If You Hate Conflict Then Leadership is Not For You by Robert Tanner

If You Hate Conflict Then Leadership is Not For You

by Robert Tanner

John was highly intelligent and cooperative. He excelled at his craft and he took pride in his work. Others liked to work with him.

Senior leadership took notice. They promoted him to management. John did well and he quickly progressed to middle management. As John progressed higher into the upper levels of management, however, his effectiveness declined. With time, John’s promising career stalled as his organizational area fell into chaos.

Some of his ambitious peers were secretly happy with his problems. His problems cleared the way for them to compete for the few top leadership posts in their organization. John saw his dreams of becoming a senior executive disappear. Over a period of ten years, the Board of Directors twice passed over John for the few executive appointments available. Some of his peers that he had mentored even became his boss during this period.

Everybody loved John so he stayed in his role. No one respected him for his leadership skills, however.  His peers and the senior executives just worked around him. His managers and employees worked in chaos. His organizational area was inefficient, morale was poor, and infighting was common.

What was John’s failing? How did his progression to executive management come to an abrupt halt?

John’s one leadership flaw was that he hated conflict too much. In fact, he hated conflict so much that his main way of responding to conflict was to avoid it. When he could not avoid conflict, he would accommodate people by giving them what they wanted. At his core, John just wanted everybody to get along! He was a nice person who could adapt his style to work with anybody. He could not understand why the people around him could not get along.

John had the wrong attitude about conflict! Conflict is a part of the natural order of things. Baby animals struggle with each other for their share of food. Adult animals struggle for mates and territory. Naturally occurring fires spur new growth. And the list goes on!

Conflict in organizations is also a part of the natural order of things. Conflict does not have to be dysfunctional. In fact, productive conflict is necessary for organizational survival. As I explain in my book, Organizational Conflict: Get Used to It and Use It, eight reasons why managers should use conflict are to:

• hold stakeholders accountable
• improve processes
• challenge outdated thinking
• ensure continued viability
• promote innovation
• eliminate inappropriate behavior
• address unclear direction
• make the necessary tough decisions

If you hate conflict then leadership is not for you. Sometimes conflict is necessary!

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: employee engagement, leadership, management, organizational productivity, people skills, strategic thinking

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Being a better communicator

I am going to start with this topic, as it is one that will be consistent with all of the others.

I guess it is easy to say that we all communicate.  The challenge is discovering if we are effective in our communication.  I see a lot of brochures for communication course that come across my e mail, promoting this or that course.  Do we really need to communicate better?

I was recently on a conference call and someone stopped the conversation and requested that we stop using pronouns because the conversation was getting to confusing.  When asked to restart the conversation, I was at a loss because of the train of thought that I was using had the use of the pronouns.  The thought that when we speak we are confident in what we are expressing is not wrong, it just may be that the other person(s) listening just aren’t following.

 

So the challenge here is:

• How do we get people to follow with our train of thought?
• How can we adjust our terminology to help convey the correct message?
• What are possible tools we can utilize to present the message?

i am sure that there are more questions that what are listed above, but let’s start with those to see if we can communicate effectively.  Let’s slow down our message and get everyone on the same page and course correct before we go down a road of confusion.

More to come on this topic.

Leadership & Challenges a New Year New Perspective

Over the past few years I have not really been keeping up with my own promise of writing on this blog.  It has been a challenge because of personal struggles I have been having with my leadership and management styles.  So this year I will once again make an effort to work on posting these thoughts and findings to share with others.

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My goal for this year….

• How to be a better mentor
• How to be a better communicator
• Learning to Listen for understanding
• Slowing down the thought process
• Everyone is not as fast at thinking

 

The New Chapter

I have been issued a challenge,  create and establish a sustainable mentoring program in the Stamford Connecticut area.  The program must be effective, inspire, educate, and elevate young men of color.

 

Well my response is simple, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.’s Guide Right program.  This program is designed to hit all of those tasks and much more.  Over the last year I have been working with my Fraternity Brothers to help establish this program so that we can instill a new vision of hope and education in these young men.

