Thank you to Tony Wiggins for this post. View the original here: https://tonywiggins.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/leadershiphq-leadership-challenges-and-insights/
Sonia McDonald was proud to facilitate and hold the first Leadership Effectiveness Group (LEG) for Brisbane Leaders to discuss their purpose, challenges and insights around leadership and talent.
The LEG was well attended by practitioners from the building and construction, consulting, finance, government and electricity industries which added to the diversity, depth and vigour of the evening’s conversations.
The themed question that was posed for the group created exciting, thought provoking and energised discussion – “why do people want to be a leader”? Comments covered a wide spectrum of the leadership space including – values based leadership makes a difference with followers, forget everything you thought you knew about hardwiring how to motivate/lead people (work, school, home) – it is wrong; leadership is about us as a team, not you as an individual; engaging the head and the heart. This was a good starting point from where the group launched into the concepts of leadership and engagement.
It is about performance and satisfaction. The conversation, then lead into a discussion about Daniel Pink and his paradigm-shattering book ‘Drive’. The book was closely link to the current leadership discussion in the room. In his book, Daniel Pink explains that the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today’s world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and the world. It drills down to three elements of true motivation: Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives; Mastery – the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and Purpose – the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. The model is about harnessing the power of intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic remuneration can be thoroughly satisfying and infinitely more rewarding.
Performance and engagement, so what! The discussion progressed into the central ideas that drive engagement at work within the leadership domain. One model, the SCRAF (Rock, 2008) model was very relevant to the discussion. The model as explained is directly linked to recent neuroscientific research, identifying how well an organisation or manager is providing people with what the brain requires in social settings for optimal performance and engagement.
The model involves five domains of human social experience: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness. The five domains – Status is about relative importance to others; Certainty concerns being able to predict the future; Autonomy provides a sense of control over events; Relatedness is a sense of safety with others – of friend rather than foe; Fairness is a perception of fair exchanges between people. These five domains have been shown in many studies to activate the same reward circuitry that physical rewards activate, like money, and the same threat circuitry that physical threats, like pain, activate (Rock, 2009b).
First impressions, lasting impressions! The LEG experience for The HR Architect can be depicted on many dimensions – exhilarating discussions, great learning space with peers and networking unlimited. I am looking forward with great anticipation to the next LEG event.
Thank you to AECOM, for providing the venue and supporting the HR profession in Brisbane.
Thank you Sonia!
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About the Author
Tony Wiggins is the Founder and UX Editor of Saturday Shoutout!!! and The HR Architect Spends 5 Minutes with …. Tony utilises the blog ‘The HR Architect’ as a social media network and platform that empowers HR professionals to network, assist and support one another, spanning different countries, subcultures and niches.
Phone 1300 719 665 or +61 424 447 616
www.soniamcdonald.com.au
sonia@soniamcdonald.com.au