Are you doing the leadership heavy lifting?

Leadership should be the easiest job in the world.  You create the vision of where your business is going, you align all of your processes, resources and people to deliver the vision and boom, the execution just follows.

Easy.  Well that’s what the leadership manuals say anyway.  Leadership should be easy, except for two key fundamentals.  All of the people in your organisation are individuals with their own ideas about the world and the world is always changing.  When you put those two factors together, suddenly the ever changing world and a whole load of individuals to work with suddenly makes vision, alignment and execution a whole lot harder.

And then when you you’ve got layers of department heads and managers who are supposed to support you in delivering your mission, but insteaf they end up causing you many of the stresses and headaches, leadership starts to feel hard.

So after a while of missing targets and having a scoreboard full of reds and ambers where there should be grees, you start to get frustrated.  You start to wonder why these people just aren’t getting it, get what needs to be done.  After weeks, then months of frustration you eventually lose patience and just tell them what needs to be done.  You naturally take the reigns and start driving the business, the managers and your people forward, after all, no one else seems to be stepping up.

Then the problem really starts.

The moment you step into tell, push, drive mode you have lost your leadership edge.  You have started heavy lifting and from now on you  are going to need to take the pressure.  To make people move or act through push and tell is simply hard work and the most unproductive use of your energy.  What’s more, you have taken responsibility away from everyone in your business to deliver the results.

What does it look like to you? 

It looks like you in a meeting asking people for their updates then telling them where they’ve gone wrong.

It looks like you telling your people what needs to be done.

It looks like you pushing the team to get things done.

It looks like constant bad news and increased pressure on you.

But take a moment to think what it’s like for your people.  What are they thinking and experiencing?

What does it look like to your people?

It looks like blame and defend, so people come prepared with excuses, after all you come up with the solutions now.

It looks like your people being too scared to say what they really think or feel because they know how frustrated you are and don’t want to make matters worse.

It looks like managers now feeling the stress and passing that on to their people.

It feels like a negative, pushing ripple effect that seeps into and then changes your culture.

It feels like hard work.

Heavy lifting the leadership skills

How do you reverse the culture that exists?  It starts with leadership. As a leadership team you need to look at the behaviours and attitudes that you are role modelling, or the ones you aren’t addressing.  Your actions directly influence the culture and behaviours and ultimately the results of your organisation.

The answer to change is simple, Stop pushing and start engaging.  Stop forcing and start nurturing,  Stop judging and start asking.  Stop directing and start leading.  The change itself takes inner strength. At whatwhenwhyhow our values are Be Bold, Be Courageous, Be True.  It’s these three qualities that we believe will help leaders to face the real issues in the business and will turn the tide to smash their targets.  And success breeds success, and leadership becomes easy again.

So be true today.  Look at what feels like heavy lifting and ask yourself what is your part in that?  Be bold in you soloultions and then have the courage to change

At whatwhenwhyhow we help you diagnose what are the underlying behaviours, attitudes and actions that cause the ripple effects in your business and we create a bridge to the new culture.

And we are experts in culture change because we have not only experienced all that you are experiencing, with over 40 years combined experience, but we have helped other businesses just like yours to make the changes needed to start achieving your goals.

Contact us to find out how we can make the change within your organisation by being bold, courgageous and true.