How forming the right informal relationships impact a leader’s influence

In literature, film and television the hero might be credited with the victory, but often their decisions are coloured by an influencer in the background. In business, being an influential leader is not confined to those with a seat in the boardroom. Leaders outside senior management are in a prime position to influence change, innovation and decision-making – if they form the right informal relationships.

Within formal, structured hierarchies, each player must know their role and stick to it. Think teams or project groups – sticking to the structure is vital in these scenarios.

However, not all decisions are made within meetings and inside structured groups. Managers can also have their ideas heard and considered by building informal relationships.

Based on a study, casual coalitions may come about through chats at coffee shops, the office hallways or even while exercising together. These informal conversations can then help managers build a friendly relationship with senior leaders and other colleagues. That, in turn, allows managers to – in the best case, inform key decisions and at worst, provide senior leaders with an idea of how the organisation thinks and feels.

The aim is to develop more candid conversations and open up new lines of communication between key decision-makers and the rest of the business, not creating a channel for lobbying personal interests.

Informal relationships do more than just afford managers the ear of senior leaders. These coalitions can influence other key activities:

 

Informal relationships influence innovation

Research on innovation describes it as a social process since it is not limited to the conjuring up of ideas but also involves acceptance and implementation. This means that the innovator and the individual responsible for delivering it must agree.

Whether the innovative idea is implemented may therefore rely on the strength of the informal relationship of the parties involved. The better each other know and trust each other, the higher the likelihood of a successful outcome.

 

Informal relationships influence change

One of the most difficult situations to manage is change. People are wired to resist it yet it’s a recurring feature in the modern workplace. However, a study found that having a strong informal network can affect successful change management.

It concluded that those with strong informal networks became clear change agents regardless of their position in the organisation. The study also found that people who built their informal networks acted as a bridge between socially disconnected colleagues resulting in improved buy-in when change is rolled out.

Make more time for quick chats and start building healthy casual relationships with your leaders and colleagues. You never know how your influence can impact the rest of the business.

Sources (these articles are available to IML ANZ members via Leadership Direct):

The merits of peer learning for leaders

Leadership is a transformative process – once you’ve become a people manager your thinking around leadership changes. As you progress every day, many factors influence how you learn, and suddenly that is no longer an activity reserved only for the classroom. Not surprisingly, the best way to learn could be through your peers.

 

The way we learn is changing

A recent study reveals that 70% of workers learn from their peers and only 21% rely on what their L&D or HR departments offer as learning options.

Because leaders bring with them a unique set of skills, knowledge and experiences, the advantages of learning from peers are further magnified when applied to this group. According to organisational development expert and facilitator of IML ANZ’s Intentional Leadership Foundations program, Kerry Irwin, sharing these aspects amongst peers enriches the learning experience.

Irwin explains, “The theory and practice delivered in a peer learning program is brought to life by the participants’ past experiences. It embeds the learnings. So whilst the theory may fade in the mind of participants, the examples shared by others in the room means the learnings are brought further to life and they stick.”

 

Diversity of thought is better

Several perspectives are also better than one. Irwin strongly believes that leaders benefit from the wide experience and views brought into the room by a cohort of peers.

“A teacher-led or trainer-led approach limits the participants to only one view. Either that of the trainer or the organisation who designed the program.”

Irwin adds that effective peer learning does not require a trainer or a teacher. “You need a facilitator who understands and encourages the flow of discussion, which brings about fruitful learning,” she said.

 

Not a silver bullet

Of course, peer learning should be just one element of the way leaders learn. Irwin points out that coaching is best conducted one-on-one and when it comes to technical learning, courses that are focused on the individual’s skills gap, and therefore the need, is best.

Adult learning delivery should vary according to the individual’s personal learning preference, and this is a key consideration as to whether peer learning is the right choice. “Some may learn better as an individual, for example online, if group work makes them anxious therefore hurting their learning experience”.

 

Learning from and with like-minded individuals has its merits when contrasted to the typical classroom-based, teacher- or trainer-led approach. Mainly when peer learning is an element of a leadership development program, participants have strong shared motivation: learning to be better leaders. Irwin also states the importance of being open to others’ views and experience. She concludes, “If they approach the session with a curious mindset – even better!”

