The Leadership Style You Need for a Successful Team
Hugh Littleton, Director, Learning Design Solutions
For a team to achieve peak performance, you will need to lead with a clear vision and agenda. This article focuses on concepts leaders must practice for team success, and illustrates leadership imperatives for high-performing teams.
I recommend the following “Roadmap for Leadership Success” to be in the fore front and put into focus. It is essential for Leaders to embrace my five leadership Imperatives, identify three characteristics of leadership, and work toward my ten leadership Competencies that will help drive team success.
The “Five Leadership Imperatives” I suggest for any company and/or organization are to ensure there is effective communication present during any and all employee conversations and engagements. Trust must be defined in the organization as doing what you say, saying what you mean and the bottom-line is you must follow-through. Commitment is to become a common ground rule mantra number one for individuals within the team to have the “will” to do. You see you can’t motivate your team you must as a leader create an environment that fosters motivation, creativity, and the “will” for individuals to “show-up and bring their whole self to the job”.
This is created not by trying to motivate your team but, by “inspiring” your team. It is imperative that you have a sound process in place to afford successful outcomes regarding goals, projects and objectives your team/organization wants to achieve.
Finally, the focus of a successful team is to always have in their line-of-sight “results”. What is it that we really want at the end-of-the-day that will validate what success looks like?
Three primary characteristics of successful leaders to bring to life affecting the 5 leadership imperatives are to “diagnose” all issues, perceptions, and agendas seen and unseen. Everyone will have their own agenda. Leader have to coach for maximum performance by always asking questions with and “Appreciative Inquiry” mind-set.
Next steps are to continuously reinforce and reward appropriately successful outcomes. Never forget to reinforce never repeating things that didn’t afford team success.
Of course, ten leadership competencies that are important to for the process of team success are: Vision, Authenticity, Appreciative Inquiry, managing/handling difficult conversations, commitment, shared ideas, developing impeccable listening skills, managing non-performers, having fun and remaining at all times a sense of openness and a high-level accountability.
Remember, accountability equates to the word responsibility and it is doing the right thing when no one is looking and certainly doing the right thing when everyone is looking. Accountability is simply just doing the right thing!
These are the foundation competencies for all leaders striving to develop/design successful teams that will be sustainable.
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