We recently hired a new Director for IT services who is very well acclaimed in the industry and comes with a lot of experience. Since this individual sits pretty high up in the pecking order in the organization, we were all pretty excited and anxious about what the leadership direction was going to be. It has been about 4 months now and we are already beginning to see some significant changes – processes are getting more streamlined with the reduced presence of bureaucracy, teams are getting empowered to make their own decisions and are held accountable for them, cross-functional teams are being governed more effectively and the individual person itself is VERY approachable. The person has a keen ear for listening and my guess is – a high EQ. I along with others have seen some very positive steps towards approaching problems and resolving them and we are finally able to collaborate with other disparate teams. I hope this momentum continues as there is a whole LOT of crap still prevalent in the organization and this individual is not victimized by the legacy cultural environment that still dominates to date….
I believe, for good or worse, the senior leadership of every organization is infectious – the leader’s behaviors tend to be transmitted to their direct reports, who pass them on to their subordinates, and so on down. Eventually they permeate the entire organization, influencing activity at all levels. The “unwritten rules” that come out of this infection ultimately get embodied in the organizational culture. It influences all types of individuals – ones who get promoted and ones hired into the organization. It almost creates this positive self-reinforcing feedback loop. As I have witnessed first hand I can safely state that the implication of this example highlights the importance of how leaders can have a significant ‘viral’ impact on their organization.
Now, of course the practice of Leadership is also a choice…the choice of being infectious like the plague or infectious like good virtues and ethical behavior.
