Do the members of your team cringe when you ask them to step up and lead? Is it due to lack of title? What are you doing to build non-positional leaders who focus on making a positive impact from any place in organizational hierarchy?

Contributor

• • Sam Segran, CIO, Texas Tech University (TTU)

Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to this segment of CTN. To Learn more please visit ciotalknetwork.com the topic for today is Building Non Positional Leaders and our guest for today is Sam Segran, who’s the CIO with Texas Tech University. Hey Sam, how are you?

Sam Segran [00:00:16]:
Pretty good.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:18]:
All right, great to have you and the reason we wanted to talk about this subject is we have a lot going on in organizations today and we want our direct reports as well as people who are at the very least level at the bottom level of the organization. Everyone needs to get involved, be taking the initiatives and show some leadership traits but then it’s not uncommon for on one hand an organization be seen as innovative and progressive or even there’s lack of such innovation but in both cases we find that there would be members who cringe at the whole idea of stepping up and lead and while we give them pep talks. but it simply doesn’t happen and many times it has been seen because they feel that if they don’t have the title that means that’s not their responsibility. We are talking about non positional leaders that we need to develop and how do you go about it, how do we start, where do we start and what are the challenges.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:21]:
So that’s all we want to discuss. So Sam, as a reality today, if you look at any organization, we always see a very few people in the group who will be ready to jump into the fire voluntarily or when you ask them to and then there would be other people who will like to wait and watch while yes, at the performance review you will ding them and or look at them, whether to keep them or to manage them out or whatever else that you do as a workforce but on a daily basis there is an opportunity for the leaders to be able to convert these people’s mindset where they take the initiatives but we feel it is not where we want to be in many organizations. What do you think is the reason for this disparity among the people who really are gung ho about their job and what they are there to do versus other people who are not as much.

Sam Segran [00:02:32]:
Sanjog, I think first, thank you for having me on the show.

Sam Segran [00:02:35]:
Great topic and having been in the business for a little bit, one of the things I would say is that’s pretty complex question. No single answer for that but, part of it naturally goes back to the person himself or herself in terms of their own personalities, their characteristics, their knowledge levels in the area but beyond that, I think overall it goes back to the company’s culture or the organization’s culture and the leadership and what trends have been stats over the number of years to facilitate a certain culture in the organization and I think if a leadership is leading in a direction, then what happens is over the long period of time they will set the tone for what the expectation is from employees and sometimes that tends to stifle and sometimes it tends to encourage employee participation between the combination of employees themselves and the leadership and the culture of the organization, I think that really sets the pace of what we tend to see in different organizations. Sometimes people step up a whole lot more than in other organizations.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:50]:
So what you just said is of course there is a dependence on the culture and the leadership and we will talk more about it. We wanted to explore why some people at the very we can say okay, the environment is not good, this person is not performing, but in many cases it is not that bad either. So other things remaining the same. What’s so different about an individual who jumps in and wants to ask always okay, what’s next I can do and is willing to lead? Is this a DNA because they may not have really groomed themselves only in this organization, they may have come from somewhere else. So in order for us to really work towards building those non positional leaders, we got to know the DNA of such people who lead or want to lead versus the ones who don’t.

Sam Segran [00:04:47]:
I think it’s part DNA, but also part of it is also how they were they grew up in terms of the environment, in terms of just the parenting part of it, how much opportunity they were given sharing by example, how family members do and then getting into school systems. I think some naturally tend to go in that direction and as to why, I think it’s a very complex question nurture versus nature. You always have that conversation come up in these areas but there’s another part in that mix which is also the confidence level that has to be there and that really comes about in terms of how knowledgeable the person feels in an area. How comfortable are they in an area in terms of knowing the topic.

Sam Segran [00:05:31]:
I think that also contributes to someone having the confidence to take a leadership role in a particular area.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:39]:
So you spoke about confidence. Now if you were to look at the current situation, even the leaders cannot say they have confidence and the wherewithal to be able to tackle the new digital age innovations or disruptions. We cannot really expect that confidence to be naturally existing but the whole idea about jumping into the fire is something someone has to be motivated to do that somebody has to be able to take the risk to do that and secondly, something where the reward is big enough for someone to say, hey, should I just move away from the status quo or my life as usual and unnecessarily rock the boat.

