Business & Finance Online Expert

Posts Tagged ‘Fierce Leadership’

It’s my opinion that today’s “best” practices of leaders not only fail to resolve the problems they’re meant to resolve or achieve the results they’re meant to achieve, they actually escalate problems. I’d like to recommend alternative practices to take their place. After all, reality has shifted and those who cling to old practices that no longer serve them and perhaps never did, will fail to thrive. Seriously. Fail to thrive. Here, I will touch on the first “best” practice and hope to provoke your thinking, in subsequent entries, regarding all six.

Consider that you are always practicing something. The question is: what are you practicing. And why? Are you emulating practices of well-known, global companies, many of whom are now struggling and, in some cases, bankrupt? It’s time for some original thinking.

“Worst” Best Practice #1: 360 Anonymous Feedback

Which word in “360 Anonymous Feedback” alerts us that a company professing to value openness, honesty and transparency is out of integrity? Anonymous. I expect to take a lot of heat from those who make a living ensuring anonymity, but I believe that, while there is a time and place for anonymity, we only need it in trace amounts.

It starts early in our impressionable lives – this attraction to anonymity. This hiding. So it’s no wonder that, when there are invaluable opportunities for candor, we send in good old underpaid, overworked “anonymous”, slip the feedback over the transom and run like hell. The fact is that 360 anonymous feedback rarely creates real or lasting impetus for change, which is crazy because the whole idea is to encourage professional growth and it most certainly doesn’t connect us with one another; rather, it tends to drive us apart. Here are a few highlights, or lowlights:

*The culture suffers side effects. Commercials for the latest, greatest drugs include the warning that side effects can include loss of vision, muscle spasms, internal bleeding, uncontrolled barking and sudden death. OK, maybe not barking, but you get the drift. The warnings for anonymous feedback should read: “Not to be used within organizations that value honesty,transparency, or openness or by anyone who views “authenticity” as a desirable character trait. Side effects can include a culture of terminal niceness, avoiding or working around problem employees, tolerating mediocrity, beating around the bush, dancing around the subject, skirting the issues. If you experience rapidly deteriorating relationships or have difficulty maintaining eye contact with others, call your doctor immediately as these may indicate a serious problem and could become permanent.”

*Most people hate performance reviews – hardly the response you’d hope for regarding a best practice. Other emotions associated with performance reviews include: dread, anxiety, hopelessness, fear, frustration and a firm conviction that a trip to the bathroom for a surreptitious examination of the boil on your backside would be a far better use of your time.