Jon Scriven – Group Executive People and Corporate Services at Qantas

Excerpts from Jon’s presentation at the COI Group June 2011 workplace conference.

Jon Scriven gave generously of his time to present at COI’s June conference to discuss what he sees as the key drivers of leadership success, workplace change and workplace effectiveness.

Jon spoke about the importance of the 6 C’s for leadership.

• Clarity,
• Consistency,
• Character,
• Care,
• Curiosity and
• Courage.

Jon spoke about the critical drivers of workplace change.

1. The importance of the Senior Leadership Team as owner with ultimate responsibility
2. The importance of Communication
3. The importance of Line Managers

Here are some excerpts.
‘Clarity, Consistency and Character.

Clarity of vision is essential in leadership.
Consistency of message and behaviour builds alignment and trust.
Character – this is about your integrity, your values.
It’s what you do when nobody is looking.
If you are not of good character as a leader, don’t think you can hide it.

Jon then added another three more C's.

Firstly,
Care.
Great leaders genuinely care: they care about their people, their customers and their
business.

The next,
Curiosity.
Whilst some may believe that curiosity killed the cat what I find is that at the heart of every great idea is somebody who was curious.
Somebody who asked an important question, somebody who was open to how others tackle similar issues, somebody who collects lessons.

The final one is Courage,
Courage to take a position, Courage to be persistent.
Courage to challenge the way things are done.
So the 6 C’s:

• Clarity,
• Consistency,
• Character,
• Care,
• Curiosity and
• Courage.

At the heart of those good two-­way communications are good conversations.
I have a view that business is basically a series of conversations between individuals.
Whether it’s buying and selling. Negotiating terms and conditions.
Sorting through facts and agreeing on strategy, talking to your people and agreeing on tasks, timelines and deliverables -­ or their wages and conditions.
They are all conversations.
Conflict and disharmony are never good for business, yet it is amazing how often they can occur.
They often occur through ineffective conversations.
Two people can sit in a room and disagree, so how do they move forward?
The first assumption should be that neither of them is stupid: they are there because they are smart and they have used their “smartness” to get to their side in the argument.
The second assumption should be that they are not lacking goodwill.
So if people can’t get to an agreed outcome it is almost certainly because one or both of them is operating on either the wrong facts, or a misinterpretation of them or sometimes wrong mental models.
A good conversation should include sorting through the assumptions and understandings until the root cause of the misunderstanding is reached, and then the dialogue can proceed on a shared basis.

That means not defending your position, but opening it up.
It means genuine questions, and listening to answers.
It means investing the time.
It means being very specific, not generalising.
I know this search for the root cause is a real passion here at the COI.

Of course… it’s the immediate manager who is critical.
They are the ones who build the relationship with employees.
The ones whose day to day actions build or breach trust.
A conversation that generates shared understanding, is based on mutual respect and leads to
agreed actions.
A critical part of the training is helping people to learn how to have a proper conversation.
Now Lanning in his invitation said there are five critical things to know about building high performance workplaces.
Well here are mine:
First: You need a committed leadership team.
Second: They need a clear vision and strategy and aligned values.
Third: You need great front line managers who operate as coaches, managers who are
well trained, able to have meaningful conversations and who are informed about the business and its priorities.
Fourth: People need the tools and resources to play their part.
Finally: There should be ongoing feedback, feedback about performance, feedback about behaviours. Recognition for work done and successes achieved.

COI August Conference Guest Presenter: Warren Wilmot, CEO 7 Eleven Stores discussing managing workforce effectiveness during periods of high growth having recently doubled their business size with the acquisition of the Mobil convenience network.

For further information on the complimentary breakfast CONTACT US

Comments

[richard little]

In the academic part of my job, I am always grateful to find good examples of popular leadership literature that I can put before students for critical scrutiny. This piece by the no doubt well-intentioned Mr Scriven is a perfect example of what Gosling calls 'the refrain of leadership'. It is a list of commonplace virtues that avoid everything problematic about the notion of leadership: the impossibilities and paradoxes of trait description (Allport, Kirkpatrick et al), the trap of 'romance' thinking & socially-constructed images of potency (Meindl et al); the problematic power differentials implied in lay descriptions of leadership, (Gastil, Foucault & a dozen others). Until business leaders and those responsible for business leadership development start to bone up on what is actually known and understood about leadership & learn to resist the temptation of shiny books at airports and the nostrums of CEOs, leadership and leadership development will continue to be characterised by wishful thinking, unreliable methodology and patronising and undemocratic assumptions about workplace relationships.