One of my pet peeves is the self help movement. Someone is always selling something and while I admire people who want to change for the better - too much change is just too much.
What are we supposed to do now?
I live in a state where our state leadership is giving everyone whiplash. Every couple of years, they change how schools test. The result is - we have no idea if our schools are improving - or not. Why? Because we keep changing what we are testing and how we are testing. The only people who benefit from this are the companies that win the latest testing contract.
A change in mandated testing in a state, takes a long time to implement. A change in the standards in what it being tested for in a state takes a long time to implement. The result is teachers are constantly having to redo everything. Students aren't getting consistent instruction and everyone is always in a state of - what are we supposed to do now?
Flashy Business Bandwagons
The same thing happens in businesses. It's admirable that leaders want to lead well. But if a leader jumps on a new bandwagon every few months and encourages their employees to jump on the same new flashy bandwagon every few months, nothing actually improves.
In fact, employees start to get whiplash and confused. Are they supposed to be decluttering? Are they supposed to be maximizing influence? Are they supposed to be manifesting something? Who knows? All they know is every month or so their leader demands something new of them that is completely unrelated to the actual work they need to be doing.
Most of these initiatives just make things more difficult. And forget about trying to advance if you don't know what the latest buzzwords for your bosses latest leadership obsession is.
Please Stop Doing This
Leadership isn't actually all that difficult. Just - help your employees. What do your employees need to get their job done better and more efficiently? If you don't know - ask them.
The job of a leader is to help a team accomplish their collective objectives. That's it. Help set the direction and help your team get there. It's like sailing a boat. The captain is responsible for setting the direction and the crew's job is to set up the ship to actually go where the captain wants it to.
If you keep changing direction every few weeks or months and you keep changing the destination, you will never get anywhere. You will just be sailing around in circles wondering why your crew is so frustrated with you.
Don't keep jumping on the latest leadership bandwagon. And please please please don't keep insisting your staff join you in your latest folly.
What actually does help?
There is a reason flash in the pan leadership trends flash in and out of fashion so quickly. And reasons why these things aren't helpful to leading teams.
1) Most leadership trends are just snake oil that someone is selling. Or they are just repacked existing leadership skills rebranded to seem new.
2) Changing buzzwords and approaches too often means no one particular direction can get established.
If your team is struggling, it's probably because you are struggling. When people struggle, they do tend to grasp for anything they think might help them. This pattern is a vicious cycle.
So, what will work? Honestly - just be a good honest person trying to help the team accomplish their objective. To do that, you need to be clear on what the objective is and you need to know what your team needs to accomplish that objective. It's not that hard. For the majority of organizations, this is enough.
But what about if major change is needed?
Sometimes real change is needed in an organization. If things really aren't working than a leader may need to actually lead a change effort. Constantly changing the objectives is counter productive to real change from taking root.
My suggestion is - if you have major structural and cultural changes you need to make in your organization - learn what works to make change happen. Stop grasping at straws and the latest fad. Learn what works according to science.
And what works is - repeated reinforcement of objectives and new cultural norms. That's it. Again - not rocket science.
If you want to learn this - check out my course/book Why is Change so Hard? Whether you’re looking to improve your personal habits or manage change within your organization, understanding the science behind behavior change can be a game-changer. This course will teach you how to use behavioral science to manage change and achieve lasting transformation.
https://humanistlearning.com/change1/
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