L’idée de «routine» développée dans un article de la revue HBR à l’automne 2015 ( voir ci-après) correspond à notre idée de geste (du leader, ou du manager). Elle peut servir de levier pour faire vivre, pour revivifier, pour transmettre, pour faire évoluer un modèle managérial (ses valeurs, au service d’un modèle économique singulier, et de sa stratégie / vision, …).
- Leadership development is more about application than theory
- Organizations are jungle gyms of learning opportunities,
- the key is to build the approaches and appetite that make people want to “play.”
https://hbr.org/2015/11/what-separates-high-performing-leaders-from-average-ones
For decades, the answer to those questions has been “competencies,” a psychometric-based method of assessing and developing leader behavior. Organizations figure out the competencies that leaders need to be successful, help them develop those competencies, and then measure those competencies in the organization.
Competencies represent a multibillion-dollarindustry, where armies of management consultants enter with their competency libraries to help define the “right” collection of behaviors and attributes required for leaders to be successful. The problem is that this logic is inconsistent with how work actually gets done.
A leader who possesses the “right” competencies has no assurance of success; Leadership is messy, it is relational, and it happens in millions of interactions every day around real work. (le leadership est dans le 20 !)I’ve seen dozens of leaders who were competency tested to extremes, matched to roles, and failed.
Our best leaders were defined by the execution of a collection of very discrete day-to-day routines, such as how they planned for meetings. We made leadership development discussions about application, not abstraction. Leaders want to get better in the here-and-now, not to be judged against a competency map or be sold an abstract theory about what leadership should look like.If you want to become a great leader, become a student of your context, and mind your routines. As we pursued our work at BHP Billiton,six routines(for example, how leaders spent their time in the field, in one-on-one meetings, and in cross team meetings) were identified which, when executed well, appeared to differentiate the highest-performing supervisors from average performing ones.
Self-Assess: What are your routines?Assess where you’re at: Chronicle your own routines. Where do you spend your time, what do you focus on? These habits define your effectiveness as a leader. The routines of good leaders tend to be social events, undergirded by personal habit.
Closely scrutinize your routines in your one-on-one meetings, your team meetings, and your meetings with clients. These routines will reveal opportunities for you to get better. The personal habits that inform these routines are equally important: What is planned and what is emergent? When do you collaborate, and when do you execute? How do you listen, and to whom? Honestly assessing your routines and habits as a leader is the critical starting point to improvement.
Study high-performers.
Talk to high performing peers, or better yet, shadow them. What are their routines? If you can, ask them what their most important routines are — most people know their routines, but assume that these routines are implicit. People want to talk about their routines. At BHP Billiton, as soon as the concept of routines was laid out as the differentiator in performance to our line leaders, operational leaders could not stop talking about their best routines and where they struggled; they shared ideas about what makes a great routine; and they grasped the concept that leadership is an applied craft immediately.
There is real power in focusing on differentiation on-the-ground.
Create a conversation about routines.Leadership is a contact sport. Begin a conversation with your peers, your boss, and your team about the routines that will really raise performance. Shift the conversation about leadership to application and improvement, and away from discussions about scoring well on a 360-assessment or an employee survey once a year. At BHP Billiton, routines enabled a shift away from the judgement associated with competency assessments to a focus on improvement. This helped leaders own, in a very personal way, the mantra of “getting better every day.” By focusing on local conversations about what a great routine looks like, development can really start to happen, on the ground, every day.
Tolerate imperfection and get feedback, regularly.A focus on competencies leads us to believe that there is a secret formula for great leadership. There isn’t. Routines reveal that there are patterns to how leadership shows up to make a difference. Back away from the idea that there is one way to be great, and focus on building effectiveness in the applied ways that make a difference in your context. Pick one or two routines, and get focused feedback from people on those routines, weekly.
Commentaires GDBO :
L’idée de «routine» développée dans cet article est concrète et efficace, autant que notre idée de gestes (du leader, ou du manager).
- Une «routine», tout comme un «geste managérial», est une pratique très concrètement «performative» (= qui produit des effets performants, pas un rôle, ni une fonction, encore moins une classification de qualités, caractéristiques, aptitudes, …),
- Que l’on peut appréhender comme de l’expérience, (intègre de notions de qualité du geste, de posture de vie, d’élan, de talents, d’audace, accumulation de réalisations –temps concentré, résultat d’un apprentissage, c’est un vécu (corps-cerveau), qui n’est pas de la recherche de perfection, mais l’expression d’un style, d’un projet de vie professionnelle, …)
- Qui se réalise dans des contextes singuliers, (pas génériques), propres à l’organisation où elle opère (contribue à son modèle économique, intègre les valeurs, les patrimoines d’expérience et de métiers, …),
- Qui s’inscrit dans un jeu de relations entre les parties prenantes (relations qui font système), ou les personnes peuvent trouver plaisir à participer, à jouer,
- Qui s’énonce dans le langage courant, celui de l’action des personnes dans l’organisation, (langage courant, langage de l’action courante, qui stimule l’envie de parler de la chose, d’échanger, d’enrichir, de jouer, de grandir, pas langage de catégorisation, de standardisation, dressage et domestication, ou autres langages théorisants).
Illustration de quelques gestes managériaux possibles: (à préciser selon les contextes des organisations)(Visites terrain, réunions de face à face (citée dans l’article), responsabilisation d’un collaborateur, compréhension du métier et du travail bien fait, intégration d’un collaborateur, exercice de l’autorité (selon de modèle de la confiance), donner le sens,…).