Management Rewired

On my most recent trip, I wrapped up Management Rewired by Charles S. Jacobs. Jacobs takes a look at recent brain research to address some myths of leading people that leaders may have erroneously embraced in the past. As examples, he talks about emotions versus logic in decision-making. He addresses the failure of positive or negative reinforcement to improve performance. He addresses the lack of long-term effectivenes of the authoritarian-style of leadership, instead suggesting that leaders cast a compelling vision through the use of communication and stories to empower self-managed teams.

Here are some of the highlights that challenged my thinking:

• “Using stories to change behavior is more effective than logical declarations.”
• “Leadership isn’t about forcing people to do our bidding, but about telling a story so that they want to do what we need.”
• “The study reviewed pay-for-performance programs, which are a fixture of most corporations, and found no linkage between pay and performance.”
• “Leaders who inspire outperform any other kind.”
• “The more experiential the vision is, the more powerful it will be, so the achievement of the vision should be made as tangible as possible.”
• “People are going to embrace a story to make sense of their experience.”
• “It’s important for the leader to let the followers feel the competitive pressure, but not to the extent that it makes them insecure.”
• “Given the failure of reward and punishment and other extrinsic ways of motivating behavior, managers have no choice but to consistently put the responsibility for performance back on their people.”
• “In a mental world, it is ideas that shape behavior, and it is the transformational leader’s job to package the right kind of ideas into a story and to effectively communicate it to the organization.”
• “The kind of leadership that works is more humble and therefore more empathetic.”
• “Our decisions, no matter what we think to the contrary, are made as much by our emotions as our logic.”
• “It’s the role of the transformational leader to create the story that identifies the kind of change needed and to present it in a way that is meaningful and moving. It should align the needs of the individual with those of the organization, so that people see the necessary changes as a way to meet their desire to be part of something bigger than themselves and realize their fullest potential.”
• “The best leaders are emotionally expressive.”
• “The strongest are often the ones who come across as the most humble, for, given the potential for relationship effects, leaders must step down from their pedestals so that followers don’t become overly dependent.”
• “It’s so quick and so easy to tell people what to do or to tell them how badly they’re doing it. It takes longer to come up with questions to help them decide what to do or realize that their performance isn’t cutting it, but the questions produce a better result. Questions build commitment and overcome the resistance to being controlled.”
• “When we tap into the stories others are telling themselves, we gain a clearer understanding of who they are and why they do what they do.”
• “Stories are the most useful tool we have in the mental world. They have a unique power to sneak up on people and change the way they think and behave.”

If you are interested in reading more, you can purchase Management Rewired using my Amazon link.