LEADERSHIP IS A HOT TOPIC. Across the world, businesspeople at all levels pay huge amounts of money to learn about leadership. Business bookshelves are littered with leadership titles.
However, there is a problem with this. We have almost developed a cult around the idea of the hero CEO. Far too often, we see these leaders as having special powers. I believe that much of this has to do with how much money they earn. We instinctively equate enormous salaries with mythical skills and abilities, and so we sign up for all sorts of stuff that positions the leader as a magical superhero, in the hope that some of the gold dust will fall on our own heads.
For me, a true leader in the business world is someone who always pays staff salaries on time, who understands every aspect of their business, and how this business resolves an important need in the market. My view is that real leadership involves a huge commitment to the many different aspects of commerce laid out in a book like this. When a leader is in command of every aspect of a business, based on a thorough understanding of each facet, then the leadership things that are so heavily promoted in the popular business press (creativity, innovation, human relationships, strategy and so on) will fall naturally into place.
So, what is my leadership advice? Forget about the superhero CEO and get stuck into the details of your operation. Everything else will take care of itself, if you perfect every cog in the machine.
MUCH RESEARCH SUGGESTS THAT ONE OF THE BIGGEST FACTORS determining if someone likes their job or not, is the relationship they have with their immediate supervisor.
One study by the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) showed that this relationship can have four times more influence on the effort someone puts into their work than other more expected things such as benefits and monthly salary.
Line-managers, therefore, have a very important role to play in growing and maintaining company culture. They need to be supported and trained in this role, and this requires that the company’s upper-level decision makers are aware of this dynamic, and actively manage it. The biggest risk? Executives who are happy with their teams, while never really thinking about whether the teams themselves are happy, and productive.
FORMAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES ARE required to develop current and future leaders. The development of effective leaders and management of the talent supply-chain requires that organizations formalize their leadership development process and ensure that such program’s goals are integrated with their business strategies.
In practice, this means viewing leadership within the company with the widest lens possible. Leadership development isn’t just about keeping today’s leaders skilled and active. It also requires a lot of effort in the realm of identifying tomorrow’s leaders and giving them the skills they need to grow into the position as smoothly as possible.
COMPANIES, SUCH AS Coca-Cola, Google, IBM, Apple, Microsoft and Mercedes-Benz, all have something in common: besides having a global market following and very healthy balance sheets, they attract top talent based on their reputation. Companies that attract top talent in this way are more likely to stay at the top than their competitors. Human potential is the one thing that cannot be forged, copied, imitated, duplicated or easily replaced. So, attracting top talent breeds success, and success attracts top talent.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IS AMONG THE TOP FIVE employee engagement drivers.
Gallup conducted a study in 2013 on 8,287 employed adults, aged 18 and older, and asked them the following questions (among others):
• Whether they can approach their manager with non-work-related issues, talk to them about anything, and get prompt responses to requests.
• How their manager inspires performance and accountability.
• Whether their manager knows what projects or tasks they are working on.
• Whether their manager assists in setting work priorities or setting performance goals (and holds them accountable to those goals).
The study found that high-performance managers create an engaging work environment in three primary ways:
• They are involved in employees’ work lives.
• They help employees to set goals and prioritize their projects.
• They hold their employees accountable for performance.
According to the study, engagement-focused managers increase productivity and success by helping employees to reach the highest levels of performance. The bottom-line returns of this are significant: Work groups with high levels of employee engagement experienced 22% higher profitability (and 21% higher productivity) compared to work groups with low levels of engagement. High-performance managers also experience 65% lower staff turnover (and 10% higher customer ratings) than work groups featuring low engagement levels.
Copyright A-Game© Business. All Rights Reserved.
