The
Healthy Organization
©Eric Wolff 2013
©Eric Wolff 2013
The Healthy Organization has clearly defined functional
roles, filled by the best people available to fill them. The roles must be
clearly defined and all the responsibilities an organization has are spread among the roles. Each role must be given the authority necessary to fulfill
the responsibilities. The roles must be about the responsibilities and not
about the personality. Roles are defined by their title such as VP of
Marketing, or Shelter Manager; they are not defined as Tracy’s job or Bob’s
territory.
It’s that simple.
Let’s look at what this gets us. It frees us from the
stickiness that organizations get in to when they create cults of personality.
It makes it easy for people to authorize themselves in order to get the work
done that the organization needs.
Frequently when a younger manager has to discipline someone
older or more experienced they are intimidated by the situation. What I will remind them of is that they have
a role with a set of responsibilities to fulfill. They have been authorized to
take care of these responsibilities and need to think about that – not
themselves.
As in all things; one’s ego does not serve the greater
good.
The Importance of
Mentoring and What is Important in Mentoring
©Eric Wolff 2013
Mentor was the trusted friend of Odysseus who was charged
with the education of Odysseus' son Telemachus while Odysseus went off to war.
So, as a mentor you are entrusted with what is most precious and loved as well
as what will go on to represent us in the world.
What Mentor offered as counsel to Telemechus was to set
boundaries with his Mother’s suitors and to go out into the world to discover
his Father’s fate. He was telling the boy how to behave as a man. As the tale continues this is what Mentor
continues to do. He offers his perspective on how a man should behave as well
as encouragement when Telemechus wavers because of his callowness. He does not try to make Telemechus in his
image – he points him in the correct direction for Telemechus to grow into the
world himself.
That is the essence of our roles when we Mentor.
It is best to conceive the role as having a beginning, middle, and
an end. I have already begun to define
the beginning relationship above. The task of the beginning is to establish
communication norms, expectations, and in broad strokes the goals. I say broad
strokes because this kind of relationship is a journey – the mentor playing the
role of guide – and this kind of journey is intended to travel to unknown
territory.
If I hire a mountain guide to accompany me on an adventure they
may well not know the specific mountain but they do have all the requisite
expertise to lead in such terrain. We are on the adventure together with the guide
being responsible for leadership.
As mentor we are often blessed and cursed with a great
deal of positive transference, especially in the beginning of the relationship.
As mentors we often have the opportunity to give the mentee their first real taste
of the field as a professional. Sometimes our role is to “hold the hand” of
someone who has entered the field but is a novice. In both situations the
mentee is very vulnerable, very grateful, and very disoriented. I believe that
compassion, patience, and kindness is the best beginning approach.
In this way we can understand the role of mentor as
Mentor – a stand in for the parent in a different context. The mentor, though representing
the Parent, must never lose sight of the fact that they are not the Parent and
must attend to managing that boundary of affection and authority with the
mentee. Too often a mentor becomes over identified with their mentee and ends
up imposing their own self in ways that undermine the purpose of the
relationship.
The middle of the relationship is taken up with the main purpose
of the relationship; guiding, consulting, coaching, teaching, and unpacking the
experience of the mentee as they engage and grow in the relevant world.
During this phase it is also important for the mentor to learn
from the mentee – not only about the mentee but from the mentee. This serves at
least three purposes. It enhances the mentee’s self esteem in the world, it
keeps the mentor in correct relationship (which includes humility), and it grows
the mentor. Growth and development is the fundamental value here.
The end phase of the relationship is not the end of the
relationship but rather the transition to the next relationship. Regardless of
planned future interaction or the lack thereof the relationship must transition
to that of peer. Here I mean peer as in full colleague, not necessarily equal.
But if the mentor does not acknowledge the mentee as a peer in this way, and
make sure that the mentee accepts the mentor also as peer the work of the role
will remain unfinished.
This is extremely important. I once defined for my daughter my
role as parent as follows: “My job is to take care of your well being because
right now you are too young to be able to take care of it yourself. It is also
my job while I do that to teach you to take care of your own well being so that
when you leave home you can be independent.” This principle applies entirely to
mentoring. You must make sure the mentee is capable of independence in the
world. Only then can the work of mentoring be truly done. Your mentee can now
become a mentor.
Formal Authority, Informal Authority, and Leadership
©Eric Wolff 2015
In
our organizational roles we are given responsibilities and the authority to
meet our responsibilities. Our formal responsibilities are defined by our job
description and our Job Title. These
responsibilities are not always entirely specific, and we are often required to
authorize ourselves to some degree to define what we think those
responsibilities are or are not. None the less – these responsibilities still
fall under the heading of formal responsibilities and formal authority. These
responsibilities are generally straight forward such as “oversee the marketing
function”, or “publish the playbills for all performances in the theater”. They may be less easily defined such as,
“provide an artistic vision for the institution”, for which many
interpretations may be made. None the less it is straight forward what is expected,
even if how to meet that expectation is open to interpretation. Formal
responsibilities are negotiated as part of the hiring process, during
reorganizations (which includes promotions), and at other times as necessary.
Though they may sometimes be assigned by a supervisor that authority
relationship was negotiated at the time of hiring, so I would still label that
as a negotiated responsibility. It is relatively easy to sort out how we need
to relate to each other in our Formal Roles.
We
are all also invested with informal authority in our organizational lives. This
authority derives from expectations that we inspire in our colleagues (peers,
subordinates, and those with formal authority over us) because of our natures,
our individual skill sets, and sometimes because of projections we acquire
because of social/cultural prejudices.
What is tricky about our informal authorization is that there has in
general been no negotiation regarding responsibility. If you are a good
listener and your colleagues have come to depend on you to listen to them when
they need someone to talk to does that make you responsible to listen? Clearly
not, though there can be tremendous pressure to feel that you are. Part of that pressure derives from the fact
that we all accrue Informal Roles along with our informal authority. These
roles include: “savior”, “mother hen”, “rat”, “angry young man”, “therapist”,
“bully”, “whiner”, and so forth. In a conversation with a friend yesterday the
role of “our favorite staff member” (dripping with irony) was identified. It is
not always easy to know how to relate to each other when we are in our Informal
Roles or when we are in our Formal Role and we are dealing with someone acting
out their Informal Role and vice versa.
Leadership takes place when we are willing to and make
the choice to “disappoint” both the formal and informal expectations. By
disappoint I do not mean shirk one’s responsibilities, I mean that we are
willing to do what we think is necessary, and ethical – creative – etc., to
achieve (and to have the organization achieve) the best outcome, regardless of people's expectations about the action.
Image from The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Heifitz and Linsky
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