Is Your Leadership Draining Your Organisation?

Let’s start 2018 with Great Leadership! We all know leadership isn’t about role or title, it’s about an attitude. Leadership starts with you! However we’ve heard time and time again that people don’t leave jobs; they leave poor managers. Now we know it’s true.

Are you that poor leader or manager?

HRD Magazine published an article around “Poor leadership is #1 motivator for leaving a job” via LinkedIn Australia’s 2017 Inside the Mind of Today’s Candidate Report. It revealed that two-thirds of Australian workers point to poor leadership as the main reason for moving on from their job.

Now, what usually happens when people hear the statistics is pretty much zero. There might be a flurry of leadership development courses being presented in-house or a new recruitment campaign planned to attract fresh new leadership talent into the organisation. Over time, though, things return to normal. Nothing changes for long.

Here’s how I see the problem. The senior leadership team isn’t owning the results. They don’t realise they are part of the problem. Instead, they are looking down to the leaders below them and assessing their performance.

You might be thinking, “What’s so important about my leadership style? What difference does that make?”

Think about this. True leadership begins at the top. If you want amazing leaders, you must be an amazing leader yourself. Remember, other leaders will be modelling themselves on you. If you are a poor leader, chances are your downlines are too.

Draining good leadership

Poor leadership drives people away, especially those who are, or have the potential to become, good leaders. You’re losing the very people who hold your organisation together; the ones who know what’s happening and who can influence their teams in the right direction at any given moment.

Draining future leadership

As your good leaders go, so do the most talented members of the team. These days people don’t go to work just for money. They choose jobs where they can make a difference and feel they are contributing in a positive way. Without good leadership from above, people are working just for the sake of it. The outcomes just aren’t there. Your organisation loses the talent it needs to keep.

Draining team health and engagement

Bad leaders cost the organisation millions each year in absenteeism, workers compensation claims and staff sick leave. Stress levels increase and morale drops. We also know that bad managers are one of the highest factors affecting employee engagement. Imagine how much your organisation could be paying out!

Draining good decisions

Not only have you lost the leaders who know what they are doing, you’ve lost the attention and commitment of your workers. When they aren’t engaged, they don’t invest in work outcomes, so the decisions being made may not be the right ones. You don’t only lose money, you lose time and market impact, too. But, as they say… care factor zero.

Of course, poor leadership has more impact than those areas I’ve touched on, but I wanted to give you some idea of the impact YOUR leadership may be having. If you want others to rock it as leaders, you should show them how. That means you must own the results of surveys such as LinkedIn’s 2017 report. If more leaders were prepared to assess their own performance as critically as they do the performance of their leadership teams, the face of our workplaces would change dramatically.

Poor leadership isn’t someone else’s issue; it’s yours.

Contact the LeadershipHQ Team today at www.leadershiphq.com.au or 1300 719 665 to find out how we can help you create Great Leadership and Great Organisations!

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You Rock! Sonia

About Sonia McDonald & LeadershipHQ

Sonia McDonald, CEO and Founder of LeadershipHQ, is one of Australia's Leading Executive Coaches and Dynamic Keynote Speaker and Author of Leadership Attitude and Just Rock It!

Reach the team at LeadershipHQ or Sonia via her website today.

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