THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOOD LEADERSHIP AND EFFICIENCY

I was shocked the other day when asking a group to tell me, as a percentage, how efficient they thought they were at work? The average from the group was 45%. So how are they getting away with being 55% inefficient? Surely they should be on half pay!
Poor leadership is the answer. Whether it be self leadership or leadership from superiors it was leadership that was at the heart of the issue. People need direction, they need guidance but they also need supervision, training and mentoring to perform to their optimum potential.It is here where the  main problem lies.
Too many of today's modern leaders do not perform their team development function effectively. They  allow their personnel to work at levels well below their capability and do not empower their teams by challenging them. Personal development, mentoring  and supervision all take time and all too often today's leaders are too busy to do it. Yet by doing it they create time and space to focus on other important issues as their workload is reduced by competent, satisfied team members who feel challenged and who are enjoying their work. The team performs close to its full potential and everyone gains it really is that simple.

KNOWING WHERE YOU STAND AS A LEADER

Leadership as a term is as broad as it is wide and hence all encompassing. It exists  in every facet of life from self leadership through to multinational corporation and even national leadership and it exists at different levels in an organisation. But how do we know how good we are as leaders and hence where we might need leadership development? Could you turn an ordinary successful organisation into an extraordinary successful organisation?
Leaders are successful in myriad ways and what suits one situation may not suit another. Leadership in times of plenty is simpler than leadership in fallow times. Self analysis through reflection is essential to understanding your personal leadership style,strengths and areas for development but to quote Donald Rumsfeld "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." And that is the issue for without a real depth of leadership experience and knowledge we cannot gauge whether we are performing at our optimum leadership level and hence are we leading  our organisation in the best way they deserve.  Internal 360 degree feedback is useful,  mentoring helps but an external leadership audit can be really effective in leadership development terms.

HAVING DIFFICULTY MEASURING LEADERSHIP

As a leadership development company one of the most difficult aspects of our work is measuring the return on investment from any form of leadership development.

There is no doubt that leadership drives success in an organisation and therefore has a direct influence on the bottom line profit of any organisation but the relationship between leadership and profit is indirect and tenuous therefore difficult to correlate and hence measure. Anyone can tell fairly quickly if a company is well lead or badly led by the way it functions. Good leadership is after all the difference between being an ordinary or an extraordinary organisation and that difference is stark  to the honed eye. Yet rarely is the success of an organisation directly attributed to the leadership function.
Leadership needs to be measured over a substantial period of time as its impact will take time to manifest itself. And leadership cannot be measured easily for its effects are entwined in every outcome or efficiency measure. There is no simple clearly evident link between good leadership and success although such leadership is commonly acknowledged as  fundamental to success.

Leadership, good or bad, is exercised in a personal and individual way and therefore there is no real metric that meets the leadership requirement as most of it is about feeling and subjective rather than tangible objective assessment. Different types and styles of leader suit different situations and a leaders influence is so ubiquitous it can be measured in many different ways.

One thing each leader is responsible for is selecting their supporting team and it is perhaps here that there are certain common requirements that need to be met. Having the key skill sets embedded within that team and allowing those skills to come to the fore when necessary is probably one of the true abiities of a successful leaders and perhaps one of the  simplest and  yet most effective way of measuring  good leadership. Leadership is after all about decision making and leadership is about making sure that the right expert is in the right place to enable the smart decision.
So what are the key skill sets required within any leadership team and how do we measure them. tasks can be duplicated as long as each team member understands his or her duties.

A team needs a Vision Maker someone who sees and can clearly articulate the desired endstate this may be the leader. The team also needs an Organiser to marshal people and resources. But people don't do things without a Motivator or Enthuser so one of those is required. Opportunities need to be recognised and exploited by a Watcher. An Innovator is key to overcoming issues that have no precedent.     Motivation once estabished needs to be maintained and goals set and reviewed by a Driver/Manager. If a team is to be successful it must build relationships within it and with other teams, hence the requirement for an Alliance Builder. We all get bored and some are not good at finishing what they started so a Deliverer/Finisher is key to completing anything. Learning and communicating are the domain of a Communicator, someone who ensures the smooth passage of communication and learning wherever it is required. Last but not least is the person who thinks the unthinkable who keeps the whole team true to the purpose and consequences through challenge, whatever the appeal elsewhere; long live the Honest Broker.

As Marshall Goldsmith said "Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make that decision - not the "right" person, or the "smartest" person, or the most " qualified" person". Key to leadership and being effective in power is being  able to make that decision with the right, the smartest and the most qualified people on your team advising you.

