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Dr. Stephen G. Payne details the steps in a leadership journey, and the shift tomorrow's successful managers must make.
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Step by step, Dr. Stephen G. Payne shows how managers can peel back layers of resistance and release the enthusiastic potential in each employee.
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Dr. Stephen G. Payne
president
Leadership Strategies
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Dr. Stephen G. Payne, president of Leadership Strategies, insists that today's managers must scour their horizons with the same scrutinizing eye.
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Payne asks the manager, "Is it worth the effort to capture Fred's and Alice's spirit?
Will it be good for the company, and its profitability to make them vibrant employees?
(Hint: if your computer had slowed to half-speed, would you pay to repair it?) If the manager answers "Probably," he is committing himself to the tricky waters of helping unleash another person's spirit.
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But this is where Payne requires a small, and quite logical step of faith.
"Assume that within each of us there roams a force wanting to build, to create - to do good for the company - for humankind," he says.
"And assume that this force in each individual is seeking to find greater expression in an imperfect world."
While many managers can point to this force and its fountain of enthusiasm in certain employees, they interpret it as something inborn, rather than situational.
Fred, they say, is just naturally always sluggish and bored, while Joe bursts with energy and innovative ideas no matter where he finds himself.
"Look again," says Payne.
Watch Fred with playing competitive tennis, or leading his sons' scout troop up the slopes of Mount Rainier.
You might be surprised at how he radiates energetic force and even leadership potential.
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But if Mr. Payne is telling me not to put my motivating shoulder behind them, what's a poor manager to do?
* Finding Your Force.
"The primary element in an employee's environment is you, Mr. Manager," insists Payne.
The equipment, the size of the office, even the task itself, all take a back seat to the person leading the team.
It is your model that can crush the spirit, or peel back the layers of frustration and let their energies willingly run.
"Producing this effective managerial model demands a major realization," says Payne.
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"In short, as manager you've got to belly up to your own spirituality, and make it work," says Payne.
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This subjective, personal growth, Payne assures executives, absolutely and directly leads to the objective growth of more widgets and more profitability.
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"Even as I say it, I can sense managers across the Garden State recoiling in horror," says Payne.
The very term fills most business executives with an uneasy fear.
"For most people, the word spirituality conjures up images of cathedrals, candles, prayers, and robed priests," Payne says.
"It seems wildly irrelevant to meeting today's sales or production quotas.
So, spirit and business are things we see as naturally separate.
Certainly, several of the more ostensible efforts to imbue company employees with some sort of inner bonding have proved faltering and artificial.
Visions of coworkers singing "KumbayaUnleashing the Spirit" or accountants joining hands in a circle by the pale moonlight, are more apt to rouse a deep inner spirit of only embarrassment.
Forget the forced rituals, says Payne.
Instead, he prescribes this systematic method of peeling back the layers of frustration, growing one's own spirit and passing it on.
"There's no need for fear of the term.
Spiritually is only this resourceful, rich spirit with legs," says Payne.
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Stephen G. Payne calls himself an ex-CEO on a mission.
He wants every executive to achieve the very best results from the leadership journey.
And he is working at it, one client at a time.
Payne grew up in a family of gunmakers and engineers in Birmingham, England. (Payne's great-grandfather actually sailed form Britain hoping to make guns for America's Civil War.) Taking himself out of the family trade, Payne entered Aston University, earning first a bachelor's in 1969, followed by a PH.D. in chemical engineering.
Payne began consulting work for London-based PA Consulting.
After providing managerial guidance to firms in the civilized city of Paris, Payne was ordered across the pond.
He landed in Huntington, West Virginia to help guide that region's CSS Railroad.
Undaunted by the culture sock, Payne rose to be CEO of PA Consulting.
In l994 after descending into his own Valley of Despair, Payne emerged with an epiphany and founded Leadership Strategies.
To date, his company has helped the managing heads of many Fortune 100 corporations as well as small professional firms toward that best possible executive leadership experience.
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