If you pick up any popular business periodical nowadays, you will read about the reshaping of the relationship between leaders and those they are responsible for leading.  There are lots of new words for leaders too….coach, mentor, facilitator, teacher, advisor--to name just a few.  So just what is going on?

    The old style of leadership is on its way out because it just doesn't work anymore.  Employees want different things from their careers than our fathers and grandfathers did in the 50's and 60's.  Or that our mothers and grandmothers wanted in the 70's and 80's.

    The ever-changing work environment and the complex interplay between organizational and human systems have changed exponentially.  And it is one thing to tell your employees "that they are now empowered" and another to have them actually "act" empowered.

In this issue you will....
• Find out the four conditions necessary for groups to solve problems and make good decisions for the bottom line.
• Read CEO Senior Consultant Mary Wilson's review of the book The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.
• Understand how families and "office politics" are influenced by similar patterns of behavior.
• Learn some interesting research findings that are counter-intuitive.

    When should a leader trust the group and what types of decisions and problem solving should a group tackle?  Certainly one does not want a mixed group to fly an airplane together….that requires highly honed skills and experience.  However, it has been found that groups are good at solving cognition problems (problems that have a right or definitive solution), coordination problems (problems like organizing operations), and cooperation problems (ones that involve getting people to work together).

For groups to solve these types of problems effectively, four conditions are necessary:
1. The team needs to be cognitively diverse.  Individuals in the group must have different perspectives, insight and pieces of information.
2. Individuals need to be able to make decisions independently of each other so that individual judgment errors don't impact the group's collective decision.
3. The team needs to operate in a decentralized environment in which its efforts aren't directed from the top down.
4. There must be a way to aggregate individual ideas and opinions into one collective solution or decision.  One of the reasons the intelligence community was not able to anticipate and stop the 9/11 tragedy was that it lacked an effective means of tapping into the collective wisdom of various agencies such as the NSA, CIA and FBI.

    The most important lesson that James Surowiecki wants us to learn from his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, is to stop "chasing the expert"-that one person who we think has the right answer or most intelligent solution to a problem. It's a costly mistake, he says. Instead, we should "ask the audience", as was done with successful results on the TV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire. In a world that's always searching for the next great superhero (or super leader) to save the day, Surowiecki's thesis is provocative and counterintuitive.

    So, to have better decisions in organizations-and ultimately, better results-leaders need to abandon outdated notions about who has power and knowledge, get the concept of the leader as all-knowing superhero, tell the truth themselves, and establish a climate in which others are encouraged to tell the emperor he or she has no clothes. Although that's a high expectation, "total leaders" are up to the challenge. Only when leaders embrace their transformational role will the wisdom of the crowd flourish and our organizations and our world become better places.

    To read the entire review click read more

    H.J. Leavett, in a Journal of Managerial Psychology article, said that leaders, unlike parents, must work with used (not new) human beings-human beings whom others have gotten to first. As we learn in Creative Energy Options, Inc. (CEO) leadership program, Total Leadership Connections™ (TLC), we all have behavioral patterns that were programmed into us by our family, culture, and crisis experiences. Knowing our patterns and choosing to use them more effectively is what makes us great leaders of people. But no one says it is easy.

    I just got back from the garage….An act of procrastination because I am putting off writing this article that I promised my wife I would write. As a Procrastinator, I find all kinds of things that have to be done before getting to the task at hand….like reorganizing the nails in my workshop or sorting through the sandpaper bins and looking for that new can of paint I put somewhere yesterday.

    I am a Procrastinator and I own it! Before going through the TLC program I didn't realize how much of a Procrastinator I was and I didn't recognize that there was anything I could do about it. I learned that the first step to transformation is to realize when I am procrastinating. Then I learned that the opposite of a Procrastinator is a Realizer, the fourth component of a total leader. All the energy that I use to find reasons to postpone my actions can be used to realize my actions.

    There is an old Spanish proverb: "Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week."

    Procrastinators say "yes" to projects but wait until the last minute to do them or not do them. A Realizer makes things real, gets things done--early, instead of just in time, or never.

    Moving my Procrastinator pattern into being a Realizer is just one of the things that happened to me during the Total Leadership Connections™ sessions that I participated in. My eyes were opened to a number of significant patterns that impact our lives every day. Not just mine but the group of terrific people I worked with. It is a great learning experience and an amazing way to interact with one another. I now see patterns in others as well and better understand how to relate on a truthful and honest level. And best of all, there is hope for all of us. All our patterns can be transformed-moving the negative aspects into positive behavior. As a result, we are better leaders in the business world and better partners in this complicated experience we call life.

1. If job satisfaction is defined as a collection of feelings that an individual holds toward his/her job, will a positive job satisfaction make one more productive? Yes? Well, No. According to Organizational Behavioral research, just the opposite is true. Having a positive feeling about one's productivity and performance positively increases one's job satisfaction, but having a positive job satisfaction does not make one more productive.
2. Does an employee's low level of job satisfaction increase his/her absenteeism rate? Yes? Well, No. The biggest impact on absenteeism depends on the sick leave policies of an organization. It has been found that organizations with Well Pay benefits rather than Sick-Pay benefits have a much lower rate of absenteeism with all other variables being equal.
3. Employee turnover is the voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization. Are the employees who leave an organization more likely to be the ones an organization would like to see leave? According to recent research, turnover often involves people the organization does not want to lose. For example, one study covering 900 employees who had resigned their jobs found that 92 percent earned performance ratings of "satisfactory" or better from their superiors.

    Creative Energy Options, Inc. (CEO) has been approved by the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs (NCLP). This website sponsored by the University of Maryland works to connect leadership educators and support developing leadership programs.

    Visit the site www.nclp.umd.edu and link to Resources and then Associations and Organizations.

    CEO is very pleased to be included on NCLP with other prestigious leadership organizations.

PEPtalk is a free monthly eNews from Creative Energy Options, Inc. (CEO)—a global leadership development, consulting and coaching company on the cutting-edge of business transformation. We provide the solutions you need to apply the Pattern Aware Leadership Model^TM to your daily work and home life. It is published every month and filled with leadership news and views, success stories, special events and valuable tips to energize your leadership.