Retooling and Refreshing to Set Yourself Apart

The following is an excerpt of a story I wrote for a new book called The Insider’s Guide to Supervising Government Employees, edited by Kathryn M. Johnson (Management Concepts Press 2011). The book is a collection of stories from many supervisors whose purpose is to help government supervisors (new and seasoned alike) navigate their responsibilities and challenges more successfully. It covers several key areas including understanding yourself, getting the best work from others, and supervising in a changing work landscape. In this particular story, I illustrate the importance of ongoing self-development to help supervisors continue to achieve success in their role. In my upcoming book, Employee Development on a Shoestring (ASTD Press, expected pub. date April 2012), I describe in much greater detail both the value and suggested approaches for many development methods that happen outside the classroom.

Chris’ excitement was through the roof when he learned that he had been promoted. Finally! He was now officially a supervisor of a newly formed team in his agency. Chris felt a quiet confidence in his ability to excel as he emailed his mentor, Soo-Lin, to share the good news with her. After they scheduled their next monthly “coffee talk” meeting, Chris sat at his desk making lists of ideas and action items.

A few weeks later, Soo-Lin relaxed into her chair as she congratulated Chris once again on his accomplishment and listened to his tales of his first month as a supervisor. Sipping her coffee, she listened to his stories of excitement and frustration from her perspective of having been in supervisory roles in the federal government for the past 20 years.

“What are you doing to ramp up your supervisory skills, Chris?” Soo-Lin inquired.
“What do you mean?” asked Chris.
“Well, you have a whole new skill set you need to acquire, and fast. You will certainly learn on the job, but what are you doing to proactively enhance your skills?”
“I’m not sure I have any ideas. What do you suggest?” said Chris, looking at Soo-Lin quizzically.

Over the next hour, Soo-Lin shared with Chris some of the resources that she found helpful, including books, seminars, and training classes. But it was the story she told him that really got Chris thinking about how to keep his skills and knowledge fresh now and into the next stages of his career development.

“You know, when I first got promoted, there were no supervisory training classes offered and no resources given to me to prepare me for my new role. I had to learn as I went, the hard way. Things went very well for the first couple of years and my hard work was rewarded and rewarding.

“But then, things began to shift. I was no longer getting the results I wanted from my staff. They seemed unmotivated and deflated, and I felt frustrated with my job. I applied the same techniques that had worked before, but they were just not working in the same way. I felt really stuck and unhappy. Word got around that there might be a reorganization in our department and I started to worry that I might lose my job.

“That’s when I began to realize that I had become stale; my skills and knowledge were not sufficient to produce the performance results I wanted to see. I felt baffled and lost, so I started reading every management book in the library, searching for answers. I also started looking for role models to talk with, both inside and outside my office and agency. I was amazed how happy these successful supervisors were to share their ‘best practices’ and ‘lessons learned’ with me, and it was great to learn from them about things I could do or avoid doing—and not have to learn them the hard way! One told me that he attends the monthly meetings of our field’s professional association to learn new techniques and connect and network with other professionals with whom he collaborates and shares ideas. So I started attending these meetings also—what an eye-opening experience!

“What I learned, slowly but surely, is that your skills and knowledge need to be constantly upgraded and challenged. You can never rest on your laurels just because you have reached a certain rung on the career ladder; you need to keep working or you’ll find yourself falling off—or getting pushed off. And there are so many different ways available to help you retool, refresh, and learn.”

This is an exciting time to be a supervisor. You have the opportunity to influence others in a changing landscape. You will be challenged to handle day-to-day issues effectively in the context of an ever-evolving work environment. The best way to create a balance that serves both your employees and your organization well is to keep strengthening your personal capabilities as a supervisor. Only then will you be ready and able to help others envision and prepare to meet the demands of the 21st century government work environment.

More to Think About and Try

• What are some books, training, and other resources you could access to upgrade your supervisory skills? Are there resources that would help you on an ongoing, continuous basis?

• Who are some key people who could help you learn and develop your supervisory skills? Are there any groups you could join or people in your current network you could tap to become your mentors or “master-mind” group?

• Can you branch out and increase your network to include role models and kindred spirits?

• Can you find opportunities to bring supervisors together? Who can—and is willing to—share their lessons learned?

Excerpted with permission from The Insider’s Guide to Supervising Government Employees, edited by Kathryn M. Johnson. © 2011 by Management Concepts, Inc. All rights reserved.

Halelly Azulay is president of TalentGrow, a consulting company focused on developing leaders and teams to improve the human side of work through training, teambuilding, and coaching. She is the author of the upcoming book, Employee Development on a Shoestring, to be published in April 2012.

A solution to "not enough time"

Rachael Happe, groundbreaking co-founder of The Community Roundtable, has just written an incredibly important post entitled, Communities - The New Strategic Imperative.   I urge you to read and consider it.

Some managers and executives I know have expressed what I'll characterize as desperation at the speed at which things are running, and the fact that an end to the acceleration is nowhere in sight.  A few are trying to understand this problem and devise solutions.  Others seem to hover near the point of exhaustion.  Meanwhile, brain research studies on multi-tasking's lack of efficacy have begun appearing.  None of this bodes well for high quality decision-making.  

The leadership development experts have begun socializing the "new" competencies that governing in an increasingly complex 21st century will require - but is the task just skills acquisition, or are people in the most technologically advanced cultures approaching some sort of inner limit?  Happe's post puts a much needed and very credible context around this issue of "not enough time."  I think her vision is attractive because it focuses on quality, is sustainable, and in the long run will deliver more value.  What do you think?

