Leadership Update - May 2009
Managers need to pay attention
Managers often have trouble paying attention to reality because their views are distracted and distorted. The financial crisis has exacerbated this tendency as their stress levels are rising in the face of the bigger challenges and tougher choices such as retrenchments and budget cuts.
Managers need to effect change, influence their teams to work more effectively and assist staff to be more creative and innovative about the future, but they have to pay attention first.
"Leadership involves influencing change, but in the absence of true attention to others and reality, our efforts at influencing often degenerate into being reactive and coercive. To be truly effective and innovative a symbiosis of attention and influence or ‘Attfluence’ is needed," says Richard Searle, Program Director, Mt Eliza Executive Education, part of Melbourne Business School.