Leadership Insights January 2016

ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE

leadership i n s i g h ts

KNOTTY PROBLEMS AND LONG-TERM CAREER SUCCESS: How you manage them matters

LEADERSHIP VIEWS

with a local leader This issue: Vern McGinnis

An Essay by Mathew Sheep, Ph.D. Effective leaders usually take some degree of pride in their ability to make good decisions, but sometimes those decisions backfire, and we wonder why. Likely, a “knotty” problem is lurking beneath the surface, hidden from plain view. What is a “knotty” problem?

I can almost guarantee you that you experience such problems in your organization on a daily basis—whether you call them “challenging,” or “tricky,” or “wicked.”

We call them “knots” because that is what my research colleagues and I have found that they are. That is, our intractable problems (those that won’t go away) are really made up of complexly interwoven tensions in organizational systems. As Peter Senge (2006) observed in The Fifth Discipline, “Business and other human endeavors are also systems…bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other….Instead, we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get solved.”

Let me share a story. Several years ago, I was invited to join a research team that was studying a spinoff of a global corporation (Sheep, Fairhurst, & Khazanchi, forthcoming). The spin-off had been “liberated,” so to speak, from the more hierarchical structure of its parent firm in order to develop highly innovative products.

After it had achieved a measure of success in doing so,

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As you reflect on your leadership roles and experiences, what events were critical in your development as a leader? In other words, how did you learn to be a leader?

I watched and studied others and learned from them as well as reading about leadership. This helped to shape my views on what worked and what didn’t. I was fortunate to have management roles early in my career (even though small) that gave me a learning laboratory. Involvement in outside organizations (community and industry) gave me the opportunity to work with and learn from other volunteers. Perhaps one of the best experiences was my involvement in the American Marketing Association. I started at the local chapter level and worked my way up into the national organization. Serving as national President of the AMA was a real growth experience for me in many ways.

Who did you learn from? That is, did you model your leadership after others? How? I’m sure I was impacted by many others. Growing up my role models outside of family were teachers, coaches and school administrators. Dr. Robert Bone was president of ISNU when I arrived as a green freshman. I likely didn’t realize it then, but he was a positive role model because I still have vivid memories of seeing him around the campus.

The CEO of FS Services (now GROWMARK), my first employer, was a strong influence on me as well. He was regarded then as a great leader and is still held in that regard in company history. I have had others in the company who were good role models as well as many from my experiences outside the company.

I learned as much about what isn’t good leadership as I did on the positive side from these experiences.

What would you say are the most important attributes of an effective leader? That is, what makes a great leader?

Honesty, compassion and a caring for those you lead, communication skills and an understanding of and a passion for the vision that you are championing. A leader must be able to communicate the vision to others in terms that they can understand and commit to.

What are the most important “things” a leader does that contributes to the success of an organization?

Communicate the vision and strategies for areas for which they are responsible in ways that are clear, understandable and credible to the team. This includes “building a case” and helping others understand why the strategy and direction are important. Building and securing engagement and “buy-in.” This means leaders have to exhibit passion for the cause and vision.

• Provide ongoing communication and monitor progress.

• Assure necessary resources are available.

• Make changes as needed.

• Celebrate and reward progress and results. continued on page 2

LEADERSHIP VIEWS (continued)

RESEARCHUPDATE

What can organizations do to help develop future leaders?

Provide a program of employee development through training and continuing education and challenging work assignments and experiences. Some of this can be accomplished by encouraging and supporting employee involvement in outside organizations as well.

What are organizations not doing now (or enough of) that they should be doing more of?

Recognizing the value of committed and engaged employees. Seeing employees as valuable assets worthy of support and investment for the long term.

What were some of the mistakes that people make in their leadership roles?

Leadership takes you outside your comfort zone—that means you have to believe in yourself and be willing to take chances. You should strive to be effective not to be “liked”. Leaders have to be willing to make the hard choices. Finally, your leadership style must be compatible with who you are in order to be credible.

What are the biggest mistakes people make that “derail” them in their leadership roles?

An unwillingness or failure to demonstrate interest in new things and new roles. Failing to do your best on what might seem like a minor assignment. Everything you do in your career becomes a part of your portfolio. It is hard to get rid of the “bad baggage” later on.

What mistakes do people make that keep them from being noticed as “potential leaders” earlier in their careers?

One mistake is avoiding doing things that get you noticed. There are steps people can take to build their visibility. Volunteer for team project assignments. Get involved in things outside work that may be important to the company. Build new skills. Seek out mentors.

