As managers and leaders, we know it is important to groom the team for a higher performance. Yet, most don’t take time for it. Self improvement is taken granted, with an excuse that it is not necessary now or even substituted with an idea, 'if i can manage my boss that is more than enough’.
When we measure the results expected vs. performance, it reveals a lot. The lack keep becoming exponential over time. Reverse is also true. If we spend time to teach team the values, vision and the results expected from them, it gives year on year increase in the outcome. Such endeavors does bear different fruits according to the level of participants. The generation involved, the gaps, the mindset and the attitudes. Effective leadership lays in taking together everyone from the level they are in to the level desired at the
organization’s or team’s vision.
Essential leadership focuses on what is not changing. The basic human touch and connect. Which leads to business connect. However nice our products are, buyer’s mindset and the way we approach him or her matters equal or even higher. There are good vendors every corner of the world, claiming why they are better, of course backed with genuine statistics and testimonials. Yet there are game changing new entrants who are astonishing the established giants with their innovative cost effective solutions with a human approach. Startups would not have that fancy budget for marketing.
How much time one should allocate towards learning, to be coach-able, to stay relevant?
I would say every moment. Learning can happen at every minute for a person who is ready for it. It’s not tons of boring theory, nor the puzzles which shows where you are wrong, etc., being far off from the reality prevailing today. It is at the basic level, if you take up, a few of them, and apply the new thinking, the results are evident and will astonish. Take it as a simple 80:20 example.
Game is not going to be easy, but going to be worth. In reality, multiple energies are working simultaneously on an event with different intentions. What you are, which energy you represent, only matters. A leader who is aware of his or her effect on the team, the followers and the uniqueness of own approach does not deviate from the strengths.
Firstly, it will be lesser effect by changing to something that you are not, and moreover already there is less time left to bring the kind of effect needed. Experiment demand iterations, and costs lot of time and efforts.
The scattered opinions in the team not only dilutes that energy but also the collective goodness it can do for the stakeholders.
Keen observers can make out, people are individually successful but collectively failures. Leader has to state a problem clearly, identify the reasons and excuses behind it, and on how by solving it together everyone can grow.
If we don’t take time to reflect on what and why we are doing certain things in certain ways, we will lose on our authentic progress.
Nature is cautious to reveal its future plan. Fear is, that it may act like taking a caterpillar out of the cocoon to ease its struggle in becoming a butterfly. Caterpillar ends becoming useless with no strength in its wings. Nature expects you to find your voice. No point in being another voice without uniqueness. Already there are enough noises. Essential leadership takes everything that can be accounted. Such that time is spent on the best, long term result giving endeavors.
Once started its important to keep the momentum in learning.
Our professional success can be connected with the training we receive, be it for sports, arts or towards leadership. Training helps to grow quickly in the areas we otherwise do not look at normally. Training individual self and the team, helps each other.
Essential leadership, necessitates putting people first, putting purpose before the person, and in arriving at a collective vision for all and by all.
To begin, we need to empty our cups, so that new content can be poured in. Drop all the pre-conceived ideas and be neutral, arrive learning with an open mind, rather than expecting to validate existing knowledge or experience. Be engaged for new ideas. Radical
transformation is needed in the mindset and the heart set, from living a life of self-limiting beliefs to move towards to a life of possibilities.
Below are quick pointers which helped me to move towards essential leadership.
Be ready to grow self and others
Believe that you can change yourself and the team
Know what kind of example you are setting
Pay attention to team members who are responsive and who are improving
Explain the benefits you have found in yourself as you progress towards your personal leadership
Let the members be aware of the opportunities for the prepared
Learn to respect people individually and collectively
No job is big or small, find out what needs to be done, do it without complaining
Don’t discard a lesson since the source is not familiar. Differentiate it early for your benefit
Don’t allow sensitive topics to scare you. Growth is exactly beneath the problem
Strive being better version of yourself every day. Comparison is pain. Analogies limps.
Learn to tolerate discomfort and vulnerability associated with the growth
There should be life in our actions and what we do day today, should energize everyone involved
Team grows, if your method works.
If one don’t establish in leadership, hesitation to work in a newer environment is common
As a leader do you give a starting point to your team, a road-map then add to it as your team progresses
Leadership evolves over time, as you stand more of what you are, you are a budding leader.
Industry need people who grow their skills and ready to lend their skills to grow others
When you become a leader, don’t be that person who knows how to lead but doesn’t.
Be a mentor for younger, volunteer for NGO, sit on a board, teach a class, mentor a business
Game is about transforming oneself without losing soul. Be honest with yourself.
And finally did you climb your ladder without compromising on your values, ethics, ideas and principles
'This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, Thou
canst not then be false to any man'. - Hamlet, Shakespeare
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