To be effective, leaders must be able to ‘move’ flexibly AND consistently, responsively AND proactively, powerfully AND respectfully.
If you can’t, you can’t call yourself a (capital L) Leader.
Period.
Paragraph.
End of story.
But because the world needs more (capital L) Leaders, this, then, is the first of several ‘Leadership Moves’ that I’ll be sharing with you over the next few weeks:
LEADERSHIP MOVE #1: Make Sure That Everyone Knows The Goal
Make no mistake about this: A leader’s Number One job is to make sure that everyone knows – and can state with total clarity – the goal for each and every new assignment, initiative, project, task, and/or strategy you involve them in. You can’t just assume that your staff already knows, or can figure it out:
- Sometimes it looks like the goal is about reducing costs when you really mean it to be about improving profitability.
- Sometimes it looks like the goal is to increase repeat sales when you really mean it to be about increasing market penetration.
- Sometimes it looks like the goal is maintaining current operating procedures when you really mean it to be about carefully revamping an internal workflow.
- Sometimes it looks like the goal is about avoiding conflict when you really mean it to be about solid building inter-department relationships.
But when employees pursue the ‘looks like’ goal instead of what you actually want them to do, it wastes time, money, and resources – not to mention what it does to morale, productivity, and your credibility to be constantly telling them you now want something different.
Sure, there’s a training and development aspect of having employees figure things out on their own, but when it comes to understanding what we might call the ‘Conditions for Success’, there’s no real upside to making them guess.
Thoughts?