Sam Segran [00:06:33]:
I think we can facilitate as organizational leadership, we can actually facilitate folks to go in a direction that actually helps them open up and get more confident but what we need to do really is to number one, send the message down but number two also provide tools for them. For instance, we are partnered with Gartner Consulting and they provide a lot of tools for us in technology assessments and stuff but they also provide leadership tools that we can utilize. One of the toolkit that Gartner has is called the five situational leadership types and the provider workshop and we actually organize that using our Gartner CIO partner that we have. We requested for them to come and provide a leadership training for our employees and about half the workforce.

Sam Segran [00:07:25]:
Mainly initially it was started out for managers and supervisors, but we opened it up to anyone who wanted and we found that we almost tripled the number of people who wanted that training beyond the existing positional leaders and that was an all day session that helped tremendously of identifying personality, identifying their strength, working in teams, speaking up, so it’s an exercise that actually helps build confidence for employees. So tools like that, opportunities like that do make a difference and that’s one part of it. There was a leadership training, but we also coupled it with communication training for employees and some of them want to figure out the proper way to communicate, proper context, working in different groups and then they realize there’s also a barrier that exists sometimes in terms of not having had that opportunity to actually get into that space when you give them a work environment where they actually get to practice that we have found that employees do open up in that area.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:36]:
So think of these trainings that you mentioned. It’s interesting subject because training, when you say okay, leaders are going to take the training and someone raises their hand that I want to go for this training too. Part of it, yes, pure learning, that could be an intention but another thing is it’ll look good on my resume. When we are talking about non positional leadership, it is about when someone does things even when no one is watching. It’s not about taking a training only, it’s important but to be able to implement creativity, initiative, risk taking, teamwork, leading the charge, influencing others to take people along when nobody asked them and nobody was watching them.

Sam Segran [00:09:29]:
That’s probably a couple of ways. One of course is recognition is one where when people come up with ideas, innovative ideas and things like that, to actually recognize that either in the context of a meeting, in the context of an email among employees and thanking the person that does one piece of it but over the long haul, sometimes employees tend to see that kind of initiative might have led others to promotional opportunities into actual positional leadership eventually and that’s the other part of it but there’s also the third component where there’s a personal satisfaction people get in terms of what they do and if we create a work environment where we want employees to be happy and satisfied, I think that also will help employees feel like they’re doing the right thing even when no one is watching, where they don’t. They don’t need to be in an environment that’s stressed all the time or suppressed all the time, that they actually are happy working. So if you can create an environment towards that, I think that also facilitates employees doing things that are correct,

Sam Segran [00:10:37]:
innovative when no one is watching.

Sanjog Aul [00:10:40]:
So the techniques or the approaches that you suggested definitely will be of a lot of value and they will be helpful. One is to look at these people outside in. Another is to look at people inside out. What are their agendas, what are their aspirations, where do they want to go and yes, we have systems in place in an organization like performance appraisal or career planning, et cetera, but do you think the people who are within a company are truly authentic or able to stay authentic in where they want to be and the leadership is actually looking at one person at a time versus broad stroking to make sure that particular person’s definition of what success for that person is what will bring them satisfaction and what will keep smiles on their face as paramount and as a priority over looking at them with one lens across all.

Sam Segran [00:11:44]:
I think part of that also is determined by the size of the organization and sometimes when folks talk about having a very formal organizational structure and a very flat organizational structure, the other piece that’s missing from that is actually the size of the organization. If you have a dozen employees versus a few hundred versus a few thousands, then having some form of structure helps but then the other part of it is who actually is in touch with these employees on a daily basis or weekly basis to really see what’s going on. So then as the organization gets larger, you gotta have. Now we may be talking about the third layer rather than the second layer, because you really need the second layer to be part of the leadership team. That helps the third or fourth layer of employees to be able to develop themselves into this area. So I’d say that 5 of the organization has an aspect to it.

