LEADERSHIP BASICS
I've been working with two dynamic women who operate a small business who called for help when they realised their desired business culture wasn't being experienced.
When we first met, I listened to their issues, concerns, wants and requirements and I identified immediately their glaring need: Leadership Basics.
We take for granted that we all have some experience and understanding of leadership however I was totally surprised that the entry level of leadership was required. Their personalities appeared quite different and it was interesting to observe how they communicated with their staff and each other.
To meet their urgency of 'help' I facilitated a meeting to demonstrate how to engage, involve, set standards, provide feedback and gain commitment and accountability with their staff. Following this meeting, I wrote a personalised Leadership Basics Plan - a day by day approach of how to leverage off the meeting. Finally, I hosted a coaching session using the TotalSDI* profile tool to help them build a plan to further develop their relationship building capacity.
In our world, we're bombarded with articles, books, tweets and quotes about the latest leadership skill, quality and strength needed to be successful. So, we can be forgiven when we ignore the need to build the foundations of leadership; the basics which include: two way conversations, listening and not interrupting, being consistent in our positive behaviour, providing feedback to reinforce and correct and the need to continually review how effective we are at being a leader.
By implementing this Leadership Basics Plan, the initial request of fixing the culture crash will be a natural outcome of being consistent in their leadership (if they stick to the plan!)
*TotalSDI is the newly branded title of Strength Deployment Inventory. We're about to launch a new look and new packages. It's totally awesome.