Choose to be the leader who does the right thing and does it right
Always play to your strengths
If you know you are a great coach and leader, then use this to your advantage, likewise if you know that this is an area that you need to develop, then seek out a great coach, leader or mentor and ask them to help you develop your skills. Identify people in your team who have the skills you need and use them in your team. Remember, together, everyone achieves more. Individuals and teams respond differently to change at work however, change needs to be managed effectively. From my experience, when organisations go thorough big change programmes, it’s vitally important that you and your teams feel engaged with the process. Failure to engage effectively will lead to a lack of empowerment and will ultimately affect performance. Do you want the best people to leave? I recently read an article by David W Richard about why good employees leave a company. Basically, he says the reason a business loses good people is due to their supervisor. More than any other single reason given, the reason good employees either stay and thrive in an organisation or leave it (taking their knowledge, experience and contacts straight to the competition) is their immediate manager. “People leave managers, not companies”, write the authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. “So much money has been thrown at the challenge of keeping good people – in the form of better pay, better perks and better training – when, in the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue.” If you have a turnover problem, look first to your managers and supervisors. An employee’s primary need often has less to do with money than with how he or she is treated by the business and whether he or she feels valued. Much of this depends on the immediate manager. As John Drucker says, “Effective leaders do the right things, effective managers do it right”. Why not choose to be the leader who does the right thing and does it right?
Don’t be afraid to ask
No matter who you are, whether you are a CEO, the director of your own company, a leader or an employee, it’s okay to be vulnerable and to ask for help. Not only will you grow as an individual, others around you will see that you are human after all. Do you really want to be superman or superwoman? Why not just be your brilliant best every day? After all, you are unique.
Continuously Challenge
Upwards, downwards, sideways, look in the mirror and ask yourself what you need to change. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get the same result so challenge yourself. Be innovative. To keep people engaged, you need to do something different otherwise, it becomes boring, and then you know what happens, comfort sets in. Be courageous and dare to be different.
Invest in your people
If necessary, bring in experts; coaching is an investment in your people, and you will reap the rewards many times over.