INTEGRAL ORGANIZATION CONSULTING, LLC
Peter D. Freeman, Ed.D., MBA, LICSW
The 4-Cs of effective leadership action
Communicate, Coordinate, Collaborate, and Calibrate.
Communicate:
Do you, one of your leaders, or your team as a whole have difficulties communicating? The issue might be personality differences, emotional intelligence gaps, festering resentments, conflicting cultural expectations, or differing professional objectives and worldviews.
You can, at times, be close enough to a problem, or in the middle of it yourself, that the forest and the trees blur. You and the team need the channels to be open in order to be effective.
I can research the problems for you using interviews and other methods and make recommendations for and deliver skill development, training, coaching, mediation or multi-perspective facilitation.
Improved communication and productive relationships require serious attention and are very achievable. The return on investment from improved communication is remarkable.
Coordinate:
Clearly one of the most difficult tasks a leader has in any organization is getting all the team working from the shared set of values with the same overall game plan to achieve a common set of objectives? If it doesn't always work very well, you're not alone.
Sometimes leaders need to bring in an outside party to help them understand what's working well and what's not working so well and to help tighten up organizational processes or plan and implement needed changes.
Using solid research methods, I can help you and your team fully identify the sources of the problem and take action to make necessary course adjustments to correct the problems.
Collaborate:
Synergy may be a 21st century buzzword, but that's exactly what you want to have happening with your team. You want all the ideas and energy to be channeled together to foster a "whole is greater than the sum of the parts" environment.
Synergy happens when the differences are channeled toward a higher organizational purpose that everyone can buy into.
Significant to making this happen is what I call bridging the gaps: identifying and managing the differences that can either undermine or promote team performance.
Strong working relationships don't happen when the team's differences are a constant source of irritation and conflict.
Mind the gaps - Mend the gaps - Mine the gaps.
Strong working relationships happen when multiple perspectives and team differences are identified, the team continually works to heal wounds soon after they occur, and and the differing potentials within the team are channeled into strengths.
Calibrate:
Simply, nothing ever stays the same.
Leaders periodically calibrate strategy and tactics to fit the changing conditions of the environment and the times. The "best laid plans" may or may not continue to be the best approach as originally designed.
Maintaining existing approaches because they worked in the past may lead to stagnation. Change for the sake of change may lead to a significant loss of organizational values, skills, and employee morale.
To calibrate is to retain elements from the past that are and will be effective moving forward, and adopt new mindsets, relationships, strategies and tactics better suited to emerging conditions and opportunities.