The 7 Principles of Good Leadership

I thought you would enjoy this article by Simon Ashley called The 7 Principles of Good Leadership.

There are 7 Vital Principles that make Good Leaders Great. Knowing what they are and how to cultivate them is essential for success.
First and foremost it is necessary to appreciate that good leadership is about building positive, strong and cooperative relationships. In that light what is outlined below pertains to the building of relationship strengths.
The Seven Principles of Great Leadership are:
1. Learning to Listen:
If a leader is isolated from what is going on around them they’ll have shut themselves down to the flow of vital information about what is going on in the organization. Our feelings are that an isolated leader cannot keep a pulse on the day to day activities and does not have a good sense of the employee’s moods and overall morale. A great leader keeps tracks of these subtle vibes and can act quickly to avert bigger problems from arising.
2. Learning to Trust Your Self
Self doubt is readily perceived by one’s employees. A good leader exhibits great self confidence and employees pick up on this unwavering confidence; this in turn inspires the confidence needed by others in the workforce.
3. Learning to Empower Others
With power comes a feeling of responsibility that often makes the leader feel like they must do everything themselves. We feel that a good leader has developed their key employees and by empowering them their confidence and ability to perform at peak levels grows by quantum leaps.
4. Learning to be Resilient
Resilience is defined as the ability to not let the negativity in. Our experience has been that a great leader manages the organization in the best and worst of times without wavering emotionally.
5. Learning to Make the Difficult Emotional Decisions
All of a leader’s decisions ultimately affect many other people as well as the vitality and integrity of the organization. When we work with the leader of an organization we hone their ability to trust their their inner strength and knowing that their courage to move the organization forward will ultimately be rewarded.
6. Learning to Take Responsibility
A good leader realizes that they have been charged with significant responsibility for the vitality of the organization and ultimately for the lives of the individuals that are a part of it. We concur 100% and have found that great leaders recognize that their employees bottom line results possible and they treat these employees with the respect and responsibilities they have earned.
7. Learning to Communicate Effectively
Relationships that leave out the ability to communicate effectively are doomed to fail.This is such a critical point to the success of any organization. If employees don’t feel that their input is valued and encouraged; conflict and poor performance are often the results.

Our Leader Development Coaching practice  focuses on developing, or strengthening core business skills which provide a solid platform for leader development. The emphasis is not only on the specific leadership and management skills, or hard business skills such as strategic planning, analytical thinking and root cause analysis – often referred to as transactional leadership skills, but there is an enhanced emphasis on developing the depth of leadership, or softer business skills in areas such as conflict resolution, empathetic negotiation, effective communications and delegation.

Transforming Employees into Passionate Advocates

I recently came across an article in the HBR Blog Network titled Transform Your Employees into Passionate Advocates by Rob Markey. The article focuses on employee happiness, which has, once again, become a hot topic among CEOs and in boardrooms. This topic really comes and goes but for now it’s on most everyone’s radar because, in our current economic situation, it speaks directly to organizational productivity and profitability. There can be no argument that engaged employees are more productive and generate better outcomes for their companies.

But employee happiness for its own sake is not the right outcome for companies to seek. If paying employees more, giving them free lunches and providing them with employment perks like free laundry service and transportation to work were the answers; every employee in Silicon Valley would be “happy”. But, that’s not the case-employees of these firms become disgruntled and quit or move to another firm, why is that?

The author believes that happy employees are a result of a sense of fulfillment resulting from an important job well done, and is the direct result of acknowledgement and recognition from senior management. He also believes that employers should help employees achieve great things! In short, by earning our employees’ passionate advocacy for the company’s mission, organizations will reach their success goals by generating passionate advocacy with customers.

The author concedes that this is a very ambitious goal and it necessarily links employee engagement to customer outcomes, the ultimate source of a company’s success. To accomplish this, Markey believes the following is needed:

1. True ownership by line managers. Unfortunately, most large companies depend on HR to measure and manage employee engagement. Real engagement-passionate advocacy-comes from making customer’s loves richer, and there isn’t much that HR alone can do to help employees achieve that. Have you had the pleasure of going to an Apple store lately? How about dealing with the “Genius Bar”? I can tell you from personal experience that Apple is doing it right!

