ESG Online Seminar – Team Leadership: “Smart Leadership” to Empower Your Team to Solve New Problems

The Executive Study Group (ESG) online seminar named “Team Leadership: “Smart Leadership” to Empower Your Team to Solve New Problems” was held by the ESG, Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (APIFS) on 13^th May 2021.   In the beginning, Dr. Mark Lee briefed the background, history and goal of Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (APIFS), as well as Industry-support during Covid-19.   The content included “Business Complicatedness”, “Smart Leadership for Self-Initiated Problem Solving” and “The Opportunity within Covid-19”.

In the beginning, Dr. Mark Lee used a leading hotel case to explain the barrier for self-initiated problem solving by frontline staff even though more incentives and training applied.  Then he raised a poll to survey do our business operation become more or less complicated. Most participants selected more complicated (53%) of their business operation compared with 5 years ago.

Then Dr. Lee explained the rapid increase of complicatedness continuously.  KPI driven organizations would be one of indicators and caused conflicting goals and discouraged team cooperation.

And then he mentioned carrot-and-stick became ineffective in digital era because of job dissatisfaction and more passion staff to be more disappointment under highly complicated procedures.  

In order to motive passion staff, it needed to equip staff for Autonomy and Cooperation.  So that he introduced the objective of smart leadership.

Two key factors of smart leadership were Autonomy and Cooperation.  Autonomy could empower right people to make good choice that motivating people for cooperation.

After that the 4 elements of Smart Leadership from Autonomy to Cooperation were discussed and they included for items as follows:

1.      Understand Coworkers’ “Work Context”

2.      Reinforce Subordinates Who Are “Integrators”

3.      Add New “Power Source” to Energize Subordinates

4.      Use “Rich Objectives” to Foster Reciprocity

For Work Context, there separated into four elements and they were Goals, Challenges, Resource and Constraints.  Then the second poll was to select the most difficult one.  50% of participants voted “Constraints”. 

And then he introduced to identify Integrators to solve internal conflict and to reinforce power to them.  

The 3^rd poll of integrators about which the following empower step was the most difficult?

1.      Increase their responsibilities (23%)

2.      Give them a greater say on issues that matter to others (33%)

3.      Remove some formal rules and procedures (44%)

Add New Power Source to enforce cooperation was discussed and without taking power away from others in the system.  By giving individuals new responsibility for issues that matter to others and to the company’s performance.

Finally, Dr. Lee explained how to rich objectives and expanded the boundaries.  He used airline service as example.

And briefed the virtuous cycle by common interests that included the following steps.

1.      Right Level Cleaness

2.      On-time Departure

3.      Less Customer Complaints

4.      Easier to manage passengers

5.      Arrive home on time, more time to clean next

Lastly, he raised some opportunity to employ smart leadership during Covid-19 that unlocked staff potentials for value-adding works.  

At the end, the last poll was which strategy was the most difficult?  Use “Rich Objectives” to Foster Reciprocity (36%) and Add New “Power Source” to Energize Subordinates (31%) were most participants voted.

Reference:

Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (亞太策略研究所有限公司) – www.apifs.org

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