RED Leadership
| Posted in Leadership, Project Management | Posted on 07-02-2010 | 252 views
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It’s not about the colour of your leadership style, it’s about what you can do for your people in order to make them feel valued and energize them every time they need to, RED Leadership is a style I have coined that’s cantered around three pillars: Respect, Empathize, and Develop. Many leaders use different techniques to get results through people, however a true leader has to learn how to respect people and treat them as human begins rather than robots!
Respect
If you want to be listened you have to listen first, if you have to be understood you have to understand first, and if you have to be respected you have to show respect, do not expect people to respect you because you are higher in position, even though they may try to show respect whenever they see you, you have to be smart enough to distinguish real respect from fake one. Respect is a genuine trait that if you have it, you will get outstanding results, you need to learn how to respect people, most of people do not practice respect and this is one of the key reasons of frustration at workplace, first thing you have to know about respect is it has to be consistent, like you are not supposed to show respect to your superiors and treat people who work for your in a disrespectful way, Respect can be practiced by:
- Understand everybody’s culture and deal with them based on that, what may appear OK with you may be offensive to someone else, one of your traits as a leader is to understand the culture of different people who work for you, failing to do that can lead to destructive results
- Look at people when they speak to you
- Listen to people and do not interrupt, even if you feel tempted to interrupt
- Catch them doing something right
- Show courtesy and use words such as please, thank you, I really appreciate
- Value ideas and suggestions, whenever someone suggest a new process or change to make business better, first thank him and don’t be dismissive
- If someone comes to you with a fool idea never show that on your face, you always have to presume the good in people
- Be a silent coach, do not tell your people that you teach and mentor them, they will feel bad about it, rather do not say it loudly and believe me they will value your efforts and respect you more!
And now, I have a small exercise to you, try to google “How to respect people”, you will get 17+ million pages, how do you feel about it? the only explanation is that we need to work more on developing the skill called “Respect”, I always believe that respect is the most important factor in any relationship and work is no exception!
Every morning I think of new ways to lead people, and the only thing I am always left with is respect
Empathize
Did you feel like you request your people to do “stuff” without ever considering the obstacles associated with that stuff? Do you try to force your people to do what you want in a my way or highway fashion? if answer is yes then you do not know how to empathize, empathy is all about putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and trying to think from his perspective, empathy can be practiced everywhere starting from home to the cafe where you may get coffee by an exhausted waitress, if you really try to empathize you will get outstanding results and you will never worry about misjudging people, to empathize you need to understand people and consider their backgrounds, next time you listen to one of your team members, try to understand him and feel his pain, furthermore try to clear his obstacles.
Develop
In 100 Ways To Know Your Project is FUBAR, I added one point that’s “You develop your team members skills by showing them how to make a facebook profile visible to friends of friends only and not to anonymous bad hackers”, as a leader you need to care about your people, money is not the silver bullet to get stellar performance, if you give a junk job to someone and pay him high salary, he will be happy for some time, but after a while he will get bored, today’s people are modern and always want to learn new and cutting edge stuff, many organizations and leaders ignore this fact, while companies do not care much about development of people during these recessionary times, yet you can develop your people without expending much, you even can ask a team member to learn something new and let him conduct on the job training to other team members, you need to show your people that you care about their development, while they can go on their own and study, if you ask them to do so, this would have another meaning to them, always try to give new assignment and add the challenge flavour to it.
Do you want to add something? What do you think about this approach? I always think that Respect leads to great results, it is sad that leadership has always been associated with positional power, while each and everyone, no matter how junior he is can practice leadership, Do you have other techniques you use yourself? PLEASE share your experience, Thank you!
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Kareem, while I think all of those are certainly vital, I also feel Trust is a key component. Along the same lines as respect, trust is a two-way street that you have to give, before you receive. Trust will generate an open communication channel and eliminate ambiguity of motives.
Great stuff, as usual!
Jason, I believe that respect is a pre-requisite to trust, Can you trust someone whom you don’t respect?
If you trust someone whom you don’t respect, and it’s likely that he will not respect you either, you may get unexpected actions from that person.
