What's the climate of your team? | Issue #29
The latest news and updates for leaders and managers.
Welcome to the latest edition of The Leadership Bulletin.
When it comes to leadership and management, this isn’t just any old week: it’s International Leadership Week.
That’s where we start in this bulletin.
INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP WEEK.
I’m proud to be supporting #ILW23, a special moment when we celebrate the community that is striving to raise the standards of leadership and management - here in the UK and throughout the world. At Edfolio, we're pleased to play our small part in making that happen.
Click here to find out more about this week and how you can get involved.
IN FOCUS: WHAT’S THE CLIMATE OF YOUR TEAM?
What is the "climate" of your team? It isn't how hot or cold the office is - it's not that kind of climate. It's the key factors that define an organisation's working environment.
I was reminded of this way of thinking about an organisation recently when I was reading a classic Daniel Goleman article from 2000. It featured in the Harvard Business Review and covered different styles of leadership and how they relate to both emotional intelligence (the idea which made Goleman’s name) and organisational climate.
So what shapes the climate of your organisation? Here are the six key elements:
Flexibility. How free are employees to innovate?
Responsibility. How responsible do employees feel to your organisation?
Standards. At what level are they set?
Rewards. How accurately is feedback given and are rewards fair?
Clarity. Do people clearly understand your mission and values?
Commitment. What levels of commitment are there to common purposes?
Together, I firmly believe these factors determine the long-term success of a team and organisation. For example, without flexibility, you will be stifling the new ideas that could move your business forward. Without clarity, team members will struggle to understand their objectives and how they fit into the wider aims of the organisation. And without effective rewards, or clear commitment, you will likely suffer from high rates of staff attrition, losing skills and incurring costs.
So use this International Leadership Week to think about these factors and the climate in your organisation. What's working? What isn't? And what should you do to improve?
Let me know how you get on via lee@edfolio.co.uk - and if I can help the way you think about these concepts and how they apply in your organisation, please just ask.
A POLITICIAN’S INSIGHT ON CHANGE.
What's true in politics can often be true in business, too. Take this famous line from Benjamin Disraeli:
“The question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws, and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles.”
The same absolutely applies when affecting change - even essential change - in a business. It's all very well to have a plan on paper. You may have thought it through and planned every fine detail of how change will happen. But ultimately, it has to be tailored to the manners, customs, laws, and yes, even the traditions, of your team, partners and customers if change is to be effective rather than destructive. Because to change a business, just as to change a nation, is to deal with the realities of people. And people can never be fully understood through theoretical models which are detached from those very same manners, customers, laws and traditions.
CENTRE FOR ARMY LEADERSHIP ESSAY COMPETITION.
The National Army Museum and the Centre for Army Leadership (who have done a huge amount of work in recent years to understand, improve and share the army’s style of leadership) are running an essay competition. For 2023, they’re asking writers - civilian and military - to share their thoughts on leadership and emotional intelligence. You can find out more, including how to enter, by clicking here.
WHAT IS YOUR FEASIBLE UPTOPIA?
It may seem an odd question - in fact, a “feasible utopia” may seem a contradiction in terms! - but I think it’s a question worth asking. Below, you can find David Goldblatt's answer, as shared in the recent Royal Society of Arts journal. I've got to confess, it isn't my idea of a feasible utopia. I don't think "empty prisons" are feasible, for example, and any society with them would be a long way from a utopia! But it's an interesting way to think about the specific positive changes you would like to see in the world to get us a little bit closer to a feasible utopia.
22 March 2023