Leadership Challenges

In these volatile economic times, business leaders face unprecedented challenges with issues of morale, management, marketing, and customer service. Today’s successful business people value customer loyalty and earn it through trust rather than trickery. They know how to use creative recognition to motivate and retain employees. They’ve figured out how to balance customers’ interests with generating profits in an ethical mix. Some of the best share their secrets of success in business through their books.
In tough times and tight job markets, sometimes it’s better to hang on and make the best of a difficult situation. In Love It Don’t Leave It: 26 Ways to Get What You Want at Work, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1-57675-250-X, Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans claim that “What you want could be found right where you are.” Workplace satisfaction is a two-way street that demands action from both management and employees.
A manager’s actions can unwittingly de-motivate an employee and result in decreased performance. “Research shows that while most bosses’ behavior toward ‘lower performers’ seems like common sense and is meant to improve subordinate performance, it actually undermines many a subordinate’s sense of self-determination,” write Jean-Francois Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux in The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail, Harvard Business School Press, 0-87584-949-0.
Savvy managers who recognize and manage job dissatisfaction can ward off further covert behaviors like those discussed in Toxic Emotions at Work: How Compassionate Managers Handle Pain and Conflict at Work by Peter J. Frost, Harvard Business School Press, 1-57851-257-3.
Often overlooked, effective recognition “energizes and revitalizes” the work force. In Make Their Day: Employee Recognition That Works, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1-57675-197-X, management consultant Cindy Ventrice urges managers to “find ways to add recognition to every employee interaction,” and cites practical examples of how to do that in a sincere way.
Gerald Czarnecki believes that the role of an effective Work Leader is comprised of seven essential steps. “We start our leadership steps with L for love, followed by E for expectations, A for assignment, D for development, E for evaluate, R for rewards, and S for self,” he explains in You’re in Charge...What Now? Seven Essential Steps for Work Leader Success, Griffin Publishing Group, 1-58000-109-2.
In True to Our Roots: Fermenting a Business Revolution by Paul Dolan, Bloomberg Press, 1-57660-150-1, another leader tells how he has used his own six principles of leadership to grow a prosperous business and foster a healthy corporate culture. Dolan, CEO of Fetzer Vineyards, promotes balancing values, environmental stewardship, and understanding that “the soul of your company can be found in the heart of your people.”
Matthew May describes how to use personal leadership to have a maximum impact in work and life in Absolute Impact: The Drive for Personal Leadership, Peloton Publishing, 0-9729794-0-9. “The goal is not necessarily to embark on a radically new path in life, but to investigate how we might bring more of who we are to our current, everyday experience.”
Ethical leaders respect others’ interests and build relationships based on earned trust. “Creating an ethical culture means empowering people to do the right thing for the company, the customer, and the community.” Richard Bellingham, Ed.D. hopes that his book, Ethical Leadership: Rebuilding Trust in Corporations., HRD Press, Inc., 0-87425-738-7, will help workers to realize that “relationship is the most important success factor in any venture.”
Rick Tate and Josh Stroup agree. In their book, The Service Pro: Creating Better, Faster, and Different Customer Experiences by, HRD Press, Inc., 0-87425-731-X, they quote a Forum Corporation Research statement, which asserts that “Seventy percent of lost customers hit the road not because of price or quality issues but because they didn’t like the human side of doing business with the prior provider of the product or service.” Trained service professionals can drive great customer experiences, which will result in increased loyalty and repeat business.
There’s a lot of talk about CRM these days, but international marketing consultant Frederick Newell has a slightly different view than most. “The time has passed for customer relationship management (CRM); it’s time to transition to customer management of relationships (CMR),” he urges in Why CRM Doesn’t Work: How to Win by Letting Customers Manage the Relationship, Bloomberg Press, 1-57660-132-3.
Winning in the Invisible Market: A Guide to Selling Professional Services in Turbulent Times, Llumina Press, 1-932303-66-9, is geared for consultants and consulting firms facing one of the worst economic downturns for service providers in history. Robert A. Potter says “Most of the estimated 15 million service providers in the United States who manage and advise clients are also expected to attract new business” and he endorses value mining as a proactive way to break into the invisible market of companies looking for sole-source providers.
Today’s capitalistic society has evolved from one dedicated to return on investment for corporations’ owners to one in which corporations are being run to profit the fund managers who control large amounts of the stock, according to John C. Bogle, founder and former CEO of The Vanguard Group. He goes on to say, “Once owned largely by a diffuse and inchoate group of individual investors, each one with relatively modest holdings, today the ownership of stocks is concentrated—for better or worse!—among a remarkably small group of institutions whose potential power is truly awesome. . . . Together these 100 large institutional investors constitute the great 800-pound gorilla that can sit wherever he wants to sit at the board table.” Putting Investors First: Real Solutions for Better Corporate Governance by Scott C. Newquist with Max B. Russell, Bloomberg Press, 1-57660-141-2, advises companies to develop principles-based corporate governance to protect shareholders.
In the wake of corporate insider trading scandals and corporate deceit, a recurring theme in today’s business books is one of principles, winning fairly, ethical leadership, and focus on the employee—hard-earned lessons from those who got burned pursuing purely selfish interests.