Leadership for Growing Businesses by Sharon Pearson
Leadership is not management. It's not about likeability, knowledge or seniority. True Leadership - Essential Leadership - is about knowing your vision, being able to communicate that vision to your team, inspiring others to want to achieve their best and knowing when to coach, lead, manage or direct.
Leadership is something that can be developed, if you can -
- be aware of limits to your leadership abilities
- understand what needs to be changed
- learn the keys to effective and essential leadership
- be courageous enough to implement genuine leadership
Many managers believe that telling someone what needs to be done is enough, yet genuine leadership is more than directing - it's about taking the time to learn what motivates each person, listening to them fully, reflecting back what you are hearing and seeing based only on behaviour and giving feedback in real-time.
Leadership for growing businesses is challenging, because many small businesses are started up with a - rightly - aggressive leader at the helm, who wins the business, creates the deals, drives the business and gets everything started.
This aggressiveness we call The Crusader - the driver who sees and goes for opportunities. The challenge for Crusaders is that people who want to join a company want to be led by someone who has Crusader AND Collaborator traits - the traits of connection, loyalty, tolerance and willingness to listen.
These two characteristics - Crusader and Collaborator - can be in conflict and difficult for a new leader to juggle. The key is to realise (1) no one else cares as much as you do (2) you need to allow space for new team members to find their way over time (that's more than one day!) (3) loyalty comes because you care about your team as people, not because of what they can do well.
All of this is achievable, given the desire to become a truly gifted leader. Essential Leadership is accomplished through a willingness to learn and a desire to bring out the best in others, and not just your business.
Building Winning Teams by Sharon Pearson
A winning team enjoys success, wants to experience it more and is always looking to improve. How to get a team like this? - Have these very same qualities.
Building a winning team is about having a winner's mindset - the vision, the strategies, the planning, the actions and the follow up - not some of the time and constantly throughout your business cycles. It's about consistent, constant and valuable feedback about what's expected, what can be done better and how well they are doing.
Building a winning team is more than demanding they perform. It's about learning their strengths and encouraging more of what they do well, and ensuring that training, coaching and mentoring builds confidence and competence in the areas that need development.
Winning teams can also come down to one of the hardest areas of management - recruitment - and the most difficult to get right. Sometimes it's more like a crystal ball than recruitment - whilst some predictors indicate whether they will be successfull, ultimately it's how they gel with the team and the hardest predctor of all -
Recruits say "I love challenge" and then they get in the role and find out what they thought was "challenge" has just gone to a whole new level. A winning team can communicate the true definition of "challenge" in the first steps, to ensure there is a match in what everyone means. It avoids the disappointment!
Winning teams focus on creating their team the way they want it. Team first, then clients, then suppliers, then shareholders. That order of focus ensures the team will be at their best to give their best to their clients, and so it goes...
No leadership book I have read can deal with all the possibilities of what can go wrong and what needs to be dealt with to build a winning team - there are just too many scenarios and too many personalities - so the best advice I have realised there is - is to take the time to really learn what motivates each member of your team. Ask them!
Excellence and Character by Sharon Pearson
Character is not something we are born with but something we must develop. Character is that aspect of ourselves that enables us to push through the difficult times, live in alignment with our values and beliefs, say what we mean and mean what we say, follow through and be the person who is the most reliable when the answers are not obvious.
Character can not be read about - it is built only through being in situations where we must follow through, despite how difficult it is. Character comes through being tested, not being safe. The moments we risk the most are the moments we discover who we really are. We feel most successful and most capable once we have overcome an adversity or triumphed with something that is important to us. It makes sense then to place ourselves in situations where we will be tested.
Set goals that are a stretch to you - goals that have the gulp factor.
Have a go at things you have avoided until now.
Say "yes" to siutations where you don't know what to do next - and then learn what it takes to move forward.
Hang out with people who you admire because they follow through.
Stick with whatever it is regardless of the difficulty.
Do each of the above for 30 days and you will build even more character. It can be learned, but only by you doing it.
Success by Sharon Pearson
However you define success, its achievement is most likely by playing a game worth playing... more to come...