THE ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE PROCESS OR TRANSFORMATION

Key to an organisation going through any change are a few fundamental principles which apply to any size organisation. Rather like a journey you have to decide where you want to go and once you have that clear in your head you have to decide where you are now. Most people have heard the story of the Irishman who informed a lost couple “that if he wanted to go to their desired location  he would not start from here” . And there is a lot in that statement, for it is understanding the reality of the current position of the organisation and preparing and adjusting it until it is  right to begin the journey that is vital to the process. For it is from there that the journey starts.

Once you know where you are and where you want to go youe have direction and vision underpinned by a dose of reality. This is your strategy.

Now you must turn to the execution of that strategy constantly basing your assumptions and reviewing that strategy when necessary.

The execution phase continues the planning of the change journey. How are you going to move from where you are to where you want to be? Who are you going to undertake the journey with? What controls and checks do youneed in place to assist you upon that journey?

The first question is complex and yet simplified by the strategy,  for it is here that the dastardly detail lies. The second is more about knowing your people and optimising their talent and potential; putting the right people on the right tasks. The final question is about boundaries and momentum. Boundaries and checks to ensure that you progress in the right direction at the right pace  and the measurement of progress to maintain momentum to keep you going when you lose motivation or drive to complete the journey.

So simply the rules for the change process are:

• Decide where you want to go
• Recognise where you start from
• Develop a detailed plan based on the agreed strategy
• Know and optimise the strengths of your people
• Maintain momentum through checks controls and the measurement of progress

PUBLIC SPEAKING PHOBIA

How many people are prepared to speak in front of large audiences? Not many and yet it is always an excellent opportunity to reach out  to people quickly and effectively. Public speaking is about connecting with every single person in your audience. It is about managing yourself and your stress in order to deliver the required message as competently as possible. But nobody's perfect and perfect people often appear cold  to people with high emotional intelligence. So mistakes are fine as long as there are not too many of them and they are not repeated. To make mistakes is to be human and we all like humans don't we.
Reading from a script or reading power point slides is worthless most people can read for themselves, it is the speaker's additional knowledge that people want to hear. Nobody attends a voluntary presentation unless they want to understand something better so the more natural we are the more we connect. And if we connect we give the audience the opportunity to learn.  We all learn in different ways using  Visual, Auditory  and Kinesthetic means and the more you can cover all of these in your presentation the more you will connect with your audience
Three basic rules for public speaking are engage everyone, be natural in yourself and allow the audience to go away with what they want, additional knowledge.

WHY DO PEOPLE SHY AWAY FROM BECOMING LEADERS

Leadership is an issue that frightens a great many people and yet often they lead naturally. Recently I was talking to a 'Team Leader' at an event and I asked him who he lead. He denied leading anyone but merely stated that he was a team manager not a leader. Why is there such a stigma attached to leadership?
Teachers lead, parents lead, coaches lead- there are not many roles in life that don't involve a leadership role  somewhere and if they don't they involve followership which is critical to effective leadership. Good leaders are great followers, as they have to have learned their leadership somewhere, therefore most good followers have the capability to become leaders all they need to do is want to lead.
I believe it is the fear of responsibility that drives people away from leadership. they fear accountability and they fear failure. Humans are often pessimistic about outcomes and therefore expect  to fail; to lead therefore would be driving failure. It is overcoming this fear of failure that is one of the key attributes of good leadership, be aware of it but don't be frightened by it. Striving for success is what leadership is all about and that requires vision, courage and determination. Vision to see the success, courage to keep believing in yourself when others doubt you and determination to keep going when the outcome appears a long way off.
Managers are the police force for leaders and they are vital to successful leadership. They ensure targets are met, expectations are understood and resources allocated they don't drive the outcomes like leaders do because they live in the present  and not the future. It is leaders who bear responsibility for the future as they have the vision, set the direction and inspire their teams. For me it is that burden of responsibility that frightens people away from leadership. Overcoming that fear is key to training great leaders for the future.

COACHING SIMPLICITY

So many of today’s coaches and consultants take great pleasure in over intellectualising their clients issues. For with complexity comes confusion and confusion requires interpretation and consultants interpret confusion and keep their jobs.

A better consultant creates simplicity where there is confusion, for with simplicity comes comprehension as they turn from coaching to mentoring and finally to supporting. These rarer leadership consultants believe they should do themselves out of a job as quickly as possible if they are to be true to their ethics. For great consultants create simplicity and allow the organisation they are working with to get on with business after all an organisations  business is its business.