How Effective is the Leader of Your Shared Services Organisation?

Boss Quality Survey Results – Part 2 In this second article in the "Boss Quality" series we look at: How effective is your own boss? What does he/she do best? What could he/she do much better? These opinions come directly from the answers to the 2013 Survey run by SSON, where we invited you to tell us what you really thought about your shared services leader. Shared Services team members from Human Resources, Finance and Accounting, Procurement, and Information Technology openly expressed their views and provided some interesting insights about Shared Services Leadership. (See survey results Part 1) According to our survey, over 15% of respondents think their current or most recent shared services leader is very effective, a good leader all of the time. A further 23 % see their leader as effective most of the time, yet at the other end of the spectrum, over 33% only rate their shared services leader as effective some of the time and more than 10% view their shared services leader as hardly effective at all. So what do good leaders do best? Firstly, the brand personality of a good shared services leader is characterised by strong and effective communication, focused, driving for results, skilled at obtaining the buy-in of top management, as well as capable of putting shared services in a good light all of the time, via effective relationship building with key players in the organisation. This leader has a positive – glass half full – attitude, lists a clear vision, mission and goals, and sets stretching yet achievable challenges for the team. A good leader is a people person, an effective coach who is good at listening, and has the experience to delegate task, empowers individuals, and help the team to do well. The leader has a strategic outlook and aligns the work with the strategy. At the next level, an effective shared services leader supports and cares about the team at all times, especially in difficult circumstances, and has regular team and one-to-one meetings. An effective leader has good business knowledge, is organised, aware of the financials, leads by example, measures performance through metrics, meets deadlines, leverages best practices, and is someone you can trust, who is open to new ideas. And what could leaders do much better at? Those leaders who are not yet performing at the optimum leadership level in the eyes of their shared services team need to "trust us more," be more direct, provide more recognition, give praise, engage more with the team, provide more training and learning opportunities, build the team, "promote more fairly," involve others in the decision making process, be consistent in word and deed, and "be more charismatic as a leader!" Obviously, some of the characteristics of effective leaders are also shortfalls for ineffective leaders and "communicating more effectively" is a big ask. Particularly needed is the ability to "give more information about the strategic targets of the company," and "be more inclusive in charting progress and sharing challenges." Other development needs for shared services leaders include "being more visible to the lower levels", and "not making promises to the business without first knowing that we can deliver." Often, shared services leaders who fall short for their team are not so good at defining and working within the scope of the services the team can provide. They have no clear menu, but respond to those customers who shout loudest. They don’t "fight for the cause" effectively, and are not good at engaging with the business or selling the benefits of the service the team can provide broadly enough. They could certainly do more to provide customer service training to their team. Showing more patience, sensitivity, respect, and improving employee engagement would help some shared services leaders to be more highly regarded by their own team. Last and not least they need to be better at listening to the ideas and opinions generated by the team, and acting on some of these! So these are the views of shared services teams. But that’s not all. Shared Services Leaders also shared their best and their most embarrassing moments! Their anonymity is protected but the details of what they did is not. In the survey we asked: as a boss what has been your worst leadership gaffe? And here are the top ten most embarrassing moments for shared services leaders... Not knowing the names of some of the people in my team. Ok it was a big team but I had been there for over a year! I corrected a team member's English in front of others. I recognised my mistake immediately but it was too late to save her embarrassment and the embarrassment of others on the team. I sent an IM to one of my team leaders asking if he had got feedback on a rogue employee in the team. At the time he had the entire team in his office with his screen projected so everyone could see my IM. I decided not to train anyone in my team last year to save money on the annual budget. I didn’t challenge my team hard enough and accepted mediocrity as the norm. I didn’t confront disruptive behaviour early enough. I forgot to manage upwards when introducing shared services. I let myself be bullied by my team. They tried to mob me out of the job. I didn’t listen to the views of my team before taking action. It turned out they were right! I didn’t empower my team to deal with an important task and ended up doing the work myself – all weekend! And to end on a high, here are the ten best moment’s shared services leaders shared: Developing those around me to do my job effectively. Building high performing teams and turning lazy organisations into active and motivated organisations. Getting a home made "best boss award "from my team. Seeing 80% of the team get promoted into the new GBS team. My team regretting it when I left my employer. They gave me a great send off party to show their appreciation. My greatest pleasure has been to mentor and develop staff. I have almost no turnover as a result and the staff has grown, received needed training, and can articulate clearly their future professional goals. Getting good feedback from my team in the annual employee engagement survey. Being assigned a demotivated and frustrated team. After 6 months the team is highly motivated and very efficient. Successfully completing the full transformation project from decentralised HR to HR shared services! Getting great feedback from one of my peers over something they'd heard about my team. We hope the results of this survey have given shared services leaders something to reflect upon, and that it also provided shared services teams a good opportunity to share their views. Thank you to all who responded. Simon Brown, January 2014 [inlinead]

How Effective is the Leader of Your Shared Services Organisation?

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