Ask Andi: How do you build leadership throughout a business? Leadership within the company is failing us. We’ve allowed things to happen, or not, to the detriment of the business. How do we get the business back on track?
Thoughts of the Day: A new approach to building leadership. Rethink leadership development. In addition to doing, business owners need to be and build leaders. And then build a culture of leadership throughout the organization. To be successful, business owners must set aside regular planning and evaluation time.
Build leadership throughout a business
Companies spend an average of 21% of all training dollars on leadership development and management training. This is the largest area of investment on a cross-industry basis, and not surprising given the increasing evidence that we will soon be facing a deficit of leadership talent. Most business owners are fairly autocratic and heads-down practical in their choice of vision. Their way or the highway. Get the work done, get paid, and go home. In these scenarios, at least the organization has some form of a vision to follow. But the possibility exists that valuable input from employees gets lost, as people seek to conform to, rather than confront and debate the owner’s vision.
The attitude of head down, working in the business, common to so many hard-working business owners, can lead to the business getting stuck. Customers’ needs expand. Competitors come and go and change their tactics and strategies. Marketplace shifts are subtle and often go unnoticed. Most of this gets overlooked in the press of daily business.
It’s easy to get caught up in the flow of the business. Being busy with day-to-day challenges takes the place of leadership. Then one day it’s a whole new ballgame and the business is nowhere near prepared enough to compete effectively.
Owners need to set aside regular analysis and planning time, not just for themselves but for everyone in the organization. Leadership is about challenging people to develop their thinking and planning skills.
Get out of the habit of working flat out from the start to the end of the day. Ensure that people have time to meet, work out problems, and analyze how things are going.
Leadership comes from actions and words
Teach people to look critically and collaboratively at what’s going well, what needs fixing, and how things might be changing. Teach people to discuss, debate, and solve problems cooperatively.
As an owner, you want to build your collaboration skills. Practice being inquisitive. Listen in order to understand and appreciate what people are going through. Be patient. Give your people time to work through problems and develop solutions. As they do, they take ownership and begin to lead.
Distribute leadership responsibility. Ask people to provide their suggestions, meet to debate options, and then implement solutions. When things go right, praise the players. When things go wrong, ask the players to find new solutions. Observe, guide, but don’t command. And eventually, you’ll have an organization made up of people who can think for themselves, leading the way forward within an overall context.
Most business owners start out with a clear idea of what they want to accomplish – a good product or service, satisfied clients, good employees, profits, and impact on the marketplace. Those are the dreams that fuel the start-up phase of the business. But as time goes on, the day-to-day challenges get in the way of long-term planning, evaluation, and re-calculation.
The business grows, gains customers add employees, and faces marketplace challenges. The original vision of the company needs re-shaping, taking into account all the experiences, positive and negative. The world keeps changing, and as the business evolves within that ever-changing world, so must the business’ mission, vision, purpose, goals, and measures of success.
Develop the skills of leadership, analysis, action, and re-evaluation at every level of the company. Encourage group insight, awareness, and collaboration. Help to secure your company’s future by teaching your employees how to cope with an ever-changing world.
