A633.4.3.RB Changing Dynamics of Leadership

The shift in leadership is happening more and more today as we see many organizations that are restructuring themselves, kind of reinventing if you will, to be better than before.  I believe a lot of it has to do with more and more people who work the front-lines on a daily basis standing up and saying enough is enough.  More employees are becoming frustrated with their organizations because the people who were picked to lead them don’t know the solutions to most problems.  This leaves the lower level employees wondering what the heck happened to knowing and understanding the job at hand no matter what that job may be.

Some companies deal with this by hiring and promoting from within their organization (I have seen this in some restaurants).  This way a manager knows how the organization works from bottom to top and can actually come up with solutions instead of playing that charade of hoping no one asks them a question they can’t answer.  Having someone who starts out at the “bottom” and works their way up can actually help upper management get a better grip on what is happening in their own organization. 

There has to be open communication from the top down and from the bottom up.  We have to ask questions and not bluff our way out of it with some ideal of what we think is the right answer.  With more organizations becoming more complex we have to be able to adapt and change by asking questions, blurring that line a bit between leaders and followers and understanding how stay in the know instead of getting lost in the management mentality .  Getting feedback from your followers lets them know that you want their suggestions and thoughts of what works and what doesn’t.  Leaders can’t hide behind their big desks and expect their organization to run smoothly.

One way to do this is to be the example of what you want.  If you expect your front-line workers to know how to perform certain functions you as the leader need to know how to do this as well.  For example, at the other campus the assistant directors do not know how to perform verifications in financial aid.  They set the standard though for how long it should take to do based on feedback from a few individuals without actually having done a verification themselves.  How can the followers rely on their managers to help them when they don’t know the answers themselves?

In my organization there has been a lot of changes recently that I feel were made to better serve the student as well as the organization itself.  Restructuring and putting different people in charge of different areas will have a positive impact overall.  Within my department we also had some changes.  A big part of that change comes from the fact that my director is that type of leader that everyone wants to be like or are jealous of because of how well his department is run.

He started as a counselor and worked his way up to director and will be moving shortly to another position where his talents can be used to propel our organization ahead. He leads by example and never says he can’t help us.  He makes time for us and our problems whether they are personal or work related.  He doesn’t yell when you mess something up he asks you how you would fix it and how you can make it better next time.  He empowers his employees and there is open communication.  He also gets our feedback and asks us questions.  These are the things that help make a good leader great.  
He also asks what challenges we each face and what we think can make it better.  By getting to know what our frustrations are and how we are thinking we can make it better he can employee those ideas into realities.  For example, we send out many emails explaining changes that happen and we follow it up with training so that the counselors can get the information shown to them in a training setting where they can feel they can ask questions and get clarification as needed.  All these things are what will make a good organization better and help everyone embrace changes for the better.