Are you change oriented?

If the change orientation of a leader is one basic attitude to take, the other two are the desire to take on new responsibilities and to give them to employees.

• Feeling responsible means being aware that you have acted exactly as you should have with the thoroughness and speed required, considering yourself totally involved in the results achieved. The question to be answered is, “Did I do everything in my power to do?” In this way, the firm is able to ensure that the firm’s work is carried out in the best possible way, using the necessary resources, and that it feels responsible for what it achieves.
• This is a key aspect of assigning responsibility to employees. For example, in situations of prolonged organizational stress, it can happen that a manager is convinced that he wants to give more delegation to his employees because he feels pressured by too many requests, he has difficulty managing them, and this leads to a reduction in the time dedicated to planned activities and a consequent increase in the time dedicated to emergency activities. The daily activity flows so fast for him that little by little the awareness of having to change is replaced by habituation to this condition of not governing the situation.
• On the other hand, even employees, who in turn are extremely accustomed to this way of acting, run to their bosses as soon as they have a problem, expecting solutions. This vicious circle is also often encouraged by a condition of mutual satisfaction between managers and employees. In fact, the former is still gratified by perceiving himself as indispensable and by his ability to lead others by providing technical solutions. The latter are satisfied that they do not have to make decisions that could be wrong, and that they act under guidance that spares them from taking on responsibility.

In short, there is a widespread belief that to be successful, it is not enough to have the know-how or to have the professional skills and experience. The validity of this view has long been amply demonstrated in sports. David Hemery, winner of a gold medal in the 400m hurdles in the distant 1968 Olympics, interviewed 63 elite athletes from 20 different sports and showed that awareness and responsibility were the two most important attitudes that these athletes recognized as being at the base of their success. The Canadian psychologist Terry Orlick (1992), who has had forty years of experience with athletes, managers and astronauts, in his model of human excellence has shown that commitment and confidence were the most important psychological skills shown by top performers, others have added to these two skills the goal setting, which corresponds to the ability to establish clear, specific and challenging goals and to pursue them through planning articulated in weeks and months (Durand-Bush, Salmela, and Green-Hemers, 2001).

From these data, it is clear that if professional skills and experience are not supported by an adequate mental approach, one finds oneself in the condition of someone who, while owning a Ferrari but not knowing how to drive it, runs the risk of being overtaken by a less powerful but better-driven car.

Those who wish to have further information on how to develop these skills can contact me directly through this blog.