Cracking Great Leaders Program
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How to empower your frontline to be as committed as you are

Have you ever had this dream? I’ve had it many times. I’m walking down the street when I see some coins in the gutter. I stoop down, pick them up and put them in my pocket. As I continue I see many more coins and soon my pockets are bulging. When I wakeup I’m disappointed that it was just a dream.

For many years I didn’t understand its meaning. I took it too literally. Then I realised it wasn’t a dream; it was the story of my life.

One of the joys of my work is that often I get to work with people right at the frontline of the organisation; that many managers would think of as the gutter of their organisation.

Every time I have been delighted by the contribution they have made to complex, strategic organisational thinking; and what is more important, the managers of these people, could hardly believe what they were seeing and hearing. 

Over the years there have been so many magical occasions that I know organisations would have much fuller pockets if they tapped into all this money that is just waiting to be picked up.

I’ll share just three examples to make the point:
  1. I worked with a medium-sized butter manufacturer in Hamilton on a project (eight half-day workshops) involving about 30 people from across the organisation designed to put the customer at the centre of the company and empower the people. It was not until the second workshop that I met Jerry (not his real name), because, during the first workshop, he was in court on some charge. Jerry was one of the scariest looking people I have ever worked with. Everything about his body language and the tattoos on his fingers and neck screamed, “Stay away, I'm dangerous!" When I saw Jerry I thought, “If we can make progress with this guy, the program will have been a success." As the workshops progressed the trust levels increased and ever so slowly Jerry started to open up. It turns out his father had been murdered, his brother had committed suicide by hanging himself and Jerry had been in trouble with the law nearly all of his life. By the end of the program this man had grown such that the owners of the company made him a supervisor of one of the production areas. Trapped within a rough and scary exterior was a man of enormous potential. The best leaders know about this potential and deliberately go about trying to discover it.
  2. I worked on an empowerment process (nine half-day workshops) with about 45 people in a medium-sized manufacturing company in Palmerston North. In one of the workshops I set up an exercise where in groups of six they were asked to discuss: “Their greatest Leadership Accomplishment.” One group was obviously struggling with this exercise and an ageing Samoan man named Ben called me over to help. He said, “None of us have ever been leaders.” I sat with them for a while and asked questions about their backgrounds. It turned out that when Ben, who worked in the dirtiest and hottest part of the factory pouring molten iron into a mould, had arrived in New Zealand about 30 years ago he could neither speak nor write English and was totally broke. Today he is a senior in the Samoan Church, his three children all have university degrees and he holds the title of Matai (Chief) in his local community. As Ben spoke the others in the group started sitting up straighter and said, “We’ve done things like that too!” Some as leaders in local Scout groups, in sporting clubs or in the community. At the end of the workshop when people were invited to share their thoughts, Ben stood up and said, “It’s bad enough that we put each other down but it’s even worse when we put ourselves down!” Fortunately, the owner of the company was wise enough to see the untapped talent of a person like Ben to the organisational changes that occurred as a result of this program. Ben became a central part of the “Improvement Council” that managed the cultural and process changes required for empowerment. It’s interesting that Ben still cannot write English, however, his ability to communicate spoken English is inspiring.
  3. I worked with the gravediggers in Porirua City Council. When I asked them about how they made a difference to the world, they said: “All we do is dig holes and bury people.” With more questioning and challenging they started to realise that they were central to public health (no dead bodies festering in the streets). However the real breakthrough came when someone said: “You know, when you think about it, we are central to the way people remember their loved ones. If we do things well people will have wonderful memories. If we don’t, they won’t!” With this thought in mind the grave diggers started doing all their activities with more purpose and pride and redefined their jobs by having red balloon days which symbolised the souls going up to Heaven; they obtained name badges so they could greet people; they arranged for the Garden Department to tend the gardens and grounds far more attentively.

These type of changes will not just happen on their own. Often people have a lifetime of put-downs to overcome before they start to believe in themselves again. They need to be reminded of their greatness by someone who deeply believes that something inside them is special.

When these type of changes start to occur, others in the group notice and confidence starts to reinforce itself throughout the whole frontline like a large flywheel on the move and almost anything is possible, including far better customer service by those who have the strongest direct contact and faster more effective frontline decision making. Result: the organisation’s pockets bulge with coin.