Three Principles of Leadership
Success as a leader can be achieved by adhering to three principles, Mutual Trust and Respect, Systems Thinking, and a Sense of Urgency. Building and maintaining a culture based on mutual trust and respect is the bedrock principle from which all other actions, attitudes, and behaviors follow. Simply put, trust and respect are the underpinnings needed to build engagement within the workforce, and accountability and empowerment are the linchpins that maintain that culture of trust and respect. In this type of culture, an engaged workforce is motivated and enthused to achieve the goals of the organization, and, if they are properly set, this will create wealth.
As the leader, your job is to set those goals and communicate your vision of where your organization needs to go. Without a clearly defined vision nobody knows where to go however, without the right culture, nobody wants to get there even if they know where they’re supposed to go.
When employees know that you trust and respect them they in turn will trust and respect you. A simple guideline for building this trust is to “Say what you’ll do, and do what you say,” and let your employees know that you expect the same from them as well. This is accountability and it should start at the very top and then permeate down to the lowest level of the organization. As a leader, insist on concrete action plans for projects; instill the discipline that every action needs an owner and an end date, then empower employees to accomplish these actions by ensuring that they have all the tools necessary to do the job. With that, challenge them to figure out the How.
Eliminate fear by reminding them that everyone makes mistakes and learning from mistakes is part of the definition of experience. This is treating employees with respect, challenging them with meaningful tasks and respecting their ability to complete them. Resist the urge to get involved and “solve the problem” for them. If you do, you will just stymie innovation, lower their ability to deliver solutions in the future, and create disengaged workers who will view their jobs as an exchange of time for a paycheck. Eventually you will notice that your employees arrive and leave on time, take their breaks, never volunteer for extra work or projects, and do little else in between beyond the minimal effort. When they don’t care, they are essentially just going through the motions.
With an established culture of mutual trust and respect, it is possible to implement the second principle of leadership, systems thinking.
Systems thinking is getting employees to realize that they are part of a system and that their actions have consequences beyond themselves. This is paramount to getting them to care about the organization. Once employees care and feel part of the system, then they care not only about the organization, but also about how the work they do affects not only them but also those dependent upon them as well as those upon whom they are dependent. Moreover, caring engaged employees are motivated to contribute and put forth effort above and beyond what is expected. They will strive to accomplish objectives out of a shared sense of purpose, more quickly and accurately incurring less cost. Thus improving the bottom line.
With a caring, engaged workforce operating in a culture of mutual trust and respect you are now able to instill a sense of urgency without resorting to micromanaging. A sense of urgency is needed throughout the organization as knowing and being willing are not enough, the organization must actually do something and keeping a sense of urgency in place ensures that employees realize the importance of the company’s goals and their objectives. It infuses a criticality and motivation to the accomplishment of the objectives and creates a discipline of quickness that will enable the team to achieve more results in a shorter period, thus completing objectives on time, under budget, and with less stress, which enables more wealth creation and retention. As basketball legend, John Wooden famously said, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”
To learn more about the leadership topics of organizational development, operational excellence, resource leveraging, and intellectual asset management, send me a note at info@ventusstrategies.com