Actions To Help Improve Leadership Practices

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." ~ Margaret Mead

By Patrick Driessen

One of my points of view on leadership is the following; we all can be a leader and we are all in leadership! Although not everyone chooses to be a leader in business (some choose to lead, some choose to follow), we are all part of leadership and we can always lead ourselves!

Leading yourself is also one of the things you´ll need to accelerate your own success! So, how often do you ask yourself what YOU can do to improve your leadership skills or help to improve the leadership practices around you?

To help you to indirectly or directly improve leadership, please find below a range of actions you can take to improve your own leadership and the leadership practices within your organisation:

1. Challenging the Process: how are you questioning and changing the status quo?

• Volunteer for a challenging project that will stretch you and require you to learn something new.
• Treat every day as a chance to start a new. Ask yourself what can I do today that will make me do my job smarter and better than yesterday?
• For a week, make a list of every task you perform. About each ask yourself why am I doing this, why am I doing it this way? Can this task be eliminated or done better?
• Begin meetings by asking colleagues, “what action did you take recently to make your performance even better?” Answer the question yourself to model. Ask colleagues to “brag” about ways they have improved performance of team members or of processes used.
• Meet with staff and coworkers and ask them what really annoys them about the organization. Commit to changing three of the most frequently mention items.
• Review every policy and procedure in the organization. Ask yourself, “why are we doing it this way?” If the answer is because we’ve always done it this way”, ask, “How is it contributing to us being the best we can be?” If you don’t get a satisfactory answer work to change or eliminate the process.
• Reward risk takers. Praise them and recognize them publicly. Give them opportunities to talk about their experiences and share the lessons they’ve learned!

2. Inspiring a Shared Vision

• Read articles on the future of your business and society. Think about how future trends might affect current industry-, business- and company processes and methods. Make a list of what reputable people are predicting about your industry in the next ten years. Look for patterns and predict how your organization will be affected.
• Please ask yourself, “Am I in the job to do something or to have something to do?” Write down what you want to accomplish while you are in your current job and why.
• Interview some of your colleagues and stakeholders and ask them about their hopes, dreams, goals, and aspirations for the future. Think about how these relate to your own. What are the common goals? How can you incorporate their aspirations into your own?
• Clarify your vision for the future and share it with people formally and informally in meetings, at lunch, and in other conversations.
• Take every opportunity to make presentations and speak to colleagues and stakeholders.

3. Enabling Others to Act

• Find ways to increase interactions among people who need to work more effectively together. Invite people to attend your meetings. Invite people to each lunch together to discuss some aspect of your work.
• Identify who needs to be involved in your work or project. Call them all together at the beginning to establish a team and gain commitment to working together.
• Assign important tasks such as meetings and presentations to others to build capacity. Coach and support the person so they have the confidence to take over the tasks.
• Assign nonroutine work to people who often do routine work. Routine work breeds a sense of being powerless, whereas nonroutine work fosters a sense of doing something important.
• Ask coworkers for their opinions and viewpoints. Share problems with them.
• Make sure that everyone in your organization engages in substantial (e.g., at least 40 hours) job related professional development each year.
• Be very accessible to others. Wander around your organization daily. Stop in to say hello and ask coworkers how things are going. If you are in an office, always keep your door open.
• Publicize the work of team members. Let others know about their accomplishments!

4. Modeling The Way

• Write down the values and principles that you believe should guide your part of the organization. Ask others on your team to do the same and come to consensus about the values you want to guide you.
• Keep track of how you spend your time. Check to see if your actions are consistent with your values. Are you setting the example you want? If there are inconsistencies, identify what you need to change.
• Set goals that are achievable. If the large goal is to implement something complex, break down the goal into parts so people know the key milestones and they can easily see their progress.
• Make decisions visible. Post decisions and progress made on a bulletin board or keep colleagues posted through email, webcasts and meetings.

5. Encouraging the Heart

• Praise and reward people who exemplify the organization’s standards!
• Plan a celebration for each small milestone your team reaches: don’t wait until the end to celebrate. You can bring in bagels for breakfast or end a meeting with a pizza party. Success breeds success!!!
• Tell a public story about a person in your organization who went above and beyond the call of duty.
• Build a peer recognition program into your organization such as a “You made my day!” award.
• Be creative about awards: give a giant light bulb to the person who has the best idea of the month or chocolate for an act of sweetness.
• Provide feedback about results as quickly as possible. Stay abreast of what is and isn’t going well and seek out team members to give feedback. From: Leadership Practices, by J.M. Kouzes & B.Z. Posner

"Real leaders are ordinary people with extraordinary determination!" ~ Unknown

Make this a Positive & Fruitful day....unless you have other plans!

Thanks, warm regards & success,

Patrick Driessen