Archive for the ‘Delivering Great Results as a Leader’ Category

Leaders understand that to deliver to their potential and get the rewards, results and returns that they want they have to be effective.

In this short video I highlight a number of areas where you need to focus in order to be effective. As always I value your comments and contributions too.

Duncan Brodie helps organisations and individual leaders to achieve great results through people. He invites you to sign up for his free audio e-course

We all know that leadership is really long term work in progress.  By that I mean that there are always things that you can develop in order to be even more effective.

At the same time there are often some simple changes that you can make that really make a difference to the results that you acieve.  In this short video blog post I share 5 ideas on things that you can do right now to increase your success and improve your results as a leader.

As always I value your comments and and tips on specific adjustments leaders can make to be even better at what they do.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achivements helps organisations and leaders to achieve better results through people. He invites you to sign up for his free audio e-course at http://www.goalsandachievements.co.uk/leaders-main.html

Being in a leadership role in an organisation, whether small or large, is demanding. Faced with these demands it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and what is key to achieving long term organisational success.

So what in my experience are the keys to achieving long term organisational success?

Key 1: Clarity Of Direction

You need to be clear about where you are heading. While you will need to be flexible from time to time, it is important to keep focus on the end game.

Key 2: Products Or Services Someone Wants To Buy

Ultimately, unless you have sufficient demand for what you offer, you can never achieve long-term success.

Key 3: The Ability To Market What You Have To Offer

There is little use in having a product or service that is world-class but the best kept secret.

Key 4: The Ability To Convert Interested Parties Into Buyers

A lot of interest in what you have to offer is great but the real acid test is whether you can convert the interested into buyers.

Key 5: Good Back Office Processes

Some businesses do a great job at making the sale but struggle with delivering the product or service because they don’t pay enough attention to the back office stuff.

Key 6: A Range Of Products And Services

Successful organisations know that products and services have a period when they are at their peak so spread the risk by having products and services at different stages in the life cycle.

Key 7: Employees Who Are Engaged

A lack of engagement hurts organisations in terms of productivity, sales, customer satisfaction and profits.

Key 8: People Who Can Do The Job Well

Successful organisations have people who are appropriately skilled and developed to do the job to the highest standard.

Key 9: A Willingness To Innovate

People have a thirst for new things or things that improve what is already on offer and good organisations respond to this demand through innovating.

Key 10: A Willingness To Take Balanced Risks

No organisation can get beyond a certain point without taking some sort of risk.

The Bottom Line:

In a fast moving world where there is a demand for instant results it is easy to lose sight of the key things that contribute to organisational success. I wonder what else you would add to the list?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professional people become great leaders and managers. Sign up for his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk.

Reviewing the content on a group that I belong to on one of the major social media sites recently, I came across an interesting job advert. In a nutshell the recruiter was looking for someone who stood out from the crowd, was a self-starter and a good communicator.

Now it might have raised a bit of a chuckle and ideas in my mind as to what it meant in practice and it got me thinking about the whole way we communicate.

As a leader one of the keys to success is getting results through others. However before you can get results through others you need to specify what is required.

Perhaps you are thinking that it can’t be that difficult to do. You might well be right but how often do you see:

• Job descriptions that are so vague they are almost meaningless
• Employee objectives merely being a list of actions rather than measurable results
• Two people leaving a meeting with a completely different understanding of the next steps
• People reporting back and assuming that someone else was dealing with this or that aspect of a project.

We all know that vaguely specified requirements can lead to:

• Things not being achieved
• Resources being wasted
• Additional costs being incurred when adjustments need to be made to what already has been done.

So as a leader, if you want to get even better results and achieve more success, start:

• Specifying what is to be achieved in terms of results or outcomes
• Making it crystal clear who is responsible for what
• Setting clear and unambiguous deadlines.

The Bottom Line: Sometimes it is the simple changes that yield the biggest benefits. To be more successful, start by being specific when giving direction and setting expectations.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professional people become great leaders and managers. Sign up for his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk.

There are many great leadership books out there and like many I love to learn from the insights of others. At the same time there are often some harsh realities that you never discover or are perhaps skimmed over in books and training.