Sanjog Aul [00:12:49]:
Let’s take a quick break, listeners, and we’ll be right back and let’s talk about the difference between a leader and a manager because we spoke about multiple levels in an organization. So a leader is supposed to get the right things done and a manager or a director, which is the second, third, fourth layers that you may have in your organization, they are measured on getting the things done right. It’s the reverse where they’re given a scope, get it done the way it is supposed to be and you’ll be able to get rewarded. Now whatever you reward an individual on, that is what they practice and that’s what they promote but you’re trying to build leaders but measuring and incenting them on being managers. So how do you eat the cake and have it too? Let’s explore

Sanjog Aul [00:13:43]:
we’ll be right back. Please stay tuned.

Sanjog Aul [00:15:44]:
Welcome back. So Sam, the leader versus Manager. Leaders are supposed to get the right things done and managers are incented and rewarded and measured on getting the things done right and when you are essentially getting these people to literally live on a regular basis on getting the things done right and at the same time you want them and the people who report to these managers to demonstrate the leadership, that’s a conflict in itself. How do we get over that?

Sam Segran [00:16:22]:
I think part of that is also how we actually train the managers first. One of the things that we look at for managers, for instance, is managers are just going back to the positional authority in terms of getting task done, work done, moving the company in a certain direction and having employees basically follow rules, adhere to rules, have policies and things of that nature but in that environment, if all you have is just managers, you will not see any innovation in any place. You will see a mediocre company in terms of a major organization. I think leadership is where people either at a senior level take major visionary approach to moving the organization in a major direction, or almost everyone at any part of the organization takes initiatives and initiatives in support of others in the organization, or initiatives and so forth of the organization themselves and I think that is a communication issue that we need to have in a conversation approach or official meeting approach or written approach. I think we need to be able to communicate that to employees that there is a difference

Sam Segran [00:17:39]:
and we do want to encourage leadership approach at different levels without convening existing rules that the organization may have because you don’t want it to go in a different direction, that suddenly you have employees who don’t do what the manager wants because they feel like they’re taking a leadership approach and that takes it in the wrong direction.

Sanjog Aul [00:18:03]:
How about us fundamentally even challenge the very topic? Do you really want everyone in your organization to show leadership trait or assume a leadership mindset? Wouldn’t too many chefs cook the broth be a risky proposition?

Sam Segran [00:18:25]:
I think that could be, but they also depends because if you’re going to have people take, I think there’s the main thing is leadership role doesn’t mean that an employee no longer does what they’re supposed to do within the context of the organization. I think leadership control can be done in very small increments in small areas and what we might not recognize as a leadership role could be for the employee where they have taken the initiative to do something that contributes basically back to the organization. Now you definitely need to have. A friend of mine once told me many years ago when we were training, and this is probably close to 20 years ago, and I remember he talked about having employees of a certain mix between, I think his son’s ex was having programmers and I think he said he wanted resources and he wanted to have me off

Sam Segran [00:19:24]:
and his idea was he really was talking about changing from the old legacy mainframe to getting into the client server environment about 20 years ago and in his mind he was looking at programmers like in the old Coremal and Things like that, where he needed them to just come every day and keep the lights on, keep the programs running, make sure that the original codes are there, make sure that the updates are being done but at the same time he wanted to then get into the new area of client server approach and Gartner actually characterizes as more and more as a bimodal approach but so if you talk about leadership in that instance, can we have leaders on both sides? Yes, we can. It’s just that the leadership type is going to be different in the different groups of folks.

Sanjog Aul [00:20:15]:
And when you speak about that.

Sam Segran [00:20:16]:
It doesn’t automatically put somebody into an upward managerial position. It could lead there, but it doesn’t automatically put them there.

Sanjog Aul [00:20:25]:
And further to that question that I just asked, if you look at any of the defense services, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, in any country, they succeed in winning a war or a battle based on some people making those strategic decisions, other people following orders without putting much input or without putting much thought into why that was done, while they would buy into it but then they will follow it down to the very last sentence that was uttered by the general is because that’s how they will get certain things done. Now we understand that leadership itself is important and that’s why we are even having this discussion. Where would you draw the line because if everyone says, in my view the right thing to do is X and that is in direct conflict with what the top leadership said, then we’ll be butting heads all day or nothing will get done, or there will be slowed down or there will be a passive resistance.