What advice would you give to someone just starting out—assuming he/she wants to take have leadership responsibilities at some point?

Be positive. Make your interests known. Be willing to accept small assignments. Always fulfill your commitments.

What advice would you give to someone who is already in a leadership role, but wants to continue to move up?

The same as above only at a higher level. Be open to changes in job assignments. People who do really well at what they are currently doing are the ones who get noticed and are given the chance to do more on a larger scale. Work to demonstrate skills that are transferable to other roles.

Some of the readers will be college students. What advice would you give them (not necessarily related to leadership)?

Build your College resume outside of the classroom. Seek internships. Volunteer. Have some involvement in student organizations. Be cautious with social media, so you don’t leave something behind that you might have to explain in the future.

As you look at the local, state, and national political/economic environment, what concerns you? What role do organizations (and their leaders) have in addressing these concerns?

These are challenging times for a variety of reasons. Both the political and economic environments are difficult and fraught with problems. The need for leadership grows as the magnitude of the problems escalates. Society and organizations are faced with multiple issues to resolve. Our ability to deal with this multitude of threats and opportunities will shape our future and the desirability of the outcome.

Looking forward, how might the roles and responsibilities of leaders change?

The basic responsibilities of leaders will remain essentially the same. How that role is fulfilled changes over time. Technology impacts how we interact. Communication is now real time. Society looks for results more quickly. There is more pressure on leaders to produce and less tolerance for how long it takes.

it pays to have an

EYE FOR EMOTIONS Can you explain the research and, in general, what the research suggests?

We conducted two studies in Germany with a diverse group of participants, and we found in both studies that employees who are able to accurately recognize emotional expressions of others tend to earn high annual income. In our main study we found that the relationship between emotion recognition ability and annual income can be explained by two intervening factors, political skill and interpersonal facilitation. That is, those who are good at recognizing emotions also tend to be skilled at navigating the social environment at work, and they are cooperative, considerate employees who excel at assisting others with their work performance.

Many of our readers will be familiar with the general idea of Emotional Intelligence, or EI. Your research, however, addresses a more specific concept that you call “Emotional Recognition Ability” or ERA. Can you provide some detail on what is meant by ERA and how it is related to Emotional Intelligence?

EI has multiple components, including accurately perceiving emotions, being able to understand emotions, using emotions to facilitate thoughts and actions, as well as managing emotions. Many researchers believe these components of EI are hierarchically related to each other, and that perceiving emotion, or emotion recognition ability, is the most basic and fundamental component of EI.

Your research suggests a link between higher levels of ERA and higher levels of income. That is, individuals with “stronger” ERA will tend to make more money that those with lower ERA. Why, do you think, that relationship exists?

The relationship between emotional intelligence and financial success is an indirect one. According to our research model, those who are high on emotion recognition ability, an important component of emotional intelligence, are able to better understand and navigate the social, political environment at the workplace, which allows them to more effectively get things done, which eventually leads to higher annual income. In other words, it is through enhanced political skill that emotional intelligence increases one’s financial outcomes. Political skill is a set of abilities that allow individuals to get things done through favorable interpersonal relationships outside of formally prescribed organizational mechanisms, and the ability to influence, motivate, and win support from others. They are able to interact with others in a way that generate trust and goodwill, and develop favorable reputations for themselves.

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Knotty Problems (continued) the spin-off was then re-acquired by the same corporation in order to commercialize the new products and to profit thereby. However, this did not go as simply as expected.

Once the spin-off had become accustomed to the “freedom” to be autonomous, creative, and nimble in what some members called their “Wild West” culture, it was not an easy transition to move back in “with the parents.” There were rules, procedures, chains of command, all sorts of resource constraints, too many projects, highly constrained financial and human capital, and so on. These constraints formed multiple tensions that members in the re-acquired spin-off had to find a way to navigate and manage every day. In analyzing our interview data for this study, we found that members frequently talked about the various tensions they faced in ways that were entangled and mutually amplifying of one another—they had become “knot-like.”

We also discovered that people are very different when it comes to how they “manage” knots. Some members argued that tensional knots were a justification for “giving up” or “giving in” to paralysis of further innovation—“it’s just not doable.”

However, other members saw knots as an opportunity to be increasingly innovative

sider recent headlines: “Apple’s Innovation Problem is Real” (CNN Money, 09/09/2013); “Big Picture: Where Are Apple’s New Products?” (BloombergBusiness, 09/10/2015); “Google, Mighty Now, but Not Forever” (NY Times, 02/11/2015).

