Its all about Leadership
Dr. W. Edwards Deming said it decades ago in his best selling book The New Economics.
The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort.
As if that isn’t difficult enough to accomplish, he goes on to say, “The job of a leader is to accomplish transformation of his organization. But what is in his own head is not enough. He must convince and change enough people in power to make it happen. He possesses persuasive power. He understands people.”To help our clients accomplish this, we use a customized method of Group Coaching meant to bring a management team onto the same page. We have worked with leadership teams at all levels, and have found that underperforming teams have a common problem.
They fail, not because of a lack of skill or knowledge, but because they are unable to say what they believe to be true. Issues brought up in team meetings are sugarcoated out of fear of retribution or a perceived need to be politically correct. The real bones of contention are never discussed … until later, in the “meeting after the meeting.”
Highly functioning teams have a strong commitment to the truth, and are able to get at the heart of team issues. Our leadership development process helps executive teams to identify their own dysfunctions and get at the truth. The team learns to work together to grow and openly address their real issues. While it is never easy, and often painful, it works.