Good Leadership Makes the Important Things Important

Welcome to this week's edition of "Elevations."?

There are a number of reasons that leadership is hard work - even when it looks easy.

For one thing, it really is lonely at the top. You are surrounded with people, many whom you trust and rely upon, perhaps people who look up to you and offer adulation, admiration and respect, both in your organization and the world around you. But it is the weight of decisions, and the enormous responsibilities you assumes that have us all, at times, feeling isolated and can keep you up at night wrestling with your thoughts. Research shows that isolation diminishes your critical thinking and your wellbeing.

Leadership is also difficult because few people know how to lead other people effectively. You may have some natural talent, but you still need to learn how to lead.

Leadership is something you learn, but it's not something anyone can teach you. At best, you might glean some clues from observing those who seem to do it well, but you will still need to develop the leadership competencies that work for you and serve the needs of those you lead.

The essay below speaks to decision-making and the complexities leaders face. Everybody makes decisions, with some more crucial than others. But as a business leader you are not only faced with crucial decisions on a regular basis, you are ultimately responsible for enabling others to make good decisions as well.

There is no secret sauce to being a virtuoso decision-maker, or a capable leader, but you may find that expanding your understanding as to your role in this and the influence you can have over others, will enable you to become a better leader and lead a more successful company.

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Have an outstanding week!

Philip R. Liebman, CEO ALPS Leadership

Cultivating Joy in the World by Increasing the Effectiveness of Leaders and Enhancing Lives

Good Leadership Makes the Important Things Important

By Phil Liebman

Organizational decision-making is the necessary and complex balancing of alignment and disagreement. That is particularly true for critical issues that business leaders routinely face. You need people aligned around an organization's core purpose so they will act to its benefit. And you need a rigorous assessment of different and even opposing ideas to draw out solutions that might not be obvious or prove difficult or unpopular.

Looking back at the issues and challenges I have worked with my clients to resolve, I see that their leadership is crucial to achieving this balance. Setting critical goals, establishing strategic priorities, and weighing options to solve problems or capitalize on opportunities all require that the people involved understand and prioritize what is most important. That is the first step towards becoming a virtuoso decision-maker.

Routine decisions should be the job of managers and frontline workers. Empowering people with such authority is necessary but insufficient. You need everyone to make the best possible decisions under the circumstances and given the resources available. Leaders must remove the fear of making wrong choices while making clear the consequences of making careless or avoidable mistakes. Great leaders don't just make decisions; they provide the meaning needed for others to make good decisions.

Your job as a leader is to establish priorities by determining what is necessary. You must also demonstrate that accomplishing those things is possible. This guidance fosters alignment of purpose when first posing the question, "Should we?" And when the answer is "yes," the next step is to ask, "Can we?" That involves interrogating likely good and bad consequences, the available capacity and resources needed to accomplish the desired outcome, and the will to succeed under adversity.

By empowering and driving effective decision-making, leadership is, in effect, a catalyst that bonds the things you must manage to the core organization by making this process central to its culture. Culture is how an organization does things to get things done.

A company culture that drives significant accomplishment results from leadership that makes conscientiousness an imperative at a level equal to knowledge, skill, and experience. Conscientious people do things because they feel they must: it is a function of discerning right from wrong. When everyone approaches their responsibilities and tasks with this level of determination, the organization can perform like a well-oiled machine. Leadership is the lubricant.

Without competent leadership, problems fester and become avoidable dysfunction that robs companies of performance and profit. Moreover, it robs people of the joy they gain from the satisfaction of accomplishing things that matter.

Cultivating joy isn't pleasing people; it's making them competent. Your job is to provision the organization with the material resources required to accomplish what it was designed to do and to ensure that people manage whatever is needed to execute at the level necessary to accomplish your organization's objectives. Companies succeed when what is important to the organization is important to everyone on your team.