2. Simpler measurement. most companies gauge employee satisfaction through the time-honored annual survey, managed centrally and comprising a huge number of questions. This method is tired and really doesn’t work. The author recommends the actions taken by Net Promoter. They survey employees more often, ask just a few simple questions, and simplify the reporting. We find this to be very powerful and a great way to find out what’s really going on.

3. Direct feedback from customers. The bottom line is this: when front line employees and managers hear directly from customers-when they see how customers scored their experience, whey they hear what went right and wrong in the customer’s own words-the effect is dramatic.
In my opinion, organizations that maintain a culture of authenticity and appreciation, and inspire their employees to exceed performance expectations are ones that are able to build an environment of positive morale which results in employee loyalty. Loyal, passionate employees bring a company as much benefits as loyal, passionate customers. They stay longer, work harder, work more creatively, and find ways to the the extra mile!

What is your challenge? We at Transform Coaching look forward to working with you and discovering ways to transform your employees into passionate advocates.

Succession Planning: Building Your Bench Strength

Organizations that understand the need to identify and cultivate a deep talent pool tend to ensure their organization’s success by establishing performance continuity and minimal disruption during times of leadership transition. They understand that planning for succession is a cyclical, strategic initiative within the boundaries of a core set of leadership and succession management competencies, building a foundation for the implementation of strategies and the achievement of longer term goals and initiatives by identifying and developing their bench strength. Continue Reading »

The Completeness of Incomplete Leadership

No leader is perfect, and our business culture has historically placed such unrealistic demands on our leaders, many are afraid to make mistakes or admit their personal limitations. But the truly effective leaders are those who no longer try to be perfect, and instead, embrace their incompleteness; spending their energies developing and leveraging their strengths, and delegating those tasks or responsibilities to others who have the experience, capacity or competency to carry them through.  In today’s business environment, an executive’s job is no longer command and control, but rather one of coordination and collaboration among many different information resources which reside in their organizations. When leaders begin to see themselves as incomplete – as having both strengths and weaknesses – they will be able to cultivate their true leadership capacity and make up for what is missing by relying on others. Only then can a transformative leadership culture take shape.

In the article, “In Praise of the Incomplete Leaders”, the authors explain their distributed model of leadership which takes the incomplete leader into account. Their framework describes leadership as a set of four capabilities; sensemaking, relating, visioning and inventing.  These capabilities span the intellectual and interpersonal qualities necessary for leadership in our current business culture.  They argue that rarely will any leader possess strength in all four, thus creating a clear distinction between an incomplete and an incompetent leader: incomplete leaders “understand what they’re good at and what they’re not and have good judgment about how they can work with others to build on their strengths and offset their limitations.” Continue Reading »

Use of Assessments as a Selection or Development Tool

I ran across this article in the Wall Street Journal regarding the use of assessments in an executive selection and development capacity and found it to be very interesting. Many organizations are turning to assessments to provide an additional set of data points to better understand their executive candidates on many levels, ranging from their individual preferences to different styles and approaches for problem solving, communication – even in how they deal with and handle conflict. Continue Reading »

Succession Planning-Identifying and Developing Your Bench Strength

Succession planning is a process of identifying and developing key talent in an organization, and then grooming them through experience, training and focused development for more responsible positions of authority. Many organizations believe that is an exercise strictly reserved for the highest levels of executive management and leadership. In reality, every position of leadership or management responsibility within an organization should have a successor candidate – the depth of the succession plan strongly depends on the organization and their specific strategic initiatives.  For this reason, succession is a highly customized process. Continue Reading »

Transform Coaching

Thanks for stopping by and visiting our blog. We at Transform Coaching are experts in succession planning, leadership development and executive coaching. We will be bringing you our latest insights in helping companies achieve these objectives and answering some of the most frequently asked questions.

Thanks for joining us on this journey!