Month: March 2016 Page 1 of 2

In this week’s blog, I continue with the theme of tips to help develop leadership capability, develop greater employee engagement and create the right environment for high performance.

This week, I am providing some tips to help the team to be enthused about the vision and to be more engaged with it.

One of my favourite stories about the power and importance of a clearly articulated vision in a team involves President Kennedy’s visit to the NASA Space Centre in 1962. During his visit he noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said, “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?”

“Well, Mr. President,” the janitor responded, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

To most people the janitor was just cleaning a building but what is wonderful is that the janitor felt part of a team and something larger than just his day to day activities. He felt involved and in his mind he was helping to make history. Without a clean building and facilities the team wouldn’t have been able to operate at optimum levels. Everyone has a part to play in successful team performance.

No matter how large or small someone’s role in a team, they are helping to contribute to something larger that’s being created by the whole team/business. When the entire team adopts this attitude and belief then the team is able to create an amazing team spirit and generate incredible results and achievements.

Here a few tips to develop a sense of ownership of your team’s vision:

• Frequently talk with enthusiasm about the future prospects and the vision for the team/business. Encourage engagement with the vision by seeking colleague’s ideas and input on how to achieve it.

• Ensure that everyone in the team has clarity on the core focus and purpose of their role. Discuss with colleagues how their role contributes towards vision achievement. It’s imperative that people feel valued and part of things to create the right environment.

• Encourage the team to be innovative and creative in their thinking to bring the vision to life and make it a reality. Use mind mapping techniques, the creation of story boards, timelines and vision posters to support this.

• Be responsive and deal with colleague’s concerns about the obstacles and roadblocks that hamper performance and may get in the way of vision achievement. Look for and implement solutions to these obstacles.

• Use Storytelling as a powerful tool when you want to drive change and performance improvement. Stories help to develop the imagination and when used effectively can motivate people to achieve more than they thought possible.

This week why not take a few moments to reflect and consider your personal and/or business vision. How clear is your personal vision for the next 12 months? What steps can you take to bring more clarity or to progress your vision? Professionally, how clear is the vision for the team that you are involved with? What steps could you take to get greater engagement and involvement within the team for the vision?

This week’s quotation:

“A vision without action is just a dream; an action without a vision just passes time; a vision with an action changes the world.” Nelson Mandela

To arrange a free no obligation consultation, please contact Stephen Pauley via the contact form or by e mail: Stephen@befirstclass.co.uk

In the blog over the past few weeks, I have looked at tips to develop leadership capability and effectiveness, specifically how to get greater employee engagement and create the right environment for high performance.

This week, I am going to provide some tips that will help to challenge the status quo and some questions to help do this. An important part of a leader’s role is to look to create an environment where there is commitment to continuous learning and innovation. The world is changing at a fast rate accelerated by the advancement of technology. It’s important that teams and businesses constantly look at ways to meet the challenges of these changes and evolve.

It’s never a great idea for leaders, when asking questions about processes and ways of doing things, to accept the answer “we’ve always done it this way” as a reason to not explore alternative approaches. What may have worked in the past may need some refinement and adjustment to help generate greater efficiency, customer service and/or profitability. What has worked in the past may not be what is relevant to today or plans for the future. It was Einstein that said the definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different set of results.” If we want different results, we have to do some things differently.

Asking great open questions is a skill for leaders to hone in order to increase their influence and effectiveness. It’s vital tool to help challenge the status quo and current methods. It helps develop relationships and trust when you use well structured, timely and relevant questions.

An open question that encourages people to offer their ideas and opinions on a particular topic will be useful and help people feel valued and involved. It will help increase engagement levels and also displays that you are open minded. It displays that you’re willing to listen to people’s views rather than force your ideas on others and implement your ideas without input. Really listening to people and taking action on their responses and suggestions really helps to develop a high performing team and encourage greater collaboration.

