic managed companies implement accountability and metrics more than ever before, or else they endure a lot of conflict and lack of trust.
?Think about it. Why is there no trust of employees working from home? Because when they worked from the office it was perceived they were working all 8 hours on the company projects, etc. In fact, a certain portion of those 8 hours were watching video games when nobody was observing.
?Successful companies have agreed to metrics and KPIs that quantify what we expect of the individuals at home, and uphold their accountability to achieve the OKMs that were agreed to. That’s the real problem, no accountability and metrics.
?Which is where solid leadership managers come in. It doesn’t matter who is accountable, as long as we know someone is accountable. And that means the leadership manager can expect to receive a self-evaluation by the employee based upon an agreed-to metric of performance. If she’s meeting her agreed-to metric or KPI while working from home, that should be all that’s required.
?Without accountability and metrics, it’s tough to have a business without conflicts.
?