Being a leader, is lifelong journey, a work in progress, a learning process that never ends. Leadership Development starts with who you are (your being) and flows into actions (your doing). Your actual success will never lie in what you do and achieve, but rather in the successes of the people and teams you lead. Leadership is relational and motivational, and yet it is tested in what the team members are achieving together. Leadership is about Influence – how you take people from “the current here” to “the desired there”.
You can force your team, you can nag them, manipulate, bribe or threaten them. Or, you can rather choose to guide, develop, motivate, support and empower them. Hopefully, you will grow into the type of leader that others will be proud to associate with; a leader that others will follow voluntarily and with passion.
It is often asked during Leadership Development: what leadership style is the best? The answer is, of course, that there is no right style for every situation and every person. The challenge of leadership in today’s world is to be a servant leader who can be adaptable and flexible. Someone who can “read” the situation and the people and then use the style that will best serve the people and get the results desired.
To help you, part of the journey will be to become competent in the following:
- Building a high-performing Team: To develop a collaborative and cohesive team with clear vision and roles, high trust, safety to debate while they keep each other accountable to implement decisions and achieve the desired results.
- Situational Leadership: To “read” the situation, then lead different people in different situations using different styles and approaches. In other words, being flexible and relevant, with a focus on both relationships and results. The idea is to get your people as competent and confident as possible so that you can empower them and delegate not only tasks but responsibilities.
- Coaching for Results: To coach your people team to become the best they can be. So the intent is to fast-track their learning and development.
One thing is for sure: in our current realities you will, like never before, need to find the right talent to build great teams and future-proof your organisation. At the same time, you need to be authentic, energetic, credible, wise, open and ethical to influence people to go from the current “here and now” to the best “there and then”. And then, proactively lead in an inclusive and interdependent way to get both clarity and buy-in.
To help leaders, I take them on a journey called the Leadership Development Process (LDP), which includes workshops and coaching. The workshops are filled with experiential exercises, interactive conversation and debate, while they try to figure out the right the right way and best skills to navigate the journey ahead.
My focus is on leaders as influencers, who are fulfilling the following roles:
- Motivators of teams and colleagues, giving energy and direction while lifting the morale and team spirit so that together we can be productive, provide high quality services and products, and be cost-effective.
- Relationship-builders, because without happy and engaged people we are dead in the water.
- Team builders, developing our teams through different stages and phases while staying together and achieving success and results.
- Culture developers, helping our organisations to developing the best and greatest culture that will make possible to execute our strategy and
Not one of us can be everything for everybody, but together as leaders we can take on the challenge, complementing and helping each other to be our best for the world!
