LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT - AN UPDATED VIEW AND A PROCESS TO GET THERE

By Michael Sampson, Licensee with LMI Kenya

Dynamic leaders excel in people skills and the ability to create a motivational environment. They focus on their vision for their organization, clearly communicating defined goals to the people within that organization. They value their employees and customers and genuinely listen to them. Effective leaders are organized, focused, and always keep their commitments. 

However, some leaders are so often concerned about their position or status that they sometimes forget their real job. Leadership is less about being in charge and more about taking care of those in your charge.

Leadership is not a title. True leadership happens when anyone takes action and leads by example. Our innovative leadership concept is based on two key principles:

·     For organizations to succeed in the 21st century, they must develop leaders throughout the entire organization. Leadership is no longer a position or title, but rather a process that every person at every level must practice.

·     For leadership development to be effective, it must use a complete, integrated, total development process. Leadership development is not an event, a project, or a program. Truly effective leadership development is a continuous, ongoing process.

There are many values associated with good leadership. I will discuss a few. This list is not comprehensive but will give you an idea what values make a good leader.

Compassion

Compassion isn’t something that everyone is born with but it can be learned. It develops out of being considerate of others. Research shows that employees report that the best leaders are the ones who are empathetic, sympathetic, and understanding—in other words, considerate. This also correlates well with a high emotional intelligence. This is important because it gives you the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering them. This creates an environment where everyone can collaborate by sharing their ideas and offering creative solutions.

Vision

Vision is a mental picture or movie of the future. It is about what the future can hold, but has not yet happened. Vision is the voice inside of us that guides us. It stimulates a desire to grow and improve. Vision represents our hopes and ideals. It provides a sense of purpose. Leaders need to focus on results. This is important because a leader’s vision provides the resilience to carry them through to the end result so difficulties will seem inconsequential.

Connection

Employees’ feelings of connection and agreement provide a competitive advantage in the market place. It is the goal of a leader to develop this facility in employees. Employees in any organization that have a high degree of connection are more engaged. There are many studies that demonstrate that when employees are more engaged they are more productive in their jobs and this increases profitability. Gallup has shown, in their studies, that how employees felt about their employer and their connection strongly predicted the outcome on every metric that related to performance such as increased productivity and profitability as well as decreased turnover and absenteeism. Connection and the result – engagement, is important because it makes companies more productive and profitable.

Courage

Courageous leaders take risks that often go against the culture of their organizations. Leaders must be willing to make revolutionary changes in their markets and inspire their teams to implement those changes. Courage is a key element that separates great leaders from excellent managers. This often involves making bold and often unpopular decisions. Courage is important because without courage it is hard to be innovative and without innovation it is hard to break the status quo and move on to greater opportunities. Innovation takes courage.

Responsibility

Many leaders get caught up in thinking about power rather than their responsibility to those they lead. As leaders, it is our responsibility to share the credit when things go right and take the blame when things go wrong. Responsibility mean accepting criticism for mistakes of your team and taking steps to fix the mistakes. This requires a leader to protect his team from pressure that comes from above and requires one to be proactive in letting senior leadership know of performance deficits. 

Responsibility to your direct reports and other team members is important because of what it says about you as a leader – you are able to meet issues head on and fix them – you are the go-to person. The wonderful thing about taking responsibility is that it empowers you. It gives you the ability to avoid feeling like a victim and control your destiny. Being a victim is the reverse of being a leader. Victims are submissive. Actions happen to them. Leaders on the other hand are active. They take initiative to impact the results.

Learning

Leadership and learning should never be considered separate. Leadership is not a destination it is a journey. This means that a leader must be continuously learning. The best leaders are constant learners. In addition, leaders should inspire learning in direct reports and peers to develop an environment that is constantly learning and growing. They need to develop relationships that encourage and facilitate group and individual learning. Learning is important because as we grow and get better we are able to handle increasingly complex leadership and management situations. This increases our value to the organization.

Self-awareness

Understanding one’s strengths, weaknesses, style, personality, etc., has a great impact on how leaders behave and interact with others. Being self-aware, a leader can consciously influence the work situation and the culture of the group.

Developing emotional self-awareness is an important first step in effective leadership because it lays the foundation upon which emotional and social intelligence is crafted. It is a characteristic crucial to career success and improved executive leadership. It is hard to develop skills like empathy, emotional self-control, or teamwork unless we know of our own feelings and how they influence our thoughts and actions. Self-awareness is important because it improves workplace effectiveness and reduces stress in the workplace environment. In addition, a Korn Ferry study in 2013 demonstrated that companies with self-aware employees produce higher overall company financial performance.