It is sobering to realize that corporate reputations of highly innovative companies in the past (like Kodak) were much like those of the most highly-regarded companies of today (like Apple). Few analysts in 1992 would have seriously predicted that Kodak would be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy only 20 years later in 2012. Headlines read, “The Last Kodak Moment?” (The Economist, 01/14/2012) and “What Killed Kodak?” (The Atlantic, 01/05/2012). Or just substitute the headlines for any company that has fallen short in recent years of sustaining its innovative and competitive edge.

More importantly, do most managers really care? Or has our thinking become so short-term that many simply opt out of long-term responsibility for their decisions and actions? (“As long as it didn’t happen on my watch...no one will know.”)

Or maybe you do care (one would hope). If so, then your successes depend on how effectively you can approach complex problems by seeing them for what they are—multiple tensions and constraints that we call a system of “knots.” In her book

so that knotted tensions could be handled simultaneously. The latter approach was clearly more beneficial and resulted from “integrative thinking” or “systems thinking,” both subsumed under a larger umbrella of what is known as a “design thinking” shift in management. (See references below).

Closer to home, we all face such “knotted tensions” every day at work, regardless of where we are positioned in our organization (from entry level to top management).

Thus, we all could benefit by becoming more adept at a “systems” view of solving tension-riddled problems.

For many problems we face in our organizations, knotted tensions can be made worse when we insist on short-term gains or overly simplistic “solutions.” These undermine long-term system viability and sustainability for competitive advantage. For example, we too often read headlines like those of the recent oil industry glut, VW’s emissions software scandal, GM’s ignition switch scandal, BP’s “Deepwater Horizon” disaster, financial travails of Detroit, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and formerly innovative industry giants now faced with massive layoffs and restructuring, at best, or bankruptcy and threat of demise, at worst.

There are big problems, yes, but their magnitude is deceptive. They started with and will wind up as smaller decisions made at all levels of the organization—decisions that are either narrowly short-sighted by superficially considering only one’s own little slice of time and space, OR those that take a long-term view and are broadly interdependent with other parts of the system.

It is ever more urgent to learn from past declines and present successes. To facilitate such learning in the classroom, I assign MBA students a case analysis entitled, “How will Apple (or Google, Amazon—or take your pick) prevent itself from becoming the next Kodak (or GM, Yahoo!—or take your pick)?” Preposterous? Unthinkable? Con-

referenced below, Donella Meadows quotes Russell Ackoff, an operations theorist: Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes…Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes.

Want to know how to manage a mess like a pro? Enter systems thinking, which Senge (2006) defines as “a body of knowledge and tools…to make the full pattern clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively.” To understand the difference that systems thinking makes, Donella Meadows (2008) uses a “zoo metaphor.” That is, zoos are over-simplified and unrealistic habitats because they “group animals by family--monkeys here, bears there…so you can observe the characteristic behavior of monkeys, as opposed to bears. But, like a zoo, this collection is too neat.”

By contrast, in a systems view, “zoo animals more naturally occur mixed together in ecosystems.” Thus, animals in the “real world” are not isolated, but they “normally connect and interact with each other…—all making up the buzzing, hooting, chirping, changing complexity in which we live.” So it is with organizational systems.

Want to be a better leader and decision-maker in challenging situations when problems are ill-defined? Learn to think in terms of interdependent systems and how your actions will impact related parts of that system. Also ask the “what if” sorts of questions that will help you to unearth possibilities. As Roger Martin (Dunne & Martin, 2006) put it, “What is something completely new that would be lovely if it existed but doesn’t now?” Finally, refuse to settle for false “either-or” choices and look for “both-and” opportunities that lead to win-win solutions. Your decisions, even amidst complex “knots” and “messes,” may lead to systemic successes that take you and your organization further (for longer) than you had initially imagined.

WANT TO KNOW MORE? • • • • •

Dunne, D., & Martin R. (2006). Design thinking and how it will change management education: An interview and discussion. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5: 512-523.

Kolko, J. (2015). Design thinking comes of age. Harvard Business Review (September 2015 issue). (See three other feature articles on design thinking in this issue).

Martin, R. (2008). The opposable mind: How successful leaders win through integrative thinking. Harvard Business School Press.

Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.

Senge, P. (2006). The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (Revised Edition). New York: Currency Doubleday.

• Sheep, M., Fairhurst, G., & Khazanchi, S. (forthcoming 2016). Knots in the discourse of innovation: Investigating multiple tensions in a reacquired spin-off.