1. Creating a vision is actually pretty hard. For a few coming up with a clear vision which they are totally passionate about is really easy. For the majority coming up with this big aspiration is actually pretty tough.
2. People don’t neatly fall into buckets. We all like to categorise people into certain buckets or types. You know the ideas of certain professions being creative, dynamic and extroverted while others are dull or boring. Some of this is reasonable but being too rigid can actually be counter-productive.
3. Change is a lot less about process and a lot more about people. You can have the best tools, project plans and change programmes but if you can’t shift hearts and minds it is all in vain.
4. Teams don’t always work in perfect harmony. In fact in some of the best teams there is what is best described as healthy constructive interaction.
5. The figureheads or public facing leader are not doing it all single handedly. We can really easily buy into the belief that entrepreneurs and leaders like Richard Branson, Lord Sugar, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are doing it all. The reality is they are supported by great teams.
6. The best leaders are all charismatic and extroverted. The reality is that some of the best are just quiet and introverted and let others take the limelight. They have a knack for looking to attribute success to others.
7. People who are supposedly trying to achieve the same thing don’t always pull together. I noticed this a lot when I worked in the NHS where there was often a lot of silo working.
8. People put the customer first. In reality people put their own interests first and what it means for them in many cases.
9. People are great at spotting the problems but a lot less are ready to offer solutions. Anyone can find problems but not everyone can find solutions.
10. Change does not happen overnight and in fact making meaningful and sustainable change is likely to be more like a marathon than a sprint.

If you have some of your own experiences to add why not go ahead and leave a comment?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professional people become great leaders and managers. Sign up for his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk.

Of course you want to achieve success as a leader.  At the same time we often forget some obvious things when the going gets tough and lose our way.  Here are 10 timely reminders to help you be more successful as a leader and personally in 2012.

1.  You need to get clear on what you want to achieve.
2.  To achieve you need a plan of action.
3.  There will be obstacles and setbacks along the way.
4.  There are things you can influence and control and things that you can’t.
5.  Sometimes you need to be flexible.
6.  Change is happening all of the time and likely to impact on everyone.
7.  Taking decisions and action is the catalyst for progress.
8.  Everyone fails from time to time.
9.  The best investment you can make is in you.
10. Peak performers don’t try to do it all by themselves.

What words of wisdom would you add?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professional people to become highly effective leaders, managers and achieve more career success.  He invites you to sign up for his free audio e-course at http://goalsandachievements.co.uk/leaders-main.html

We are coming to the end of another year. Like most of us, you probably started the year with some plans. Your plans might have been related to your work, career, business, family or some personal aspiration.

The chances are some things went according to plan, some spectacularly failed and some turned out okay but not quite how you anticipated. I know that, as I look back on the year, there were things I tried that failed in a big way.

For some, failing at all is devastating. For me it is all part of the process of achieving success. We all have our own definition of success. Some of the components that constitute success for me include:

• Having plenty of opportunity to contribute to the success of others.
• Being appropriately rewarded for the skills, experience and expertise I bring for those who work with me.
• Keeping a sense of balance between running a business and having the time to exercise and eat properly.
• Being able to grow, develop and take on new challenges.
• Being able to experiment and try things.

So as you think about planning for a new year, start by defining what success means for you. Taking this simple step will increase the chances of success and help you make the right choices.

So what do you hope to achieve in 2012?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professional people become great leaders and managers. Sign up for his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk.

We all have our moments of doubt and it is completely normal to have them. On the other hand, if you allow those moments of doubt to turn into continual procrastination, the results and success you achieve diminish.

So how can you stop procrastinating and start achieving?

Stop Over-Thinking

Any time we have to take a decision there are going to be areas of uncertainty. Of course you need to be mindful of pitfalls as a leader. At the same time, if you over-think, you worry yourself out decision and action taking.

Ask Yourself Key Questions

At the end of the day there are two simple but highly effective questions you can ask yourself. The first one is what is the worst that can happen? The second question is what is the best that can happen? In my experience asking these questions can get you from stuck to action.

Recognise That You Are In The Risk And Reward Business

Leadership is all about making things happen and to make things happen you have to be ready and willing to take balanced risks. Once you accept that this is just how it is you reduce the pressure on yourself.

Develop The Action Habit

Taking action builds confidence, just in the same way continuous repetitions with weights builds muscle. Start becoming an action taker and building the action habit. Small successes lead to more action and more achievement.

The Bottom Line: Everyone has fears and doubts. The most successful push through despite their fears and doubts.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements Ltd helps professional people become great leaders . Sign up for his free 6 part audio e-course .