Accountability

When leaders take personal accountability, they answer for the outcomes of their choices, their behaviors, and their actions in situations in which they are involved. Accountable leaders do not blame others when things go wrong. In most organizations, leaders typically take the blame in failures of their team or for their own personal actions. This may be intimidating but this allows leaders to take the next step and move up in their leadership roles. Leaders need to create an accountability environment where all people on their team can improve and view themselves as leaders of their own areas. For this to happen the organizational culture needs to view failure as a learning opportunity and make it a core principle of their workplace culture. This important because shifting from a blaming culture to a learning one allows team members to use their creativity to solve problems, which means work get accomplished more effectively. Without allowing for mistakes and failures employees will feel reluctant to accept accountability, which means they will be waiting to be told what to do when they face new issues or concerns. This will stifle leadership development in the organization.

Encouragement

Encouragement is fundamental to leadership and is a process that focuses on the individual’s strength and contributions in order to push their motivation and performance to a higher level. When people are encouraged, they feel valued and this improves their engagement. It brings out the best in people and increases their potential, which drives better performance and results. It is one of the best and easiest ways to build rapport and facilitate open communication among team members. Remember, human behavior is social behavior, which is influenced by the relationship with others. When people feel they can make a positive contribution in their organization they are more willing to work. It is the difference between the employee who waits to be told what to do and the employee who, after he is finished with a task, asks you what else can they work on. Encouragement is important because it makes a positive impact on someone’s life. Encouragement has a powerful and lasting impact to drive improved commitment and help people reach their full potential, which increases the organization’s potential.

People Management

Effective leadership and the ability to manage people are essential in the success of any venture be that in business or in any other organization. When you are working towards a common goal it important that you can command the respect of the team and pull all of the various elements together in order to reach that goal. A simple measure of success as a leader is by how well the people who work for you succeed. If the people you lead have not accomplished their goals, you need to look at yourself and your actions. Great people management is important because if done correctly, people say we did it ourselves. In other words, they become self-motivated to reach goals and targets. This makes your work easier and gets everyone focused on accomplishing what the organization needs to do to succeed.

Why is leadership development important for an organization or individual?

Simply put, it increases your productivity, which increases our profitability. Is earning more money important? For most businesses it is. It is the very reason businesses are in business. Other organizations like NGOs or Government Agencies might not be interested in making money but they are probably interested in saving money or being more effective, which is the same as making money. Many businesses and organizations see leadership development and learning and development in general as a luxury expense. However, if you are not developing your organization, which is the job of a leader, to become better and more effective, you are actually losing money. Organizations do not see it that way because they are not tracking their performance results, their job turnover, and their lack of engagement. There are costs associated with doing nothing. In fact, we have a spreadsheet calculator that is based on current research by Gallup and the Society for Human Resource Management, which shows how much an organization is losing based on their own accounting and human resource data. If any readers are interested in learning more about this we would be willing offer a free consultation, which can show them what it costs them to not develop their organization (to do nothing).

Another way to look at this: If the world best athletes have facilitators and coaches shouldn’t you? Take any sport – running, football, golfing, tennis, basketball, boxing, etc. – all of the athletes have coaches to help them improve their game.

Sometimes, because you are in the activity, you are never really able to see clearly what you have the ability to accomplish. Here is where the coach or facilitator pushes you outside of your comfort zone to incrementally improve your skills and your effectiveness. If you doubt this, just ask any athlete what they think is the benefit from having a coach. In fact, this model is so entrenched in the sports field that there is no professional team that does not have a professional coach. 

Leadership is a learnable skill just like any other skill. If you practice at it you will get better and be a strong leader. If you stop working on developing your skill you will be a weak leader. We all have the capacity to be good leaders.  

You might already know what changes need to be made in your organization. But like many other leaders, you need a process to facilitate those changes. That’s where LMI excels. We have developed a truly unique process that magnifies potential and builds leadership capability. We don’t just present the program and walk away; over the course of several weeks, we coach, facilitate and guide you through every step of the process. Throughout that time, we give you the attention you deserve, focusing on what’s important to you and empowering you to get the long-lasting results you need to be successful. Send a message if you are interested in learning more.