Corporate managers travel winding road

Anyone who is trying to manage in corporate America today can tell you the landscape has changed.

Helm Lehman wants to give managers a new map.

Lehman, manager of organizational performance and planning for REI, recently put his thoughts on leadership development and performance into book form, self-publishing Driver's Ed for Today's Managers: Six Leadership Strategies for the New Rules of the Road. Cruise control, which is how many managers approached their careers in past decades, doesn't work today, he said. Managers must have new skills and must move in new directions, navigating through constantly changing competitive landscapes if they want to survive and thrive, he said. Managers may have been pretty good drivers in the past, he said. "But now all the rules are changing. Organizations are continually asking their managers to do more with less." The tasks of today's manager boil down to four responsibilities: get results through effective leadership and coaching of employees; make the business grow by acquiring and sharing knowledge; provide opportunities and resources for people to do their best work; and learn how to influence the organization's future and help others do the same. In most organizations, three-quarters of a manager's time is spent on practical day-to-day activities, Lehman said. Other tasks, such as those above, get relegated to the back seat. He argues that those priorities should be changed, and managers should spend more time doing strategic planning and long-term problem solving. "Practical thinking is good," he said. "However, the overuse of practical thinking without a strategic perspective can lead to entrenchment, stubbornness and an inability to see alternative courses of action. In short, it can lead to either/or thinking and decision-making based on short-term results." In addition to taking a more long-term approach, he argues that managers need to move from fear-based management to a more compassionate form of leadership that takes into account both organizational and employee goals. But how does a person get from here to there? The trick is to cross the bridge from the old style of managing, or driving, to the new style. In the old style, managers knew all the answers, looked to the past for solutions, adopted a controlling, confrontational stance with workers, controlled the information in the organization and made decisions by the numbers. In the new style, managers ask questions, look for answers that will work tomorrow, help subordinates manage change, spend time mentoring and coaching employees, trust their instincts and disperse information. There are six strategies for making that transition, Lehman said. The first is to know when to be prescriptive, and when to be inquisitive, he said. "Leaders don't need to know all the answers. However, they need to know how to ask the right questions." The next strategy is to align actions with purpose and direction. It's important to help others see the connection between their day- to-day work and corporate strategy, he said. Strategy No. 3 is to build trust and competence among employees by creating environments that help people deal with change and turbulence in the work world. The fourth strategy is to promote self-sufficiency and challenge others to higher levels of performance from a position of caring and mutual self-interest, he said. The fifth is to manage from the head, but lead from the heart. Managers need to be able to make decisions on both data and intuition, combining left and right-brain thinking by combining facts with "gut feelings," he said. The last strategy is to "share information, then share more of it. Help build organizational literacy (knowledge of the business) with peers and direct reports." Lehman, who has been a management consultant for 17 years, said the most common complaint he hears from today's managers is that they sense a lack of leadership in their organizations, and they lack a sense of purpose in their jobs. The goal of his new style of driving is to give managers both. Most companies start as "engines of commerce," he said. "But they evolve into communities of people." What Lehman's book makes clear is that managers who pay attention to the people in the car with them are the most likely to get to their destination.

Copyright 1997
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