THE LANGUAGE OF LEADERSHIP - D

Today is D day. I have many Ds to share and I have selected three to add to our Language of Leadership.

Join me as I play The Language of Leadership:

Diversity – it’s great to have diversity in your team. This doesn’t mean ensuring that there’s a balance of gender, generation, ability and disability – that’s a given.

How I see diversity is a diversity of motivation. If everyone you lead are motivated to help people, then you will struggle with the paramount need to meet to accomplish new projects or ensure that the diligence of the project analysis is completed.

 If you could build your own team, seek out what is important to people. Ensure you select those who see the world differently to you; ensure you can give trust to these diverse members to individually contribute their various skills, views, concerns and strengths.

 Direction – in a world where collaboration, co-operation and co-creation is expected, we’re seeing a lack of direction when people are looking around for someone to take the lead.

 Direction doesn’t need to be applied in an authoritarian style, but in a manner which people understand and can make sense of; how it connects to the purpose of their role and business.

 Discussion is more than a dialogue. In our time poor management of our day, we allow dialogue to fill it e.g. meetings. A discussion should have a desired outcome stated up front. For example, I need to understand what your expectation is of my involvement in this meeting.

I use a model to help people decide about the communication process they need to use dependent on the situation, context and audience. Too often we use the wrong process and we wonder why we don’t achieve what we’re expecting!

Did you catch my A, B & C blogs? You can locate these in the Thoughts section of my website.