Could your leadership team be stunting your organisation’s growth?

 

Published in Press & Journal Newspaper

This week Karran Bonner discusses why the performance of your leadership team is the most important factor to your organisation’s success.

In my interactions with clients, often I am contacted to discuss topics including: customer service, sales performance, team development, one to one coaching, management and leadership skills. One thing that all of these topics have in common is they are largely impacted on by the leadership of the organisation. Would there be a grave need for intensive customer service training if the leadership team had set out and implemented customer service values and processes to best serve their customers? Would there be a need to enhance sales performance if an efficient sales manager was working with his team to coach their sales team on the job? I believe that every team can be developed no matter their level of competence but when people contact me it tends to be when there is an issue within a team rather than when things are going well. It comes down to a few key simple factors that so many organisations fail to address and communication effectively.

Clear Purpose, Vision and Goals

Firstly, to be successful, I firmly believe, every organisation needs to have a clear purpose, vision and goals. If your staff are unaware of why your organisation exists; where your organisation is going; and the key goals that will help to get you there; it can be very difficult to get full engagement. By making your team feel part of your purpose, vision and goals you will see motivation levels increase. Fear not, if you don’t have clarity on these issues I have a number of simple resources to get you started so please get in touch and I can send these across to you. Getting your team to help you to create the purpose, vision and goals is a perfect way to enhance engagement and get buy in to your strategy.

Regular Communication

The leadership team in an organisation has a tough job to lead, develop strategy and communicate all of this effectively. Regular communication does lead to a significant increase in employee engagement. Some highly effective ways of engaging your team include:

  • Lunch and Learn sessions: getting the team together to update on key activities and have fun over a bite to eat.
  • Staff Newsletter: sharing a mixture of fun and business topics and asking your staff for contributions is a great way of keeping everyone up to date.
  • Feedback Focus Groups: ask your staff to participate in focus groups on different business issues to help improve processes and to gain insights from the people performing different roles in your organisation.

These are a few innovative ways to communicate and engage your team to enhance your organisation’s success.

Take Action

Employees often get frustrated because so many ideas and topics are discussed on a regular basis, yet nothing changes. The most effective leadership teams gather feedback, update on progress and implement change. If an idea cannot be implemented by simply explaining to someone why it isn’t going to be tackled right now will keep people in the loop and encourage them to make suggestions in the future.

When there are lots of different priorities in any organisation it is no wonder that the perception can be that we have meetings and nothing happens, however, to be truly successful in your leadership role you need to follow up on what you say you will. Actions speak louder than words with your staff and respect is gained when they feel part of the company and listened too.

None of what I have discussed in this article is complex, yet if one of these key areas is ignored you may be stunting your organisation’s growth. To discuss how you can implement more effective leadership in your organisation please contact me on info@brightsideinspiration.com or visit www.brightsideinspiration.com