In 2012, we will begin to capitalize on this vision with the full installation of the Stamford Alumni Chapter’s Kappa League Leadership development program.  We will be taking these young men on a journey of self discovery in which they will begin to determine self identity and begin to create their own pathways to their destinations.

 

New Philosophy

How many of us have ever taken responsibility for the outcome of our current positions in life?

We all know that perception is reality, but what if reality was really skewed?  Our perception of a person, group, or situation is based on how we view these things.  However, does that make it real, or skewed?  I think that it makes one skewed, which makes all conversations and interactions from that point forward skewed.  So if it is skewed, then one has to reflect on how it became that way.

This brings me to the new philosophy, of ME.  Where I am taking responsiblity for what people see and how they interact and react to ME.  I am doing reasearch about self-reflection and trying to determine how we as people can grow from looking within before looking without.  What are we willing to accept about ourselves and what are we willing to listen and grow from.

More to come….

Goal Setting (Asking the Question)

Where do you see yourself in ____ year(s)?

I know that many of us have been asked this question on interviews and come up with some response to give to the HR or hiring manager. My question is how many of us take this seriously? In taking this question seriously have you really taken the time to answer where do you want to be in five , ten , twenty years from now. If you haven’t maybe you should just take some time and start setting some goals.

In the past few years we have all been faced with an economic recession, during this time people are losing their jobs and their patience looking for the new job. They are focused on meeting the basic needs for food clothing and shelter, but they are not looking for their passion. I have been to many seminars and workgroups in which these principals are given and everyone shakes their heads and says I will try that when I get back. Have you ever done an assessment of how soon you implement a strategy you learned in one of these courses. Most of us say we will but in reality we don’t because we get back into the same old rut and forget what we are going to implement.

The problem that we are facing is not putting it in writing, and hanging it up in our face to see every day.

to be continued…

Multi-generational networking | AccountingWEB.com

have you ever wondered why there are so many young people that jump from one place of employment to another?  Do you ever wonder why there is a communications gap between generations?

Read the attached article and you might find away to communicate between the generations as well as a little bit of how you are preceived from other generations as well.

Multi-generational networking | AccountingWEB.com.

Rite of Passage

In the next coming weeks I will speak to a group of young men, and give them some advice on what it is to be a man in the business world.  So what is a rite of passage?

rite of passage   n.   pl. rites of passage A ritual or ceremony signifying an event in a person’s life indicative of a transition from one stage to another, as from adolescence to adulthood.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

What is your rite of passage?

Student Business Case Competition

As most of us have learned throughout our lives to deal with disappointment, it is always remarkable how our students will deal with and approach what they believe is fair/unfair.

In order for us to improve over time we need the ability to take and receive feedback.  As in real world examples a business case competition prepares our students for what types of questions an executive in the boardroom asks to employees and consultants. Over the past few weeks Graduate, Undergraduate, and High School students have been preparing to deliver an interesting case about financial planning, forecasting, and customer wants and needs in the retail market.  In this preparation there are long nights a lot of research and then need for information to summarized.  The students have had  time to prepare for what is necessary to deliver a presentation to a panel of judges.

The case competition teams were able to impress the judges and the competition.  This experience showed our high school students that anything is possible and that they could also do the presentation and why we show them the skills that we know will be necessary in college and their professional careers.

What will be next for them?  the Sage continues

The Definition of Networking

In an attempt to help others understand my point of view of networking and what it means to me and should mean to others, I have decided to start this blog posting. It is important to understand that this Blog is about leadership and the challenges that I face continually in my career and look forward to overcoming.

So what is networking? It is simply a connection between at least two components. Well lets define the components.

Components: People

Connection: A relationship that has been formed from a mutual understanding or platform.

As a person we all continue to network and build these realtionships with people. Whether it is from a classmate, Fraternity/Sorrority, boy/girl friend, etc. These relationships are the essence of netowrking. So some might ask how do I network?

That is easy netowrking today has become much eaiser to stay in contact and keep in touch with people through social media. With the advent of MySpace we saw everyone become friends with Tom. From this we have seen other outlets such as Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter, and the such. These media tools have given us the ability to connect and reconnect with people.

So if you are willing to network with me come find me on LinkedIN or Twitter.