Civil Protection 2.0 - More from Elena Rapisardi in Tuscany

Some of you will remember an earlier blog post about the webconference that Elena Rapisardi and I convened, in January, 2010, between Virginia, New Orleans, Boston, Italy (University of Ferrara campus) and in Dublin, with the generous assistance of Management Concepts staff.  Elena continues her groundbreaking efforts to harness social media for emergency preparedness and emergency response purposes in Italy.  The technical aspect of those efforts is the simplest one; as we all know, introducing a constructive vision for the future that can change mindsets and motivate different behavior is much harder and requires leadership.  Elena is doing both.  A quick video that gives us a peek at the latest project is available at http://www.vimeo.com/21875547.  Take a look.

Social Learning for Leaders

We know that a critical component of effective leadership is a commitment to developing talent and helping people reach their full potential.  This most often takes the form of formal training opportunities, like workshops or seminars. But we know that most workplace learning occurs not in a classroom. Where and how does one learn – really learn—to be good at one’s job? Through daily interactions with others. Through coaching and feedback from supervisors, or mentoring from others. And yes, through trial and error.  While formal training can lower that error rate, and can provide theoretical foundations of how to lead, it is what happens in those spaces between formal training events that supports or hinders the developing leader’s growth and ultimate success. And as often as not, this real learning is also social. At the water cooler, yes, but also in casual conversations, in meetings, in discussions of what-happened-and-how-I-solved-it, in “Hey Joe!” interactions- as in, “Hey Joe! What do I do if the check is going to be cut after the deadline?”


New social tools and technologies give us more access to those spaces and those social interactions, to support learning as it is happening. Through social tools, from popular public products like Facebook and Twitter to internal products like Yammer and wikis – most also accessible from smartphones -- leaders can access information and expertise when and where they need it. A Facebook group for employees in similar jobs, a site offering social profiles of expertise within a work area or across an organization or professional field, a private group for new hires, overseen by a mentor, or a collaborative wiki documenting FAQs or best practices are only some strategies for supporting social learning. Talent can interact and engage with other talent wherever it resides.


If you’re doubtful, take some time over the next few days to do a quick scan. How much time do leaders in your organization spend looking for something, or someone? How much time do you spend looking for something or someone? What is the cost of not using social media more effectively?
 


Jane Bozarth, cutting-edge author of Social Media for Trainers, has written or contributed to several other books that contribute significantly to the talent management and leadership development conversations.  Jane's day job is eLearning Coordinator, North Carolina Office of State Personnel.  Connect with her at: http://www.bozarthzone.com/, http://www.facebook.com/Bozarthzone, and @janebozarth on Twitter.

Resources That Promote Leadership Systems Thinking

• The Leadership Dilemma in a Democratic Society: Re-energizing the Practice of Leadership for the Public Good (think about the systems maps and read more at the Public Sector Consortium's site)

• Tim Bonnemann's blog post about the New York Times Budget Puzzle

•  And see related posts on the Experiments in Civic Sensemaking blog

Question for Government Leaders at All Levels

Do you measure your leadership ability by the size of the burden you carry? Or by the amount of responsibility you create in others?  Check out this little video. 

To stimulate adoption, just say no.

About mid way into the pilot phase of the open collaborative workplace project, we added Karl to the team.  This is the story of his adoption of a wiki approach to preparing a large document. Karl had joined the Canadian Public Service 6 years earlier, after surviving most of the Nortel Networks meltdown. He had a background in large-scale learning, IT development and management and he knew this web 2.0 stuff was probably a good thing, he just did not know exactly how it should be used. This is the story of his initiation to a wiki, specifically the MediWiki install known as GCPEDIA. It is a story you may be able to repeat.

One of Karl's first tasks was to prepare a formal project charter that would begin the process of taking us from pilot to enterprise solution. As you can imagine preparing a project charter in a government central agency is a significant task. There was a prescribed outline to follow, four primary authors and an executive  level steering committee of 20 or so to be consulted. In addition to the immediate circle there were perhaps 100 or so interested parties.

After obtaining the requisite word processing template from the project management office, Karl came to me to discuss the approach for developing the charter. We had a tight deadline and I told Karl that we should use the wiki to create the document.

Two days later Karl showed up with a draft. As a word processing document. He was in a hurry he said and did not have time to learn how to use a new tool. He would put it on the wiki later he said.  I was keen to see the document, but refused to look at it, telling him to "do it on the wiki".  Apparently he did not believe me because a day later he was back with another word processed document, this time printed!  I rejected it outright. He left in a bit of a huff, probably thinking I was being unreasonable.

After a few minutes of instruction he was working away in the new tool. Some copy and paste and a little formatting and he had a rough wiki version. Commenting that maybe that was not so bad he sent a link to the small group of original authors.

Over the next few days we all contributed to the document and Karl began to smile as the benefits of writing on the wiki became obvious. No  emails with attachments.  No confusion over what version was the most recent.  A consolidated revision history and immediate notification of changes. We worked on it when we could, in the early morning or late at night, from the office or from home, I even made an edit from my BlackBerry.

In a few days we had created a version that we were happy with as a first draft and invited the larger group of executives to take part. A couple of them did, and we also had comments from interested bystanders.  By the time we got to the committee meeting everyone had had their opportunity to contribute and the document was quickly approved.

Lessons:

Most people will naturally resist change, even when they know it good for them. If there is a familiar alternative they will use it, particularly when they are under pressure. By removing the familiar, users have no choice but to try the new way.

If it is possible to make your collaboration space the only way to do something important, make it so. It will force that critical first step.

What do you think, is this something you can use?

Do you have any adoption stories you would like to share?

Thom Kearney is a partner in Rowanwood Consulting and can be found online at strategyguy.com. This post refers to a time when Thom was a Senior Director with the Canadian Federal Government leading the introduction of the Government of Canada internal collaboration space known as GCPEDIA.