Sam Segran [00:21:32]:
I think this goes back to the, once again, when we started, I talked about having the right leadership at the senior level makes a huge difference because I think at the senior leadership level, cooks need to be able to listen first before making strategic decisions. I think the military context is a little bit similar to businesses, organizations, where in an organization if we have for instance a strategic plan for the organization. So for us we have three major strategic mission vision that we are actually heading towards in terms of initiatives. So everybody actually knows what the strategic part of the institution is. The second thesis after that is from that point onward, how do you achieve those initiatives? What are the day to day goals? What are the paths you need to do and that’s where I think the initial piece of setting the goal is, vision is good, but then the employees can come up with different ways to actually achieve that

Sam Segran [00:22:35]:
and if the leader themselves want to set the strategic vision, the initiatives, the goals, the tasks, everything themselves that’s when it becomes what I said earlier. As a mediocre organization, I think you really need skills at different levels, at different depths and breadth where people are able to achieve something that the leaders want. The leader doesn’t have everything. They don’t have all the knowledge and I think that’s where being able to open it up. So contributions, ideas, thoughts from everyone and then eventually coalescing that into a few specific things that make sense and ultimately I think the leadership should look at that and say, okay, I buy into this and that’s a type of culture, at least from what I believe is approachable and workable but I think a leader can do it alone and neither can the employees.

Sam Segran [00:23:27]:
One leads to the dictator approach and the other one goes to anarchy on the other side. So I think we need to have a healthy mix there.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:35]:
So one is to expect that from them, perhaps coach them, train them but how do we make it easy for these people who essentially have that spark in them to actually lead even though they don’t have a formal power or title because frankly the team members watch each other, that hey, I tried to demonstrate it, I tried to do something, but that gets shut down and I know you will definitely go back to the culture side of it but then this could be spanning different leaders. So the people will not go away, perhaps the leaders might change. So could you have a culture that you’re referring to be independent of the leadership at the top so that it is self healing, self managing?

Sam Segran [00:24:27]:
It is possible. I think, for instance, when we do the basic brainstorming approach, which is no idea is wrong, there is no blame, every idea goes into the basket. So if you try and approach on a brainstorming approach that actually helps people contribute, why you don’t get too many ideas in terms of actually somebody doing something? I think we talked about not just recognizing it. We actually celebrate like in our case end of the year when everybody is having Christmas parties and stuff, we actually forward division for a few hundred employees. We come together more as recap of the whole year, what we did, how we moved closer to the targets for the institution, how we achieved the strategic objectives and then in the process we also have a segment where we actually recognize individuals who contributed to specific things and that list is usually different year by year because different people have contributed and so something of that I think works for us where we are actually able to recognize employees in different ways.

Sam Segran [00:25:44]:
Sometimes it is just a mention of a name, sometimes if it is big enough, it’s an award. Sometimes it’s a promotion and usually it could also even just be a byline in a news bulletin or an article that we read out that somebody is recognized for something they did and in some instances we might actually share customer feedback where the customer themselves have recognized one of these employees for stepping up and doing something right. I think you have to use a multiple way of getting all these ways of mechanisms and tools and methods where we are able to get people being recognized in different ways both formally and informally and I think if you do that continuously called full step up and we have seen it.

Sanjog Aul [00:26:34]:
Let’s take a quick break listeners. We’ll be right back and how about we also evaluate if by design every member of your team has a default right to non positional leadership because you could find people who might even use or abuse that flexibility or liberty to say, hey, I’m going to try to do ABC, whereas they are not even fulfilling their assigned duties. On one hand I could see that you could shoot down that idea from the very beginning that hey, if you’re not doing your assigned duties, why are you even thinking of doing things outside of the scope of what you were hired for but on the other hand, if you allow them a complete freedom, they might show propensity towards doing a certain other type of job as their interest and their competencies are shifting. That could actually help you groom or move that person to a role where they can be most productive and most value creating. How do we tackle this scenario or how do we make sure that any person at any given time is always given the right type of opportunities which is very good for them and in the process will work out to be even better for the organization. Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:51]:
Welcome back. So the question here is do you allow a default right to every member of your team, no matter how they’re performing in their current assigned duties, to go do experimentation and spread their wings or you make it more regimented and all of this, of course, in the best interest of the organization and the person involved. What would be the approach you would advocate?