Leadership is one of those odd areas. Unlike the detailed technical and professional work that many of my clients undertake, it can appear really simple. Yet the reality is very different.

So I was thinking about my take on leadership and what I have learned and discovered personally through my own experiences and those of my clients. Here is my top 25 and I would love you to share your experiences too.

1. It is not always the smartest people who progress to the more senior roles. The reason being is that your success at a more senior level is as much about you as an individual as it is your knowledge.
2. Knowledge is just one dimension in being a successful leader. Interpersonal, or what are sometimes oddly referred to as ‘softer skills’, really count.
3. If you cannot get along with people it is always going to be a struggle. The idea that you can do it all by yourself is a complete myth.
4. You have to take action. Ideas are great and creativity is marvellous but it is action that translates ideas into results.
5. Good leaders make plenty of mistakes. No-one is perfect and we all make mistakes. The key is to learn from them.
6. Breakthroughs do not happen without balanced risk taking. Sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking that taking risks is a bad thing. On the other hand, balanced risk taking is essential if you are ever going to make any kind of breakthrough.
7. Leadership success is a marathon not a sprint. Forget the idea that you become an overnight success. It takes time, effort and commitment.
8. Anyone can find fault. At the same time not everyone can find solutions or spot the opportunities.
9. Simple things can often yield the biggest impact. It is easy to get obsessed with the next big thing but often it is the small changes that make the difference.
10. Being a leader is a longer term project, not task and finish.
11. A great team is essential, otherwise you are always going to shoot below your potential.
12. Leaders need a support network as being at the top can be a lonely existence.
13. Taking responsibility is essential rather being optional.
14. Look for the good in everyone as no one turns up intending to do a mediocre or poor job.
15. There will always be difficult challenges and it is how you respond that matters.
16. Sacrifices are part and parcel of your success in your career. You need to be willing to make the sacrifices.
17. Time is your ultimate limiting factor so you need to invest it wisely.
18. Praise people for what they contribute as it is a powerful motivator.
19. We never stop learning. There are always going to be new challenges, obstacles and barriers to address.
20. See challenges not as problem but an opportunity to learn and grow.
21. Communication skills are important, especially listening skills. The best leaders in my experience are exceptional listeners.
22. Play to your personal strengths as much as you can rather than trying to master what you are no good or not so good at.
23. Don’t let your personal agenda become more important than results and people.
24. People are your real assets even if they are shown as an expense in the profit and loss account.
25. Persistence through good and not so good times really counts. Anyone can thrive in the good times.

So what else would you add to the list?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements Ltd helps professional people become great leaders . Sign up for his free 6 part audio e-course .

Stepping into and prospering as a leader has never been an easy ride. These days I truly believe that the demands on the modern business leader are huge. So what are 10 realities of the modern business leader?

1. Having ‘leader’ in your job title does not make you a leader. If you are going to be a leader you need followers. Seniority or status no longer brings followers; you have to earn the right.
2. Loyalties are different. There was a time when people joined and stayed with an organisation for the long term. Now with continued mergers, acquisition and greater mobility, people change jobs more. As a result they might not have the same level of loyalty.
3. People want to be involved. There may have been a time when you could issue instructions and people would do what you asked. These days, people want to be involved.
4. Bad news travels fast. 24 hour media and social networking means bad news quickly becomes viral, which puts a huge strain on leaders and leadership teams.
5. It’s a balancing act. Leaders are asked to create long term strategy and success. On the other hand they are judged on the short term results. The challenge is to balance long term success and short term results.
6. Multiple stakeholders with different expectations mean that it is a continuous juggling act. You need to respond to the different stakeholder expectations, some of which can be conflicting.
7. Greater regulation means there are many considerations to take into account. From employment, to advertising, to accounting, to money laundering, health and safety and corporate social responsibility, to name just a few.
8. Geographically dispersed operations present many challenges. There is the obvious one of time difference but challenges around cultural issues too.
9. Innovations come like a tidal wave with organisations seeking to get one step ahead of the rest. The challenge is to make the right choices.
10. The rewards are high but so are the risks. When we hear about the rewards packages of senior people they can often seem like they are huge. At the same time there is a fair degree of risk, especially for those at the very top of the organisation.

The Bottom Line: Being a leader is demanding, rewarding and challenging in the modern business world and achieving success is a long term project.