Why do organisations need learning leaders?

Have you ever noticed that the difference between the words ‘leader’ and ‘learner’ are merely two letters? Perhaps it’s because the best leaders are ones who constantly seek to learn and encourage the same of others. We unpack why the learning leader is the best type in today’s modern business world.

Organisations know that good leaders never stop seeking development. According to IML ANZ’s latest research on employer and graduate expectations around leadership skills development, 72% of employers believe they need leadership skills development in their organisation.

In addition, the 2019 National Salary Survey found that one of the top human capital challenges for organisations is the need to develop effective leaders (44%). Interestingly, survey respondents (52%) also rated this as a crucial value-add to organisations if managed correctly.

Clearly, organisations will then seek leaders who share their view on the importance of leadership development. For the individual, that starts with their attitude towards the importance of learning.

Another benefit of having a leader who continually seeks to learn is that they will encourage those around them to do the same.

If you’d like to become a learning leader, here are some simple tips:

 

View learning as an unending process

Progress in technology, education and society mean that what we knew a few years ago may already be outdated. The time between when we acquire knowledge and their ‘use-by date’ is shrinking.

Leaders therefore, must look at every opportunity to learn and to update their expertise. When you’re the person in charge of organisational changes, the strategy, business growth and employee engagement, you cannot afford to get left behind.

 

Stop thinking that learning equals courses

As humans, we like to evaluate ourselves based on measurable, tangible and finite outcomes. Part of the appeal of attending a class is that participants normally come away with a piece of paper that tells them they’ve ‘learned’ about a particular topic, skill or capability.

Learning can come from a variety of contexts. Leaders can gain new knowledge from trialling a new process for instance. Shift the focus from the ‘outcome’ to the ‘journey’ and the lessons won’t be confined to just whether the process resulted in a win or loss.

 

Learn from your people

In the relentless cadence of managing and leading the business, it can be easy for leaders to focus only on their individual learnings. However, reflection is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that you are a learning leader.

Involve your people when reflecting on outcomes, processes and areas of improvement for the team and the business. Each person has a unique way of viewing things and no two people will ever come up with exactly the same idea – no matter how similar they think and behave. By taking in the perspectives of others, you’ll open yourself up to experiences and ideas that would have simply been impossible for you to learn about.

Why you need to re-engage demotivated employees

There’s no denying that motivation drives performance. So when employees lose their drive to succeed how can managers help them? More importantly, should managers try to salvage motivation?

Motivation is the force that leads to success. In fact without the willingness, persistence and mental effort that result from high-motivation, 60% of team projects fail. High-performance cannot be achieved without motivation.

Employees, however, lose this drive for various reasons. They may no longer feel positively challenged in their role or perhaps they are dealing with a difficult situation. They could also be feeling that they are not rewarded fairly for their work.

It’s therefore prudent for leaders to be supportive when good employees lose their motivation. You don’t want them to be demotivated to the point of leaving. IML ANZ’s National Salary Survey found that on average, it costs A$23,410 to replace staff who leave. Not to mention the invaluable cost of losing the knowledge and understanding those employees have of your organisation and customers.

What can managers do to re-engage demotivated employees? Here are some ways:

 

Reward for extrinsic motivation

This includes external or tangible rewards such as salary, benefits, the conditions of work and even the physical work environment.

Managers must be cautious not to assume that extrinsic motivation is the quick fix. There could be a number of factors that influence de-motivation. Instead, use extrinsic motivation as just one of the ways to re-engage your employee.

 

Support their intrinsic motivations

Here is an area where leadership skills can truly make an impact – boosting an employee’s intrinsic motivation. Unlike extrinsic motivation, this takes time, effort and commitment to build within employees.

An intrinsically motivated worker is one who feels confident in their capability, enjoys a healthy sense of challenge in their work feels appreciated by workmates and displays care and consideration for those around them.

