Building Leadership within …

You cannot change your leaders and their point of view. No numbers no books that you have read.

No meetings and/or angry conversations. It is not going to happen.

You do not need to change the leader; you just need to become the leader you wish to have.

Leadership has nothing to do with rank.? Rank affords you authority, that is it. But it doesn’t make you a leader. If you have rank and authority, you just need to lead at scale.

If you do not have the leader that you wish to have, just don’t quit. Stay there and practice the skill of leadership with your team and become the leader that you want to have.

Just care for people who are on the “left” of you and on the “right” of you, see what they need, and commit to what they need, to help them achieve their goals, you can commit that someone has their back in difficult times. You should commit when they go home, they have a feeling of a fulfilled day, and they are closer to their goal.

In this way, the team will focus on better performance. They will focus on getting along with others better and achieving their goals. In this case, higher leadership will not notice you, as your team is doing just fine, and there is no action needed from their side.

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You cannot be successful as a leader if your team is not successful. To do that, you also need to have some numbers behind.

These numbers are:

-??????? Environment

-??????? Targets

-??????? Consistency

-??????? Vision

Environment (Workplace)

Selection of the right people. With the attitude “work is Fun”. Look for people who have a spark, not just a need.

You have to watch people. To see if they enjoy themselves. To see what they want to do in the future.

I look at you, and I see you have no fun anymore. Why is that? Are you looking for some other place/career/direction?

Have a discussion with each team member, WHY they do what they do. Do they want to spend their lives doing what is not bringing them fun at all?

-??????? Make sure your employees are being heard. Exclude the situations when employees need to look in “your calendar” to talk to you.

-??????? Make sure everything you say it is being done. Are the rules the same for everyone? If you have exceptions, do not introduce policies.

-??????? Make sure if you criticize (a decision, an idea, a plan) you should propose an alternative. Commit, not Complain. And when committing, make sure you can bet on its success ??.

Targets

Targets are meant to control the progress of Growth. You want to grow as a professional. You want to grow your project and your program.

You just need to get more strategic to develop new skills to achieve more, to get more out of what you do. Setting targets is not only what you want or need to deliver, It is more a Plan to Get you where you want to be. Targets/goals are designed to make you learn additional skills like forecasting, day planning, work-life balance, and most importantly, responsibility for your actions/decisions.

There is a big difference between Goals, KPIs and targets.

Goal – what you try to achieve.

KPIs - help you measure how well you achieve your goals.

Target – the benchmark you are trying to achieve for your KPI.

KPIs and Targets are not goals. They just help you achieve your goal.

Consistency

At one stage, our Leaders will be curious about what that team is doing so I don’t need to intervene in there. They will get curious about how you made it and will want to learn from that and replicate your success.

Eventually, they will want to take you to other teams and take your skills implemented in another project and team, and they will have two high-performing teams already with the set skills to build new leaders.

And this is the hardest thing to understand. This is the infinite mindset. Business is an infinite game. You do not have an “End Goal” you just continue to grow and improve.

It is not the thing that will work on the day you want it to work. You just need to do what is right, and the results will come when the time is right.

It is just like with exercising. You know it is good for your health. You know that doctors say if you exercise you will get healthy. But no one knows when exactly this “healthy” will come. That you will get Healthy at an exact date at the exact time. No one can tell you that in 153 days you will be Healthy. They just know if you do the right thing, you will get better and you will have the habit to be healthy always. But you have to commit to the process, and 100% of the time the process works, but we just don’t know when. And leadership is the same. 100% it works, but we just don’t know when. Maybe you can change your company in one year, but maybe you just build the momentum, and you will be out before seeing the change. But the most important in leadership is commitment to the regime. Like brushing your teeth every day. You can take one night off, but not too many. How many? No one knows, so you need to be consistent. Commit to the regime, be the leader you wish to have, and stop wasting your time convincing anyone.

Vision

Vision is not the Mission. There are lots of debates around which one is more important.

Vision is something that you are ready to sacrifice something for it. Sacrifice your time away from your children, cos it can bring you better results, better job, better living for your family. Rejecting a client, turning down the money, cos they don’t believe in what the company believes, or cos it can bring your focus more on your existing projects and you will not fall into a trap of endless agony of just building projects but rather make some of them successful.

If you say you have a vision you need to pass a simple test:

Your vision must be:

1.????? Resilient – withstand technological, political, and cultural change. During Covid many businesses disappeared, and others exploded. Compare restaurants with food delivery services. Some were ready, some not.

2.????? Inclusive – it has to be written in such a way, that anyone can volunteer to contribute to your vision. Choose the right words. The statement must invite everyone in the organization to participate in the vision.

3. Service-oriented – the primary benefit goes to those who contribute to the vision, not to yourself. (You cannot build a project so you can have a better reputation, more money, etc. it will not last long. People who contribute to your vision must benefit first. And the benefits can be different for everyone (money, career, appreciation, opportunity, etc.).