At a recent in-house leadership development programme I was delivering, I came across an unusual number of lateral leaders among the participants.  These were senior managers with accountability for achieving results through people or teams over whom they had no formal authority.

The setting was a medical facility where a high level of collaboration and co-operation was required across a multiplicity of disciplines and functions.  The programme participants, senior managers, were drawn from various departments e.g. clinical, nursing, catering, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physiotherapy, social work, administration, facilities, IT.

Over the course of the programme, I brought up the subject of the challenges of lateral leadership with three separate groups of participants.  What I found really interesting was that few – if any – of our lateral leaders were aware that ‘lateral leadership’ was not only an established term,  but was a bona-fide management style .  These were all senior professionals, highly qualified and accomplished in their primary disciplines, professions or functions.

What they were very well aware of, however, was the day-to-day challenge of achieving the objectives of their own role while relying in part, or sometimes totally, on the discretionary co-operation of their colleagues or peers. In some cases, on peers from outside the organisation.

In this age of cost-cutting, re-sizing and getting more done with fewer resources, change initiatives have grown increasingly complex.  Most high-level change initiatives now involve multiple functions, disciplines or departments within and often between organisations.  These days many such interventions involve an entire sector.  Consequently, new kinds of collaborative partnerships, alliances and associations are on the increase.

In these conditions – with numbers of interim projects, virtual work groups, temporary teams and voluntary committees on the rise – the traditional command and control management style just won’t work.  Oftentimes there is no carrot and no stick.  This raises some interesting questions and challenges for the emerging lateral leader:

What are the imperative characteristics of a great lateral leader?

How can a newly appointed lateral leader become productive and effective quickly?

What added-value can a lateral leader bring to an organisation?

How does the lateral leader motivate a work-group when there’s no financial reward available for collaborative results?

Consensus v. conflict.  How can the lateral leader manage facilitate effective problem-solving and decision-making?

What motivates peers or colleagues to yield their discretionary ‘followership’ to a lateral leader?

These are some of the questions that #kaizenblog host Elli St.George Godfrey (@3keyscoach) and I (@MiriamAhern) will be discussing on Twitter #kaizenblog on Friday 3^rd February 2012 ( 5pm GMT/12pm ET/9am PT).  Why not join us?

Miriam Ahern is Managing Partner of Align Management Solutions.  She is a Certified Management Consultant.  Miriam is President of the Irish Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers.

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Dublin City Enterprise Board

LINK! Start-up Business Network – March Event

You are advised to book early to secure your attendance at this event

Email your booking to link@dceb.ie

Clarion Hotel, IFSC

Tuesday 30th March 2010, 6.00pm – 8.30pm

How to Exploit Your PC’s/MAC’s to Get Them Really Working For Your Business!

Guest Speaker:Christian Kortenhorst, CK Computer Solutions

Every business, big or small, is totally reliant on technology.   At this event LINK! member, Christian Kortenhorst, will talk about some simple, cheap and easy IT solutions for small/medium size companies like ours to use in their every-day business.  He will introduce us to some useful and cost-effective applications.  He will also show us how to spend less time on our computers trying to solve those frustrating recurring problems that annoy us so much!

Some of the topics Christian will explore:

• Email, IMAP VS Pop3
• Online services VS Desktop applications
• Document-sharing
• Dropbox
• Calendars
• Multiple computer setup
• Using what you have
• Mobile devices
• Hardware recommendations
• Online backups
• Open source software

If you have a specific IT topic that you would like Christian to address, you can email your request to Christian@cksolutions.ie .

After the session you should have a better understanding of how a small to medium size business should ideally be set-up for managing files and documents, coordinating email and backing up your data.

Christian Kortenhorst is based in Dublin, Ireland.  He has over 8 years’ broad-ranging technical experience, for example in setting up servers, network environments, and backup systems.  Christian offers consulting and hands-on solutions in these and many other technical areas. He set up his business –  CK Computer Solutions –  in 2008 having completed 4 years in Computer Science in DIT.

Christian’s mission is to provide a quality and creative IT service to small and medium sized businesses. “We strive to advise and provide the best product and services that fits a company’s needs. With our constant research and testing of products and services we are able to keep our clients up-to-date with the best possible products and services that are tried and tested. We select products and services objectively based on a company’s needs and wants.”

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