I agree with you Kareem especially on your points about respect. To get respect you need to give respect.
I am passionate about this topic as it is at the heart of the mindset required to be an effective project manager. Unfortunately PM training spends too much time focusing on what the Project Manager should do and not on what they must become to lead successful projects.
During my transition to be a Project Manager, the hardest thing for me to learn was to be respectful without being passive. This was especially critical around authority figures, such as my senior managers and executive sponsors, in conflict situations.
My only two default settings were to either to be too passive or overly aggressive.
We often mistake being respectful to being totally passive and submissive to the point where we are unable to tell truth to powers. I think the root cause of a lot of project issues can be traced to this lack of assertiveness on the part of the Project Manager. Whether we are dealing with uncommitted sponsors or out of control scope creep, having the capacity (and willingness) to be assertive and at the same time be respectful can make the difference between success and failure.
I learned to always be respectful but at the same time remember to interact with authority figure as equals to me. Our self confidence comes from being a respectful and respected person, valuing ourselves and valuing others, and believing that we are equal to others – not superior or inferior. It is about standing up for our own rights, opinions, and needs, but still taking into account those of other people.
When we are assertive and respectful, people tend to have a lot of respect for us in return as they know we are individuals who will not allow ourselves to be pushed around.
[...] Shaker wrote a very good blog post about RED Leadership, a term he coined for his 3 leadership pillars: Respect, Empathize, and [...]
Kimo, it has been so long since I have commented on your posts, I like your aricles as always, and I miss you man, it has been long since the last time we had a walk on that bridge
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I have one comment, that I’m thinking of writting an entry about it on my blog as my first participation in the PM world, which is “Ownership”, if you really make your team has this feeling, for sure, your never have a failing project.
I have faced this issue myself, it’s like self team’s motivating.
What do you think?
yours,
MAG
I believe that ownership cannot be reached unless the team has full understanding of the project, not only the scope of the project, but the project strategic importance and value added out of it, people do not like to work on trivial projects that add no value.
Ownership can be reached if people are actively engaged in decision making and only when they feel important, the project manager is responsible for that, so as is the project sponsor, ownership is a great factor that once reached the success is very much expected.
People can add great value only when they feel they are treated as valuable contributors!
Exactly, that what I have meant, the Team member must feel important and his participation in the decision making is one of those elements of “Ownership”, that’s why I’m saying in order to make the team members feels valued, let them participate in the decision making.
By the way, this also an added value to “Respect”, Members will respect you more and it will be like a self motivating factor as well.
“While working with senior management over the past years, one quality of leadership emerges as an absolute necessity for successful communication and organizational well-being: empathy. I define empathy as: a capacity to experience the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of other people while simultaneously differentiating one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This quality or capacity is something that many people naturally possess. However, under the stresses of running an organization, over long periods of time, necessity often trumps propriety. What is responsible for successful development of the organization – cooperative effort – is moved to the background and “efficiency” and controls in response to the “bottom line” push mutual regard into the shadows.
As this occurs, there is a decrease in human connection and communication resulting in the diminishment of empathy. Eventually, this allows a split to emerge and the fractured parts silo and begin to function independently of the whole. Individuals, departments and teams tend toward functioning in service of their independent objectives often antithetical to the well-being of other departments and the organization as a whole.
The devolution of an organization can be successfully corrected through cultivating empathy as a conscious antidote to organizational dysfunction.”-Tdukes
Timothy,
I can’t agree with you more.
I wrote recently on my blog a post titled “Compassion is the killer App” where I said
“To lead change effectively we need to develop the capacity to have compassion for those who are hostile to the change we are bringing about and even to those who attack us personally.
To be compassionate is not soft or touchy feely. It requires inner strength, courage, and self confidence. This is hard.
Having compassion will enable us to be mindful of the consequences of the change we are introducing. It will help us see things from the perspective of those who will potentially bear the losses. Acknowledging the sacrifices they are making will help them see us not as enemies but as allies. And understanding the pressures they are feeling will help us better assess the situation and design more effective ways to help ease the pain”
Thank you.