I was still sitting with David, talking about a seemingly competent manager, who simply never accomplished anything. This manager had talked a good game, but never took any effective action, never made any significant progress.
“David, I often see this in my management program. Students come into the class thinking they will listen to a series of lectures, get the latest management techniques and life will be good. I talk about how education is often understanding certain technical information. I talk about how training is often motivational to make a person feel a certain way. But in my class, the focus is on action. Quite frankly, I don’t care how much you know. I don’t care how you feel. I care about what you do.
“Some students,” I continued, “are surprised to find themselves, no longer sitting comfortably in their chairs, but standing at the front of the class. I want them on their feet, out of their comfort zone. Leadership starts with thinking. Leadership is about who you are. But ultimately, leadership is all about what you do.” -TF
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Hello Tom. I hope all is well with you.
Once again i completely agree with you:
It does not matter what managers say, it is what they do that matters to the organisation. The worst managers say something, and then do something else. “Medium bad” is saying a lot, and doing nothing or very little. “The best”, say somthing and then also do it. Even if it is not so popular, they will by time get the respect of their organisations, since they will trust them. With out trust the management in plain english “sucks”.
Small comment: the last two weeks i have been working with an excellent young becoming high level manager, who wants to “learn it all”. We have travelled, met people, been in meeting and he has been asking a lot of questions, and also received a lot of answers. But some of the questions, he has been answered “even if we try to explain to you in words, you will have to face the problem, and do the basic work, to understand what we are telling you”. And this i think is also true. Some experience and knowledge is very difficult to understand by words or in writing – it has to be “lived” and “tought live”. In this case, mainly the interaction between salesmanagement and customers in difficult situations.
🙂
All the best from a snowy and cold Sweden / Timo
Tom, I agree with you.
I find in teaching smart, educated people that the biggest problem is to get them to stop believing that cognitive comprehension is the end. I’m with you, in that the point is not to understand the world, the point is to change it.
The smarter people are, I find, the more they are likely to resist going out of their comfort zone–in the front of the class, as you say, or in role-plays, or hearing advice, or simply listening to new points of view. We tend to like what we’re good at–and highly intellectual people are good at brain-work, so they seem to want to re-write the world as if it’s all about brains.
Of course, it’s not. Fake it ’til you make it happens to be wonderful advice for learning a lot of emotional and relationship skills. Comprehending a simple idea like “listen to others” is about one-tenth the game; actually putting it into practice is all the rest.