Sam Segran [00:30:23]:
I think one of the ideas, it can be more formal than others. Remember back in early 2000, I think Google had the approach of giving employees 20% of their time working on whatever they wanted, so long as it benefits Google and over time I think I’ve seen different reports that has diminished a little bit or less people are using it and supposedly it’s dwindled a little bit. So they may have discovered some employee HR issues along the way but I think in the early years they also benefited from some of the projects that employees worked on but I think in order to make sure that we don’t lose a handle on where things are, we need to make sure that the primary reasons that employees are hired do get fulfilled, otherwise the company is going to suffer. I think in terms of setting a specific 10% of the time or 20% of the time may be a decent approach

Sam Segran [00:31:21]:
but because you don’t want an employee taking a week off to go do something without doing their work, and that does not help but sometimes employees may come up with ideas on their own time and when it gets developed to a certain point, then they could actually come talk to managers or their supervisors and ask for formal time to work on a project. So if they have a partially developed idea that they think will help the organization, then they can actually formalize a little bit more time towards dedicated towards that project. So that might be one approach, the other one having a blanket rule like 20% or 10%. When the organization has some pressing projects to be delivered and they’re short on staff and they have some bottom lines to meet, then that approach is probably going to be more towards making sure that their basic duties are fulfilled first. So it really goes back into where the organization is in terms of being able to dedicate that much time and sometimes it may have to be an employee’s own time to show what they can do before a commitment is made on resources.

Sam Segran [00:32:33]:
So those are all different approaches I think we can look at.

Sanjog Aul [00:32:37]:
And so what you just mentioned will definitely get them to move forward and company will get what they want. Would you think going and focusing on first get the job done? What you were asked for goes against the core need of an individual who says I want to grow and not having to wait till the next performance appraisal or career planning or discussion cycle to continue to do same thing as if they were widget makers and in that process, in fact the company loses the value this individual could have otherwise created if they were given the chance to blossom.

Sam Segran [00:33:21]:
Maybe, I think the waiting for the annual performance review may be a little bit too long once a year, because by that time the employee may decide, okay, this is not a place for me, I’ll go somewhere else where I can develop further. I think this is where having supervisory staff closer to the employees as part of the overall organization philosophy of enabling this culture, be able to have regular contact with the employee, whether it’s monthly or weekly or bi-weekly and be able to adjust accordingly, I think is a better approach than to wait once a year or even twice a year to be able to actually work with employee on that. There will be cases. This is where it gets a little bit tricky, where we need to be one of our biggest partners for us where we work is our HR team. Our HR team has enabled us especially in an environment where in an IT environment where the employee turnover is pretty high, we actually are doing pretty good mainly because our HR team worked with us on that and in our instance, what we have done is basically put an overall environment that’s formal in terms of making sure that we don’t necessarily have a career track just for managers and leaders.

Sam Segran [00:34:43]:
We also have a career track for technical folks because if they can demonstrate leadership roles and technical areas, we want to grow them in that direction rather than making them into a manager. So we have something formal like that but then on the other hand, if we wanted to get with employees on a day to day basis of measuring what they’re doing on a daily versus what they would like to do, we need to make sure that we actually are in sync with our HR folks to have the right guidance for those employees.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:17]:
And when you’re looking at these people and you’re talking about the non positional leadership and they start saying I’m going to take leadership approach and they start going into saying yes to a lot of things, could that also be a mask that they could be wearing for escapism that they don’t really want to do what is assigned to them for whatever reasons they have. Of course, one is that they don’t like it or they just simply are too bored out of it or there may be other reasons for them to escape or it could be someone who want to look like a hero and perhaps use that as a way that during performance appraisal they’ll say, hey look, I did this so increase my salary or use it as a form of flattery for promotion. How do you prevent any and every abuse.