There is also no silver bullet for boosting intrinsic motivation. Much will depend on ensuring that you value the achievements of employees in a fair and visible way. It also helps to work on communications skills so that you can be a source of reassurance for employees who may be waning in their motivation.

Middle managers: The key layer for influencing performance

You might have heard that between senior management and front-line employees there’s an idiomatic ‘30,000 ft drop’ – a gaping chasm of information, insight and inspiration lost between the two layers. However, middle managers exist within that space and are therefore in a key position to bridge the gap and influence performance.

It seems like a challenging place to be and research confirms that to be true. According to a study conducted among CMI members, 80% of middle managers recognise that they are important in building trust within the workplace but only 31% feel that those around them share that view.

 

Trust impacts performance

That’s a difficult fact to ignore considering trust influences performance. One study found that managerial activities can effectively improve performance, in particular, those of teams. To promote high team performance, managers, especially those directly in charge of teams, need to actively engage in fostering trust. This includes monitoring the level of trust in teams, managing team members’ perceptions of threat and initiating trust-building activities. All of which fall within the responsibility of middle managers.

 

Middle managers hold the key to unlocking trust

Research also identifies that the role middle managers take in strategic decision making put them in a key position to influence the rest of the organisation. These roles include:

  • Synthesising information. They have a unique view of the organisation that allows them to interpret and evaluate information in a way that senior management can’t.
  • Championing alternatives. This unique perspective means they are able to see alternative options and present these to upper management.
  • Facilitating adaptability. Being ‘on the ground’ and seeing first hand the challenges and obstacles that staff experience, middle managers are best placed to foster flexible organisational arrangements when it comes to executing the strategy.
  • Implementing strategy with intent. Middle managers are also best-placed to handle interventions that align organisational activities with the overall strategic intention.

 

Support middle managers to improve employee performance

What can organisations, senior leaders and managers themselves do to optimise the strategic role of middle managers?

  • Organisations can invest in developing middle managers in their leadership skills
  • Senior leaders can support middle managers through active involvement, coaching or mentoring. Keep them informed and display trust towards this layer of management.
  • Middle managers can proactively seek out ways to improve their influencing (upwards, downwards and laterally), communications and decision-making skills.

Sources (articles available to IML ANZ members via Leadership Direct):

Optimising performance while adapting to change

Change is the only constant in today’s business environment. Beyond companies merging and being acquired, there are system changes, team restructures and everything in between. As handling the flux while still delivering on business outcomes can often be too much to ask, what can leaders do to ensure employees can do both?

Even a team whose morale is high will have their performance suffer if they feel they need to juggle too much. Your high-morale team might find that managing change and delivering results pushes them to their limit.

Therefore, resilient employees – those who are flexible, adaptive and can optimistically learn from experiences – are a positive influence during times of change. Similarly, businesses also need resilient teams to thrive and survive. They are living testimony that change need not be a bad thing.

But as with any turbulence, you need deliberate tactics to navigate successfully. Here are some ways leaders can encourage top-performance amid change:

 

Strong leadership

Good leaders earn respect. Be trustworthy and give clear direction. Your teams will look to you for stability during uncertainty.

It’s also a good idea to be visible. Spend time with your team and hear them out. It doesn’t need to be a formal appointment. In fact, your employees might feel more comfortable to open up in an informal setting.

 

Provide perspective

It’s important to walk your people through the change. If you’ve ever been on a long drive to a new destination, you normally look for landmarks. These give you a sense that you are headed in the right direction.

Provide your teams with clear landmarks so they can mark progress and feel a sense of achievement. There may need to be detours but talk them through those as well. It will increase their sense of security that they are not on the change journey alone. And don’t forget to celebrate when key milestones are reached.

 

Develop soft skills

Inevitably people experiencing change will need to develop new skills to adapt. Instead of focusing on developing technical skills, look at enhancing your employees’ ‘soft skills’. That way you’ll help them improve how they make decisions, solve problems and deal with difficult situations.

How analytics tools help boost team and business performance

There is no shortage of data. The way we harvest information is also many and varied. But for leaders who are faced with the daily challenge of making informed decisions, collecting data is no longer enough. What makes it valuable are the insights it provides.

