Leading a Spirited Organization

A spirited organization is: “A dynamic group of individuals, commonly focused, and energetically charged to reach beyond the current state and achieve positive changes.” In a spirited organization: “every day the best and brightest people from everywhere are at the front door asking if they can work here,” he added.

Branco outlined six traits such an organization displays:

1. Optimism: Employees truly believe they can and will build a better future.
2. Energy: Those employees are willing to work relentlessly toward that future.
3. Enthusiasm: They are excited about working together to accomplish that future.
4. Discipline: Within the company, methods exist that allow staff to collaborate effectively day-to-day toward their goals.
5. Resilience: Employees embrace change and are willing to adapt.
6. Determination: Individuals are empowered to forge ahead and prevail.

To get to that point requires building a foundation for disciplined resilience-a foundation that allows people to perform their work daily with ease and with the flexibility to react when needed. In other words, the everyday surprises should not hold people back, but rather allow them to grow.

The foundation also requires a spirit of collaboration. The organization has to be set up to discourage a loop of disrespectleading to distrust leading to employees who won't work together, which Branco called the “doom loop.” Instead, companies need to reach the point of a “nirvana loop-if I show you respect, you will (in turn) trust me and (in turn) want to work with me,” he explains. The key to all of that just may be learning to listen, a skill both leaders and employees need to develop.

But all of this “spirited-ness” begins with examining our own leadership. “In reality, the only thing we control is ... ourselves,” Branco pointed out.

To understand their own spirits, leaders must start by pinpointing what they believe in-which might range from “all people have worth” to “I will succeed” to “my perceptions may be wrong” (in other words, I need to take another look at the issue). After beliefs are outlined, leaders must face their our own attitudes such as “I’ll fake it then make it (I don’t know this stuff, but I’ll keeping working on it until I do)” to “I’ll do all I can with what I have” to “most problems are amusing.” Then, leaders can recognize their own behaviors in dealing with situations, which might range from glacier (you can be mad at me today, but I'll still be here tomorrow) to cooler head prevails (the more angry you get, the cooler I become) to decisiveness (I'll get the data, but then make the decision), Branco said.

The important thing to remember is that, in looking at leadership attitudes and behaviors, an individual does not have to work on every area at the same time. Each individual can select a set of priorities that are important to work upon to meet current challenges, Branco said.

After leaders look at their own beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, they need to look at influencing the attitudes of others and how to move the spirit of the company from them to the outside, Branco pointed out. Businesses today face a continuum of employee attitudes toward the workplace that ranges from the cynic at one end (what's happening is wrong, always was and always will be!) to the Pollyanna at the other end (what could possibility go wrong with this change?). The sweet spot in attitudes may be between the pragmatist (things could go wrong, so let's be ready) and the optimist (it's possible things will go wrong, but it will be all right).

As a leader of that continuum, a person can make two assumptions, Branco said: 1) Everything he or she, as the leader, does is observed by those under his or her leadership, and 2) the human energy needed to create the atmosphere of spirit and collaboration exists just as much as the potential for distrust and miscommunication.

“The evidence of employee attitudes is all around us. It’s in how people talk. We simply (though not easily) have to listen,” Branco said. One hint he gave the workshop audience from his own experience at weighing attitudes is "the more optimistic organizations talk about the present and future. Pessimistic organizations talk about the past.”

There are four points leaders should remember about what they can do to move the spirit of the company from inside themselves to outside (to employees): 1) envision the next destination; 2) develop interrelationships with the people that might help the company get there; 3) determine what interactions of functions and humans is needed within the company's structure to support the spirited-ness of the company; and 4) create interdependence-not independence-between functions, processes and humans.

You can’t make people do things they don't want to do, Branco pointed out, but “stop thinking that people hate change. What they really is hate is being changed,” so make them a part of the process.

One of the keys to leading them in this process is credibility. “As a leader, if you are not credible, you are doomed,” Branco said. This credibility does not come from a title, but rather from behavior. A short list of things that can build credibility includes:

• Keep your promises, or don't make them in the first place.
• Get to know the people whom you lead
• Do many small things for those you supervise.
• Bask in reflected glory-give credit to the team for getting things done.

But one of the main things leaders can do is learn to move decisions outward toward what actually needs to be accomplished, Branco said. In other words, don't be the person making all the decisions. “The closer the decisions are made to the work being done, the better the decisions will be,” he said.

Leaders can also learn to balance the workloads of those doing the work. “Work tends to gravitate to those who do it,” Branco pointed out, so a good leader needs to recognize who is doing what and rebalance the workload as needed.

Once a leader has moved this spirit of the organization successfully out to the ranks of staff, the loop is closed and results will begin to flow back inward, Branco explained, in increased productivity and positive attitude. Still, that leader must understand that the complaining itself does not stop. It's just at a much higher level, which means it can serve as a learning source for what's going on in the company.

“Listen closely and ask a lot of questions about the grumbles. Think about the next set of grumbles and what you'd like to hear. Then create an organization that is constantly learning, improving, becoming more spirited and developing its own soul,” he concluded.

>> Read the first two articles in this three-part series: Going Lean: ‘A Million Little Changes’ and Going Lean: Continuing the Journey