EXAMPLE OF A LEARNING HISTORY: LEADERS FIND NEW ROLES

These leaders acknowledge their leadership abilities and responsibilities, yet recognize that because the way decisions have to be made is changing, they have to modify their power behaviors with subordinates. Deep shifts in their own attitudes are the starting point.

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Contains learning historians’ summary and analysis of what workers said in

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What stakeholders have to say about the event; contains information about their reactions and response

Learning to share decision-making with subordinates is one of the most difficult changes for leaders to make.

Operations Manager 3: I know personally just how traumatic it has been for me to make the necessary changes, to take off my old management hat. They literally threw me out of the first meetings of the operation-level teams. I said that I was sitting in on the meetings to help the new teams, but they finally just told me, “We don’t want you in here; you’re not helping us.”

Provided by Ann Thomas.

I knew it, but it was hard to let go because I had the information and the answers for them. To let them develop that themselves was very hard.

Senior Manager 2: As leaders, we were accustomed to making decisions. We had some very, very painful moments while we learned how to act like team members and learned how not to make decisions for others. I was probably the worst of the bunch. In the beginning people would say,“She’s never going to be able to do this.” I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it either

There were these 200 people around and they wanted instant answers. Somebody would ask me a question in the hall and I knew immediately what I thought they should do, which was what I would have said to them six months ago. Now though, I had to say to them, “Let me get with the leadership team and I’ll get back to you.”

Operations Manager 3: We put a cross-level, operations/human resources team together to implement the change. As the management level representatives, we explained that we considered everyone else on the team as peers. It was culture shock for the hourly people, though; they were very uncomfortable with managers as peers.

A key event happened after several months of meetings. The management level team members, including myself, had gone off and hammered out a vision for the team effort. When we brought it into the team meeting, one of the hourly guys finally said: “If you really want us on this team, I’ll tell you what I think: What you’ve written is BS. No one is going to believe it … it’s just management rhetoric.”

We managers looked at each other and realized that we had taken over. That was a breaking point. After that, we rewrote the vision as a whole team and went forward from there.

Sharing information across levels is another behavior change that is important in moving change forward.

Operations Manager 3: Managers, including myself, don’t always realize that the only difference between ourselves and our employees is the amount of information we control. It’s not a difference in intelligence. Given the same information, the teams are going to make the same decisions as would the manager. Teams may take a little longer because their base is not as experienced, but they do make the same decision. The resistance is in the manager letting go, giving them the information, and waiting for the decision.

In our teams that are really working, the manager has let go and the coaches are really coaching.

Positive encouragement helps people find new meaning and satisfaction in the work they do.

Senior Manager 1: It’s me providing a vision and getting buy-in from those people, but it isn’t just me doing it—I always say I don’t do much of anything; I stimulate others.

The personal credibility of the leader assumes more importance during transformation.

Any meaningful change in an organization requires a vision and expectations, and when things get sketchy, requires us to be persistent with those expectations. I just keep talking about them. It’s great to watch people change their behavior patterns and recognize their abilities—abilities they didn’t know they had. For instance, I saw people who probably had never seen the inside of a math class stand up in front of a group and talk about statistics.

Operations Manager 2: When you lead people, you do it through personal credibility. You know you’re not doing all the work, but you’re a critical enough piece of the machine that if you fall out, the whole thing comes to an end. You have to have this unwavering focus and discipline, and you really have to believe in what you’re doing.