Here are a few tips and suggestions to challenge the status quo:-

• Regularly ask colleagues for their ideas about how to improve the team’s performance. Openness to others ideas encourages participation, greater commitment and accountability. It also increases the quality of interaction with colleagues and develops increased trust.
• Frequently ask questions that help identify the obstacles that hamper performance and your efforts to increase efficiency, productivity and customer service. Ensure that you follow up on the responses to these questions and take action to remove the obstacles.
• Use effective questions to uncover the habits and practices that are outdated and no longer serve the team. 90% of what we do is habit, so it’s important that we have daily rituals and habits that help develop performance levels and results. We have always done it this way is not a good enough reason to keep a practice or procedure that is out of date or no longer working.
• Develop excellent listening skills to absorb what you learn from asking questions. You learn more from listening than talking! Become known for acting on what you learn as this will build credibility in the process and encourage future involvement.

• Regularly hold team meetings that address the following questions:-

1) What’s working well?
2) What’s not quite working yet?
3) What’s stopping us being the best we can be?
4) What needs to change to increase (you can insert something like results/efficiency/customer service)?
5) What action steps are we going to commit to?

This week, why not take a few moments to reflect on your personal and professional lives or a team that you are involved in. Consider what’s working well, what’s not quite working yet and what needs to change and devise some personal action points.

This week’s quotation:

“It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.” Harry S Truman.

To arrange a free no obligation consultation, please contact Stephen Pauley via the contact form or by e mail: Stephen@befirstclass.co.uk

In last week’s blog I talked about some tips for leaders to create greater engagement within their teams and it got me thinking about leadership more generally.

So I thought that in the blog over the next few weeks I would look at the subject of leadership in more detail.

Whilst not everyone runs a business or team, I believe that we can all display leadership qualities and use them effectively in our personal and professional lives. We are the leader and conductor of our life. Therefore we can create a clear vision and sense of purpose for our life. We can take greater responsibility for our actions, choices and results. We can commit to excellence.

Leadership isn’t always easy to define. We may have some difficulty in defining it but we know it when we see it in action and experience great leadership qualities first hand.

One of my favourite leadership definitions comes from Warren Bennis:

“Leadership is the function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust among colleagues and taking action to realise your own leadership potential.”

I saw a poster last week, which I thought also gave some clues about some of the qualities of effective leaders. It said that leadership is about capturing the imagination and enthusiasm of your people with clearly defined goals that cut through the fog like a beacon in the night.

Leaders have the ability to inspire people to go beyond what they think they are capable of doing. This includes making it possible for a group to attain a goal that was previously thought unattainable. They’re able to encourage their teams and individuals to be the best they can be. They do this by building trust, acting with consistency and fairness and motivating people by both words and deeds. I’m a big believer in people leading by example and modelling the behaviour and habits that they advocate. For me people walking their talk is essential.

As well as eliciting and securing the co-operation of others and encouraging greater collaboration, First Class leaders are able to get their team to buy into their vision of the future and the way to get there. They ask for ideas and input and listen well. They plan effectively and are great at following up and taking action on the plans they’ve set. They are exceptional at growing the motivation, engagement and commitment of others. Inspiring exceptional performance is second nature to them and they look to continuously improve and innovate.

I have detailed some tips below to create an environment for high performance. It may be that you don’t lead a team at the moment. If that is the case, consider how you can use some of the tips and leadership qualities in own life and work. Alternatively, are you able to encourage or influence greater use of some of the tips or qualities in the teams that you are part of?

Tips to create an environment for high performance

• Set high standards, be a role model for positive behaviour and lead by example
• Demonstrate and be clear about what people have to do to be successful
• Devise and set clear targets. Be clear and open about how performance will be measured, monitored, recognised and rewarded.
• Focus on the tasks and actions that matter most, serve customers best interests and are the most efficient, productive and profitable for the team and business. Ditch the rest.
• Develop an environment where people understand the boundaries that they can operate in. One where they feel trusted supported, empowered to act and take decisions. I call this freedom within a framework
• Be consistent and fair in the way that you manage and treat your team

This week, why not take a few moments to reflect on your own personal leadership qualities. What would you like to develop and use more of in your personal and professional lives?

This week’s quotation:

“The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.” Ray Kroc.

If you would like to dedicate some time developing your leadership skills, please contact me to arrange a no obligation free consultation and to discuss my 30 item leadership development questionnaire which is used in conjunction with my First Class leadership model.

To arrange a free no obligation consultation, please contact Stephen Pauley via the contact form or by e mail: Stephen@befirstclass.co.uk