We have been developing and delivering leadership development programs for the last fifteen years. More recently, we’ve worked several organizations to develop and deliver tailored in-depth leadership development programs with on-going follow-up programs to integrate the learning.
Why develop leaders? Because most leaders need it, really.
The failure of most organizations, yes, even today, is that subject matter experts are promoted for their smarts, yet their number one job becomes managing people.
Typically, leaders are good at the smart side of their job. It’s what they went to school for, may be gifted in, and for which they received on-the-job training. Those areas of expertise are probably in finance, technology, operations, marketing, and even strategy. In most of these areas you can build a plan and implement the plan. It’s the tactical part of the job.
Organizations miss that leaders need not only the smart skills, but the healthy skills. Leaders must have the ability to give clear direction, effective feedback, to build teams, and deal with conflict. When it comes to the healthy side of business, many leaders have not been trained, did not have good role models, and struggle in the areas of dealing with people.
When you do develop leaders, you’ll get these bottom line benefits:
1. Productivity increases. Well-developed leaders not only improve their own productivity, but they also improve the productivity of the team they manage. They are able to set the direction, build teams that get more done, and give effective feedback when direct reports are off course.
2. Politics reduces. Well-developed leaders learn to speak up in meetings, eliminating the “meeting after the meeting” gossip spin. Plus, when you have leaders who normally compete and go through intensive training together, you break down the political barriers across the organization. This builds strong, healthy connections supporting the culture.
3. Turnover goes down. People join a company but leave a boss. Think about the jobs you’ve left. Was it because of the company? Or was it due to a poor relationship and lack of healthy leadership from your boss? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Turnover is a huge expense—in wasted time, loss in forward momentum, the expense of recruiting firms. I wonder how many people your company is losing due to poor leadership?
4. Confusion diminishes and organizational clarity emerges. Leaders who are well-developed know that a big part of their job is leading with purpose and continually setting direction, reminding people of the organizational and team priorities. People who work for these leaders know what they need to do, how to do it, how to work together to get it done.
5. Morale improves. People relax when they know that leadership is having the right conversations and working together. People relax and are happy when they trust that leadership knows what they are doing. People relax and are happy when they are getting clear and direct feedback. People relax when they can speak up and say what they mean and work effectively on teams.
You know what happens when people relax and are happy? They engage. They are more creative. You get better results.
So when you invest in your leaders, you exponentially increase your smart side results by focusing on the healthy side of leadership.
When you have leaders that can not only do their job well, but also influence people, build and lead teams, manage team conflict, give effective feedback even to peers, and lead with clarity and purpose – the whole organization goes higher.
Why not chat with us about how you can improve the leaders at your company? If you don’t have that much clout, but still want to work on your own leadership, you can check out my executive coaching.
Be the leader your dog thinks you are.
CrisMarie
P.S. Check out LinkedIn’s latest report The 10 Most In-Demand Skills of 2019. They include both soft and hard skills such as: collaboration, persuasion, and people management.
CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke
Coaches, Business Consultants, Speakers and Authors of The Beauty of Conflict
CrisMarie and Susan work leaders and teams, couples in business, and professional women.
They help turnaround dysfunctional teams into high performing, cohesive teams who trust each other, deal with differences directly, and have clarity and alignment on their business strategy so they create great results.
Check out their website: www.thriveinc.com. Connect with CrisMarie and Susan on LinkedIn. Watch their TEDx Talk: Conflict – Use It, Don’t Defuse It! Find your copy of The Beauty of Conflict: Harnessing Your Team's Competitive Advantage here.