Sam Segran [00:36:10]:
That’s what the managers are paid for. That’s a very challenging environment. One of the things that, and I have folks who have picked up on technical tracks rather than management track mainly because they want to avoid this scenarios of having to work with employees on a daily basis because in certain instances that kind of employees ends up consuming your time and stressing you out but that’s part of what managers are for, to be able to guide employees in the right direction but also not wait till that performance review time to tell them no, you can’t do this, no, you couldn’t or shouldn’t have done this. This is where going back to tracking them on a more regular basis, you can guide them away from those areas rather than letting them go too far in one direction. Where then at that point it becomes an HR disciplinary issue. You need to track them more frequently.

Sanjog Aul [00:37:03]:
So what you just mentioned is people will of course go and get paid as managers to be able to tackle it, but they don’t want to come down with an iron hand to always look at everyone with a suspicion but at the same time be able to prevent an abuse? So are there ways and techniques that these managers be taught so that they are able to create a healthy balance where people still are motivated to demonstrate non positional leadership but also not get away with abuse?

Sam Segran [00:37:47]:
I think that definitely has to be more of the formalized supervisory training that in our case we have done it either through our HR department or we actually bring in outside groups that comes in and train supervisors in those skills where you learn to recognize employees. Earlier on we talked about personal characteristics of employees. Learning to recognize those characteristics, learning to recognize that there are different kinds of employees with different motivational aspects of things in terms of why they do things and all of this. Equipping our managers and supervisors with those skill sets is useful, but they also have to be connected with the senior leadership in the sense that they know what the expectation are of how they need to guide the employees it needs to be a little bit more formalized. It needs to be part of how we do it. It could be through a normal meeting, or it could be a specific meeting for this purpose. I think managers need to be trained for that. Otherwise you will end up with potentially employee HR issues.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:54]:
And when you do talk about the teams as the lowermost level or even at the managerial level, when somebody is trying to spread their wings, there could always be people who would demotivate them, say, why do you have to go extra out of way, you’re getting paid, take a cushy job, work 9 to 5 or there could be other toxic behaviors or influences that these members who otherwise would have blossomed or would have tried to spread their wings, they get pulled down and I know we can go back to the culture, but then specifically in a team environment, a lot that goes on, which even a manager would not come to know unless otherwise someone tells them, how do you clean that environment? So whosoever wants to spread their wings at least gets a clean, healthy and objective environment to do this.

Sam Segran [00:39:54]:
This scenario can exist even in junior highs and high school. So when you have friends and fear pressures and things like that either helps you or doesn’t or detracts you. So same thing in a work environment. I think one of the things that you can look at is to make sure that the directions of clear communications are clear across all employees. You’ve got to encourage open communications for employees to talk to team leaders, among themselves, all to supervisors and if you’ve come, become aware of specific toxic members. In most organizations, eventually toxic members tend to surface. They tend to show themselves sooner or later just by their behavior. I think in those instances there should be private individual conversations with those members so that they are not derailing what the whole organization is trying to do to make things better for both employees and for the organization.

Sam Segran [00:40:52]:
I think that’s one of those tough conversations that sometimes we need to have and if we do that consistently, I think employees themselves will also step up and be able to work on those issues, either through supervisors or directly with employees and personalities can be difficult. Some personalities tend to be very hard.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:13]:
No totally, so my question on this particular subject is that it is dependent on someone reporting it or you diagnosing it. What about the latent toxicity, if you will, how do you make the team self healing that anyone who is pulling people down or a group or whatever that may be, the team automatically fixes it because coming top down, beating them up, not literally, but trying to disciplining them it sometimes doesn’t even give that sense of freedom, that sense of okay, you guys can deal with it yourself and building them into leaders who are autonomous.

Sam Segran [00:41:59]:
Earlier the workshops and communications trainings are helpful in that direction and I think theoretically once in a while you may have to remove a bad apple to allow the team to flourish. I think it’s a combination approach. You got to look at that and you won’t have it perfect. There will be high performing teams and there will be teams that if they are not going to take pride in doing better, they’re just going to just language and every now and then when you have a toxic member who has a very strong personality, that tends to dampen the team and I think once in a while you got to remove that so that the team can actually then move forward.

