- Ambition & Proactive

If you limit your choices to what seems possible or reasonable u disconnect yourself from what you truly want and all that's left is compromise.

The Art of Retaining Your Best People

Retaining star performers is just as important as finding new prospects.

Finding and hiring top talent has never been tougher than it is today, but retaining star performers is tougher still. Unfamiliar with the psychology of work satisfaction, managers reward their best employees handsomely and assume they’re happy. But when these employees leave, as they frequently do, managers conclude that there was nothing they could have done to prevent the departure.

That’s where they’re wrong. What’s often missing from top performers’ jobs are responsibilities that coincide with their “deeply embedded life interests.” These are more than hobbies or enthusiasm for certain subjects—they are long-held, emotionally driven passions that bubble beneath the surface like a geothermal pool of water. Most people possess one to three of eight basic interests, which include theory development and conceptual thinking, counseling and mentoring, and application of technology. These interests don’t determine what people are good at; they drive the kinds of activities that make people happy. Thus, people keep returning to these interests throughout their lives—even though they may not be fully aware of how the interests are subtly influencing their career decisions.
A manager can help uncover an employee’s life interests by probing, observing, and applying a little psychology. That done, manager and employee can customize work with job sculpting—a process that matches the employee to a job that allows her deeply embedded life interests to be expressed.
In the job-sculpting techniques listed below, the basic life interests appear in italics.

• Ask employees to play an active role in job sculpting, perhaps by having them write about their views of career satisfaction—an excellent starting point for a discussion.
• In some cases sculpting can begin simply by adding a new responsibility. An engineer who has a deeply embedded life interest in counseling and mentoring might be asked to plan and manage the orientation of new hires.
• A change in assignment provides another sculpting opportunity. A salesperson with an interest in quantitative analysis might be given new duties working with market-research analysts.
• Good sculpting results when a manager listens carefully and asks questions. When a pharmaceutical sales rep told her boss how much she enjoyed helping the company find and lease new office space, he probed further and learned she wanted work that met her interests in influence through language and ideas and creative production. Her sales job encompassed the former, so new responsibilities in marketing were added to provide an outlet for her creativity.
• Sculpting often calls for more substantial changes. When a star analyst in a Wall Street firm received an unprecedented pay increase, she angrily said the company “thinks it can solve every problem with money.” Her boss discovered she wanted to direct the research group—an expression of her interests in enterprise control and managing people and relationships. She was made coordinator of research.
• Even greater sculpting changes are some-times required—for example, when a man-ager can only meet a worker’s interests with a transfer to another department. In other cases, amicable separation is necessary, as when an engineering firm has no job for an employee with a life interest in influence through language and ideas.-(hbr)

Leadership and Management

What is leadership, and what is the difference between leadership and management? In a nutshell, the difference is:

• Leadership is setting a new direction or vision for a group that they follow, ie: a leader is the spearhead for that new direction
• Management controls or directs people/resources in a group according to principles or values that have already been established.

The difference between leadership and management can be illustrated by considering what happens when you have one without the other.

Leadership without management

...sets a direction or vision that others follow, without considering too much how the new direction is going to be achieved. Other people then have to work hard in the trail that is left behind, picking up the pieces and making it work. Eg: in Lord of the Rings, at the council of Elrond, Frodo Baggins rescues the council from conflict by taking responsibility for the quest of destroying the ring - but most of the management of the group comes from others.

Management without leadership

...controls resources to maintain the status quo or ensure things happen according to already-established plans. Eg: a referee manages a sports game, but does not usually provide "leadership" because there is no new change, no new direction - the referee is controlling resources to ensure that the laws of the game are followed and status quo is maintained.

Leadership combined with management

...does both - it both sets a new direction and manages the resources to achieve it. Eg: a newly elected president or prime minister.

Some potential confusions...

The absence of leadership should not be confused with the type of leadership that calls for 'no action' to be taken. For example, when Gandhi went on hunger strike and called for protests to stop, during the negotiations for India's independence, he demonstrated great leadership - because taking no action was a new direction for the Indian people at that time.
Also, what is often referred to as "participative management" can be a very effective form of leadership. In this approach, a new direction may seem to emerge from the group rather than the leader. However, the leader has facilitated that new direction whilst also engendering ownership within the group - i.e., it is an advanced form of leadership.
Sometimes, an individual may act as a figure head for change and be viewed as a leader even though he/she hasn't set any new direction. This can arise when a group sets a new direction of its own accord, and needs to express that new direction in the form of a symbolic leader. An example is Nelson Mandela whilst in prison:

• During the period when Nelson Mandela was imprisoned (when his ability to provide personal, direct leadership was limited) he continued to grow in power and influence as the symbolic leader for the anti-apartheid movement.
• Following his release from prison, he demonstrated actual leadership by leading South Africa into a process of reconciliation rather than retribution.

Leadership and Management Summary

Leadership is about setting a new direction for a group; management is about directing and controlling according to established principles. However, someone can be a symbolic leader if they emerge as the spearhead of a direction the group sets for itself.