Leadership is an enormous responsibility – you lead people, you show them the way. You are responsible for not only achieving the company targets and vision, but more importantly, you are responsible for the team you lead. You are responsible to ensure they grow as people in their leadership skills, knowledge and talents. They are in your hands. No small or easy task! Your ability to do this has an immense impact on who is wiling to truly follow you – this determines your effectiveness and level of influence as a leader.
In order for you to lead people with increasing effectiveness, you need to continually grow in your own leadership skills and abilities. All great leaders know they must constantly re-evaluate their leadership and improve to remain effective – they can’t remain stagnant. The world is changing at a blistering pace and therefore so must they. To do this they know they have to face the truth head on and ask themselves the tough questions. Effective leaders have self-honesty and are prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure they continually grow to not just remain current, but to be relevant.
Will you look the truth head on?
What do you need to do better?
Where do you need self-improvement as the leader?
The team you lead needs you to grow as a leader. The leader that leads you needs you to continually grow in your leadership. Bringing about leadership change is an inside decision which requires teachability and humility to face the truth head on.
Are you teachable?
Do you have humility?
Leadership determines whether you rise or fall. Whether it’s the coach of an under 9’s soccer team, to the trainer of your Boot Camp, to the owner of a local franchise, to the CEO of an organisation – at the end of the day, the responsibility of a teams performance rests upon it’s leader. What every organisation and every team needs in the 21st century is for better leadership.
Leaders are under pressure. Effective leaders absorb pressure. The huge demands for their time does not get in the way of an effective leader asking themselves the tough questions in relation to where they need to grow and change.
It’s those leaders who realise the value of growing themselves in leadership who prioritse it, make it part of the organisational culture are the ones who thrive and lead for growth.
Organisations and teams succeed or fail as a result of the level of leadership that exists and the culture that is driven by those leaders.
Culture is leadership. You either have effective leaders or ineffective leaders in any organisation or team, and the culture will be determined by their leadership. The culture will be either effective or ineffective.
Do you have an organisational culture that promotes the growth and development of individuals?
Is it effective?
What do you need to do to improve the culture of your organisation?
Do you have a culture of accountability and respect?
Accountability and respect come from the heart and spirit of the people that lead you, from yourself and from the people you lead and they are crucial building blocks of a high performing organisational culture. To achieve accountability and respect and to develop a winning team culture, you need to increase trust. To do this, first you must get the heart and spirit right of the people that exist within the team or you will not get trust. Only when you have trust will people follow you. Trust is everything. Trust takes a long time to establish but only moments to tear down.
The most powerful and effective leadership strategy I use to build a winning team culture and trust is the power of One On Ones. By the end of 2015 I will have reached 14,000 plus One On Ones, over the last 27 years.
All my Leadership Dynamics clients businesses are growing with this strategy. When you grow people, you grow teams and organisations.
Where do you have trust?
Where don’t you have trust?
Who do you trust?
Who don’t you trust?
Are you trustworthy?
What do others do to gain your trust?
How do you build the heart and spirit of your team?
How do you go about building trust?
Great leaders cast vision. Without vision people perish. In this world you either have hope or hopelessness. Leaders that effectively cast vision create hope and when people have hope they follow the leader that is driving that vision. From the great leaders of our time like Winston Churchhill who led Britain through World War 2 to Martin Luther King who made great inroads for equality for African Americans in America to situations like owners of a small business inspiring their team to take their business to a national level, or the members of the local Scout Group being inspired to sell 1000 sausage sandwiches on a hot Saturday to raise money for their mate with cancer. What ever it is, people need a purpose, a vision that resonates with them to get out of bed and give a damn.
What’s your vision?
Have you communicated it effectively to your team?
An effective leader has the ability to communicate their vision to the people they lead so they align and embrace the vision.
What do you need to change to become more effective when it comes to you casting vision as the leader?
There is tremendous energy and power that can be unleashed when vision is cast effectively.
Does your vision live inside of you?
Does it live inside of your team?
Can I encourage you to take the time and really think about these questions and how they relate to you and your organisation, team or business. It will pay immeasurable dividends. Next week, I’ll be asking more tough questions about your leadership. I trust you’ll be stimulated, challenged and even a little agitated by them to help raise the lid on your leadership potential.
Are you prepared to ask yourself the tough questions to grow your leadership?