Sanjog Aul [00:42:40]:
Let’s take a quick break listeners. We will be right back and let’s compare to what we saw. The way the teams were supposed to function say 10 years ago versus now, when the speed at which our business is moving and the initiatives that we need to pick up as an organization are changing multifold. The knowledge that you need is different or new. The leaders themselves in some cases don’t have a clue and in that case you want everyone to step up. So there is a great amount of opportunity but then if you are in the haze yourself, are you in the best position to create a culture where everyone is trying to walk in the haze and give ideas and shooting from the pants? Is that what you want it to become or someone or in some way, we have to have some clarity at the specific levels, maybe at leadership or management level for you to get by in a realistic manner and in a practical manner in this new fast moving environment.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:53]:
Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Sanjog Aul [00:45:48]:
Welcome back. So 10 years ago you had a certain pace and I’ll not say that it’s too old, like too far back. I’m talking but even 10 years ago we were not dealing with this new faster, digital now type of an environment where everything was moving fast, things were disrupted by the week, months or quarter and we were trying to get people to move with full knowledge in the past but now by design, you simply cannot claim that you will have all the knowledge and wherewith all, including the leaders. So if someone comes and says I want to give an idea or they do give an idea or they show the initiative with you yourself at the leadership level, not sure what the next move is. Would just the act of someone giving idea or just trying to spread their wings is the right thing to foster or encourage?

Sam Segran [00:46:51]:
I think it goes back once again they want to spread their wings. Does it support the organization’s goals or what the organization wants to do? If the organization has dedicated a small area of time or resources to actually let employees do and spread their wings, the real issue is it helping the organization or not because ultimately the organization has to be able to say no. If they want to spread their wings on their own area, that doesn’t benefit us, they need to be in their own time but if it is going to support us and then that’s where actually they need to encourage that. That’s the piece of it and I think when things are moving real fast, especially in the current generation with the social media and technology tools and the millennial employees, I think it’s really good timing wise in terms of recognizing that employees will probably want to spread their wings earlier, faster with new tools and that may be an area that organizations tend to take a second look and see what is in it that the organizations can tap and take advantage of.

Sanjog Aul [00:48:04]:
So I agree with you. I’d like to add an angle. There is when you are trying to move fast and you are trying to have these people contribute but if you only look at them as an organizational resource versus as individuals, because all of this is about people development which comes and helps us. So it’s not may not be a short term strategy, but it can definitely pay well in the mid to long term. So should we be looking at mid to long term and allowing these people to still continue to spread their wings even though on the surface it may not look like it’s the best utilization of their time in the interest of the immediate organizational goals?

Sam Segran [00:48:50]:
We actually have a few cases where we actually had to move these employees to different parts of the organization. So it turns out that sometimes there’s no right fit for where they were, but where they were showing their interest was in another area and so we actually sometimes have to shuffle those employees, especially if those employees are good employees who are contributing benefiting the organization. We may actually find that we may train them further in a direction they have expressed an interest in and move them to another area of the organization and we’ve actually done that a few times. We’ve moved people from server environment to networking. We’ve moved employees from desktop support into security. We’ve moved people sometimes from totally out of IT into another area of the organization that has nothing to do with IT

Sam Segran [00:49:47]:
but the employee showed some promise and interest in totally another area. So we actually facilitate that piece of it also.

Sanjog Aul [00:49:55]:
In 30 seconds, what would you say would be your recommendation to other leaders who may be listening to it as the recipe for building and developing non positional leaders?

Sam Segran [00:50:10]:
Open communication, clear communications, gift. Make sure that all the way from the top to the employees, through the managers, supervisors that we give a clear direction that this is an approach that you support. Here is how we’re going to do it. Here are the types of trainings and workshop that we’re going to do. Why are we doing this? How does this support the business and how does it support the employees? I think all of those pieces need to be talked and I think we need to make sure that we have our HR folks very close to us in the process.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:45]:
On behalf of the show and our listeners, thanks so much Sam for sharing your views on how we can work together among the leaders and the managers together and build and develop these non positional leaders. Thank you.

Sam Segran [00:50:58]:
Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Sanjog Aul [00:51:01]:
And listeners hope you enjoyed, got a few nuggets from what we discussed here today to build non positional leaders. Please like us on Facebook, search for CTN that is CIO Talk Network and be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn group. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CTN. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week take care and god bless.

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