Seven Leadership Contributors and Inhibitors
By Michael Levy
Operating in time poor environments, leaders find that opportunities to reflect on their own performance and development are limited. The consequence more often than not, is that these opportunities can easily be overlooked as the next key target date looms. Commonly, leaders also see the development needs of their colleagues as more pressing than their own. As leaders, acting with integrity, its not that they don’t care about their own performance and development needs, they earnestly do want to do better, but putting themselves ‘at the head of the queue’ doesn’t sit comfortably or come naturally. It’s as counter intuitive as it is counter productive
Is there a question of right or wrong here?
Attitude is at the heart of leadership which has as much about what they do as who they are. What they do as a leader is reflected in who they are as a leader. So the attitudes leaders adopt are reflected in how they think and how they behave. In the face of a challenging business climate, there is a difference that leaders can make when they consider what either contributes to or inhibits effective leadership development:
- Values: how clear are you about what you believe in, care about and stand for.
- Vision and communication: how strong is the commitment from those you lead in understanding their part in the overall vision of the business – when is second best acceptable
- Motivation: how creative are you in building a work environment that is not purely financially motivated
- Learning and development: how serious are you in helping the people in your team to grow
- Empowerment: if you want people to be more empowered than they think they are, how trusting are you that the power, resources and responsibility of team members is
being utilised
- Team Building: how would you assess your ability to meld a diverse group into a smoothly functioning unit that works on common goals
- Change and innovation: how comfortable are you at building your teams capacity to change and be innovative in order to gain a real competitive advantage.
How do you rate yourself on each one? Marks out of 10!
Regardless of your score, leaders undoubtedly recognise that the most successful ones are those who recognise the creative potential of every member of their team and make productive use of it! If it’s important to you to raise your self rating one notch higher, would you know what to do – and if so, what if anything is stopping you from doing so?
If the above prompts a constructive discontent within you to adopt a better philisophy towards leadership, now is a good time to talk.
Ideas such as the above are discussed at regular Leadership lunch or breakfast, invite only events. The next breakfast takes place 20th March, the next lunch 21st March, in Central Manchester. Designed to focus on ways to improve personal and organisational leadership in an engaging small group format in a supportive peer group environment.
The event is by invite only and if you would like to be involved, call me on 0161 980 0780 or 07903 183931 or email me at [email protected] including any questions, comments or feedback you have on the above.