One way to use data to your advantage is when you need to address performance weaknesses – whether that’s within the team or your entire organisation.

Before you dive into the millions of bytes of information available to you, consider the following limitations:

  • Effective data analysis requires specialised skills and training. That’s why the role of data scientist is of high demand in today’s workplace.
  • While leaders might be highly skilled in business analytics, to boost team and organizational performance, talent analytics mustn’t be overlooked.

So this is where effective analytics tools can help turn mere data into powerful knowledge.

To benefit from a robust analysis of data, ask yourself the following:

 

What are you doing with the data available to you?

To be clear, launching into a fact-finding mission to improve business results doesn’t always mean putting in place new methods to collect data. What you have at hand is often sufficient. For example, data analytics company Humanyze uses RFID badges (that employees use to enter work premises) and digital data (such as email, meeting and phone call information) to analyse how people work.

 

What performance challenges are you trying to solve?

The challenge to solve will dictate the type of information you need to analyse. It’s therefore a vital step to clearly identify that challenge. Are you looking to improve team performance? Are you looking to find areas of competitive advantage? Do your managers need to raise their emotional intelligence? All of these will inform where you go to source the data that then needs analysis.

 

What analytics tools can you use to make decisions?

Once you’ve identified an objective it’s time to look at the most effective analytics model. Of course, this requires more than a simple round-up of huge data sets. A myriad of statistics that reveal submerged patterns is of little benefit if managers can’t effectively use the correlations to enhance business performance.

Creating custom analysis models can be one way to make sense of data. Another way is to use established analytics models targeted at determining how to improve specific areas of performance.

How are you gaining insights and boosting results from your data?

Remuneration’s role in fostering diversity and inclusion

Remuneration is a fundamental element of the employment transaction. While employers devise many ways to use their remuneration offers to attract top talent, is it possible to also attract and support inclusion and diversity?

It’s prudent to assess the current state of your remuneration offers. To help, ask yourself these three questions:

 

Do certain employees fall through the pay gaps?

Before you can determine where you are at in terms of pay inequity, it’s a good idea to gauge the overall environment. Insightful reports such as IML ANZ’s National Salary Survey and supplementary reports can assist in this matter.

Then, analyse the situation within your organisation. Do certain people or groups suffer from a significant gap in pay? Make a candid assessment as to whether this is due to factors such as age or gender. Are all employees truly being compensated based on their ability to perform tasks?

 

How strong is job equity in your organisation?

Are some employees being overlooked for particular roles due to age, gender or cultural background? Companies should consider evaluating gender and minority representation across various jobs and levels within the organisation. If too many of the same people are occupying similar roles or sit within the same areas of the leadership hierarchy, there may be a need to update talent development plans accordingly.

Encouraging leaders to sponsor or coach the next generation of leaders is another way to promote job equity. Is there an opportunity to train-up a team member who is a potential leader but is otherwise held back due to age, gender or culture?

 

Do you view remuneration holistically?

Remuneration goes beyond just pay. It also includes all the benefits employees can expect to receive. The concept of total rewards looks at other benefits such as development, rewards and opportunities for promotion. How readily available are these to your entire workforce?

Finally, to directly influence diversity and inclusion, organisations could introduce rewards that relate to promoting D&I in the workplace.

 

With careful planning, candid assessments and strategic actions, your organisation can enjoy a heterogeneous and fair workplace to the benefit of all.

The link between diversity and organisational resilience

In this ever-changing modern business environment, organisations need to build up their capacity to cope with unexpected events. The key to effectively handling turbulence may rest on your level of organisational diversity.

Latest research reasons that diversity can lead to the development and improvement of specific capabilities that contribute to organisational resilience. That is – anticipation, or the preventative aspects of resilience; coping, or the implementation of solutions and reactions to change; and adaptation, or the development of new capabilities following unexpected events.

In addition, the Australian Government named respect as one of the key factors in improving organisational resilience. One of the most powerful ways to demonstrate respect in the workplace is inclusion – meaning background, beliefs, age or gender are not seen as a reason for exclusion.

