Many banks do not make the best use of their most important resource: their own executives' skills.
In this time of reengineering, layoffs, and bottom-line consciousness, too many companies are still quite shortsighted. They commonly neglect developing and using their executives' full potentials, and repeat four mistakes.
First, banks waste a lot of money when they fail to develop their executives' interpersonal leadership skills in a changing business environment. Companies often offer so-called leadership or management seminars, "canned" presentations that seldom vary from group to group and are limited to formulaic or abstract concepts of what skills leaders and managers need.
While these seminars can be effective short-term stimulants, they seldom change long-term executive behavior.
Executives - even top-producing executives - need to learn how to be strategic in specific real-life situations, not just in the abstract. They must be aware of their reactions to the people they manage and of how their actions and words affect those people. In a reengineered environment, executives must be good with people as well as products if they want to keep their jobs.
Second, executive development is often crippled by corporate cultures in which unpleasant behavior is encouraged, rather than censured, in the name of profits. In recent years, aggressive, discourteous, self-centered behavior has become a corporate style of doing business; rude behavior is an epidemic infecting the financial industry.
Many companies reward their high-performing executives' aggressive, competitive behavior with big bonuses and promotions. While this kind of behavior produces short-term profit for the whole bank, the long-term cost can be great. The executive's skills stay narrow as he or she gets rewards while the demoralized staff disrespects or dislikes the boss. The team is left with little sense of cohesiveness or company loyalty.
But aggressive behavior need not be anathema. Aggression is a powerful, forward-moving energy that can be wisely focused and used. When executives learn how to channel their aggression productively, they and the bank become more successful.
Third, corporations pay lip service to the myth of team-building. It's a hot training buzzword right now, but the often-assumed focus is all wrong. Many firms have organizational charts defining job descriptions, but few pay much attention to shaping the behavior of, and interactions among, team members.
Most of the emphasis on team-building emphasizes abstract slogans. For example, "We know we're in this together, so let's act like a team," or "let's figure out how to climb this wall together so we'll feel like a team." Again, theoretical exercises may stimulate thinking but seldom change day-to-day interactions.
So what is team-building, really? It's about getting real people with differing personalities and opinions to live and work with each other daily with the least conflict and most productivity possible.
Fourth, there is often a stunning lack of communication among senior managers, executives, and staff. Further, the communication flow is seldom two-way.
Senior managers could be issuing widely distributed, printed weekly memos on what's going on inside the firm. Further, senior managers should be holding monthly breakfasts with all their managers, in reasonably small groups, to keep some personal dialogue going.
However, it is crucial that morale-boosting communications be truthful. Even uncertainty can be communicated in a positive, motivational but truthful way. Top executives know the differences among no information, disinformation, and the truth. Ultimately, executive talent will be more likely to ride out shaky periods if strong personal relationships and reality-based, truthful dialogue exist between upper- and mid-level management.
Those companies that focus on executives' people skills as well as product skills, and reward the good behavior of the real people who work there, will flourish. "Nicer guys" really do finish first.n
Ms. Austin is president of Austin Consulting in New York. She is an executive coach, a team-building and management consultant, and a certified psychotherapist.