READY FOR CONTENT EYE FOR EMOTIONS - RESEARCHUPDATE (continued) Is this, at least somewhat, an issue of personal likeability?

Perhaps. Through enhanced political skill, those who are emotionally intelligent will be able to better understand others’ motives and thoughts, to deal with awkward interpersonal situations more skillfully, and generate greater liking and trust of others. Prior research has shown that those that are emotionally intelligent are better collaborators with others. In two prior studies, my coauthors and I have also found that politically skilled employees are better liked and tend to develop more favorable reputations at the workplace.

You reference “political skill”—and some of your other research also explores political skill in organizations. But, don’t most of us consider political behavior in organizations to be a negative? We often hear complaints, or offer our own complaints, about people who are too political. Could you comment on that and offer some insights on the actual positives of political behavior and political skill?

You are right! Many people have a negative view on political behavior in organizations. We tend to associate organizational politics with “office politics.” And we think of scenarios like back stabbing, gossiping, and brownnosing the boss when we talk about organizational politics. But organizational politics is in fact a much broader concept that include both positive and negative politics. Political behaviors can be considered simply individuals’ response to workplaces where resources are scarce, and where decisions have to be made where divergent interests are involved and can’t be all satisfied. Yes, self-interest is oftentimes part of the driver of individual political acts, but such actions do not always go against organizational goals. Oftentimes the rules and structures in the organizations are obsolete and can’t be changed quick enough to adapt to the changing environment, and in those situations you almost have to fall on unsanctioned behaviors to gain power and influence and get things done.

And that is why political skill is so important. In today’s organizations, individuals increasingly have to collaborate with each other, and the organizational structure is getting less and less hierarchical. That means not only employees have to rely on others get their goals accomplished, but they have to be able to do so without formal authority to request such assistance. Because the increasing interdependence among employees and the general lack of formal authority over one another at the workplace, those who are equipped with political skill are at an incredible advantage. Because they understand others’ intentions and desires, they influence others’ thoughts and actions skillfully, and they show a sense of sincerity and trustworthiness, they are able to motivate and inspire. They also position themselves well in the social networks in organizations, which help them quickly and accurately locate information and resources they need to get things done. Because of this, they often outperforms others, and when the individuals’ intentions are not personal, but organizational, gain, it benefits everyone in the organization and the organization as a whole.

Ideally, we wish organizations are never political. But as long as organizational resources are scarce and the organizational change is a necessity, organizations will

remain political, and we need “good” political players at the scene. The worst that can happen to organizations is that the strong political players are those who “play” for personal gains, and those who care about the organization lack political skill to make a positive change.

Okay, assume I’m a mid-level manager. Still pretty early in my managerial career, but I really want to be successful—for all the right reasons. That is, I am appropriately ambitious. How does this research apply to me? What should I take away?

For ambitious middle managers who desire to add value to their organizations, it is very important to understand the importance of emotional intelligence and political skill at the workplace and continue to horn their skills in these areas. Middle managers who are emotionally intelligent create more pleasant work environment for their subordinates, where people feel seen and understood. And political skills can be used to shield their subordinates from bad politics and undue challenges and pressures from the higher ups, and to gain valuable developmental opportunities for them as well. For middle managers themselves, tremendous influence and power can be gained from doing politics right, which not only help their own career growth and success but help the organizational change processes more effective as well.

Is ERA, or emotional intelligence overall, something that people can develop or strengthen? What specific advice would you give people who need—or would like—to develop their emotional intelligence?

Because EI is a competency and can be developed and strengthened. The literature has developed some evidence that EI can be enhanced through training. I think the development of EI starts with awareness. Paying more attention to how oneself feels, paying attention to others’ emotional expressions. The more we start to pay more attention to emotions, consider them a valid and valuable part of our personal and organizational life, the more we will be able to understand, respond to and make use of them.

Your study took place in Germany. Any reason to think that the results don’t apply in the US or North America?

That’s a good question. The two cultures are similar on a number of cultural dimensions. Both are individualistic, masculine and low power distance cultures, but Germany has a higher uncertainty avoidance and a stronger long-term orientation.

Individualism versus collectivism and power distance perhaps are the culture dimensions that are most relevant in the relationships we examined in the study, because they influence the way individuals relate to each other at work. Considering the similarities between the two cultures in these two aspects, I would think that the results of our study are generalizable in the US setting, although this remains an empirical research question that needs to be answered in future studies.