So, how can diversity strengthen an organisation’s resilience? Here are three ways:

 

Diversity assists in observing, identifying and preparing for major change

Our differences, when harnessed collectively, can greatly enrich our capability to detect and prepare for changes. Having a group with diverse experiences in work and life results in an increased ability to perceive changes in the environment and to identify necessary adjustments. Further, the greater the variety of ideas explored, the better prepared an organisation will be for the consequences of change and the less likely they are to be caught off guard.

 

Diversity improves an organisation’s problem solving

As change and turbulence are complex these cannot usually be solved with existing approaches. Creating solutions demands broad knowledge, the interaction of different people, and creativity in coming up with a way to tackle the challenges. Again, the more diverse the ideas are, the better equipped an organisation will be at arriving at the right solution.

 

Diversity enriches team learning

Having diverse perspectives when reflecting upon the aftermath of change pushes organisations away from simple conclusions. It encourages deeper discussions about what actions to take and challenges any common thinking that may exist. Thus, a heterogeneous knowledge base can reduce the tendency to simply skim the surface. Rather, it promotes using logic instead of blame when analysing why things went wrong.

Source: Duchek, S., Raetze, S. & Scheuch, I. Business Research (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40685-019-0084-8

Can AI eliminate unconscious bias in recruitment?

Most of us appreciate how artificial intelligence can simplify tasks. It’s a satisfying feeling when your phone suggests a great restaurant while you’re travelling in a foreign city. Meals are of course one thing, but when it comes to crucial choices, such as unbiased recruiting, can AI be just as reliable?

A key issue for employers when they recruit is assessing if a person can carry out the requirements of the job. They must clearly outline the essential duties of all positions when hiring, being careful to not to confuse ‘abilities’ with ‘characteristics’.

To be unbiased means employers select the best person for the job. They make no assumptions about what people can and can’t do, or if they will ‘fit in’ as a result of their background.

During the early stages of recruitment, it can be easy for biases to creep into the process. For instance:

  • Advertising jobs – the Australian Human Rights Commission calls out commonly used phrases such as ‘join a dynamic team’ or ‘seeking a mature, experienced professional’ as possibly discriminatory against certain age groups.
  • Shortlisting candidates – forming an opinion about the candidate’s suitability based on their name or geographic location and what that might tell you about their cultural or racial background.

Could this be where an unbiased selector, such as AI, step in to eliminate any inherent prejudices?

 

Where AI has an advantage

Speed and accuracy. An area where machines outperform humans is around processing and analysing vast amounts of data. AI-enabled software and machines can carry out processes in a more advanced way. Although they mimic human behaviour when inputting and consuming information from multiple sources; they can gather, process and record data in more efficient way and in larger volumes. This means a larger candidate pool could be considered for roles, allowing for better diversity amongst the shortlist.

Perspective shift. Unlike humans who can at times respond based on gut feeling, AI always responds based upon evidence. In addition, AI’s ability to find patterns within data mean they could disrupt common thinking. In a similar way to how Deep Blue defeated Kasparov by making moves that his opponent didn’t anticipate, so can AI-enabled systems explore alternative avenues when selecting candidates.

 

Where AI falls short

In theory that may all sound convincing, putting AI to work however is a lot more complex. For instance, when Amazon created an AI-based recruiting system they failed to shield the system from bias. By teaching the system to rate male candidates as the ideal fit, not explicitly but by deducing through previous criteria that put female candidates at a disadvantage.

Ultimately, humans build the parameters that define AI’s decision-making. If bias creeps in then the system’s integrity is inevitably compromised.

 

Use AI to support a bias-proof recruitment process

For now it appears the best approach is not to view AI as superceding all human participation in recruiting. Rather it is best used as a support mechanism for unbiased recruitment.

Use the technology to hone in on specific processes that require objectivity. Software that check the language you use, such as Textio, can help edit out words or phrases that could limit the type of people who would respond to job ads. In addition, there are also existing systems that assist by removing information, such as names and geographical information, that may trigger bias.

Until completely bias-proofed technology exists, the onus still rests upon managers to use all possible options to ensure unbiased recruitment.