Archive for the ‘Leading’ Category

Being a leader is a massively busy and demanding role. Faced with so much to do it can be difficult to take the time to take stock and remind yourself of your unique traits as a leader.

There are obviously some great resources that can help you to unlock your hidden talents. I particularly like Marcus Buckingham’s Now Discover Your Strengths and there are many others.

On the other hand you might just be looking for something that you can do really quickly, so here is a quick checklist. Just score yourself between 1 and 5, where a 5 means you are exceptional in this area and 1 means you are a beginner.

Leadership Trait	Score
I know what I stand for as a leader
I have communicated my values to my team and peers
I have worked with my team and my peers to identify shared values
I know what I want to achieve personally
I know what I want to achieve for the organisation, function or team that I lead
I have secured the support and buy-in of others to help me achieve
I always provide clear direction
I take responsibility for what does and does not happen
I make expectations clear
I follow through and hold others to account
I listen more than I talk
I don’t pretend to be the expert at everything
I regularly inspire and motivate my team because I know what motivates and inspires them
I play to my strengths
I get others playing to their strengths
I embrace rather than avoid difficult and challenging stuff
I see change as part and parcel of leading

Once you have worked through this basic assessment, you will have the base data that will let you know what you do really well and what areas you might need to work on as a leader.

Armed with this you are all set for even greater results and success.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

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.

As a leader, you know that ultimately the perception of you is based first and foremost on the results that you achieve. At the same time, some achieve great results while others struggle.

So what makes the achievers stand out?

Real Clarity

One of the things I notice about achievers is that they know where they want to get to. They have a desired end point and a plan of action to get there. By contrast, those with less clarity bob along in a world of vagueness.

Personal Drive

We keep hearing about so called ‘overnight successes’. Yet in reality we know that this is more fiction than fact. Look at some of the most successful people around and a common thing you will see is that it took time and a ton of effort to achieve success on a major scale. They encountered many obstacles along the way but had the drive and persistence to keep going.

They Are Not Afraid To Fail

This is an odd one. Everyone has tried and failed at something. To achieve as a leader you have to get comfortable with trying and knowing that you will have just as many failures, if not more than successes. Or as Edison said, he found out 10,000 ways that did not work before achieving success.

They Build A Team

No one does it all by themselves. It does not matter how good you are; you cannot expand beyond a certain point without a team to support you. This does not mean you are incapable but just a simple fact that you have a limit of 24 hours in any one day.

They Have A Support Team

Being a leader is really lonely. I remember a Partner at Ernst & Young saying this to me when I worked there. The statement did not have much impact but it became clear when I was in a senior role. Be aware and alert to who you need on your support team.

They Have A Way To Recharge

It does not matter who you are; you can only operate at your peak for so long, then you need to recharge. The way in which you recharge will differ from person to person. The key is being alert to the need to recharge and do what works for you.

The Bottom Line: People thrive on achievement and some simple changes can make a huge difference to your success.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

Pick up one of the many books around leadership and you might get the impression that creating strategy is all about blue sky thinking and away days. In truth, creating and delivering on a business strategy is a major challenge. So what is key to creating strategy?

Key 1: Get Clear On The Now

Before you can start to think about the future, you need to get clarity about where you are now. For larger organisations this probably means doing a lot of analysis of the different sectors or areas in which the business operates.

Key 2: Scan the Horizon

This is essentially about identifying what is lying ahead and how it might impact on the organisation or specific parts of the organisation. Look, for example, at the impact the internet has had on traditional areas like print advertising or even recruitment.

Key 3: Listen To Your People

It is often those closest to creating a product or delivering the service who get insights into what is possible. Too often this valuable asset is overlooked.

Key 4: Don’t Get Set In Stone

It’s a balancing act. You need to put a stake in the ground and avoid chopping and changing all of the time. At the same time you don’t want things so set in stone that you cannot adapt to changes in the marketplace or regulation.

Key 5: Break It Down

5 years is a long time in the life of a business. You will have your long term vision or direction of travel, but you need to break it down to smaller milestone or targets to be achieved along the way.

The truth is there is no magic formula to creating strategy but focusing on some key things can make a big difference.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

If you are a manager or leader, there will be times when you need to produce a business case for funding. When you present a business case, you are asking the organisation to commit to potentially huge amounts of initial, and possibly ongoing, funding.

So what are the common reasons why business cases get rejected?

1. They fail to convincingly make the case for change. In other words, they don’t have a compelling enough answer to the question, “Why do we need to say yes?”
2. They don’t represent good value for money or quite simply are not affordable.
3. They are too complex and fail to get the key messages across clearly and concisely.
4. They don’t demonstrate to decision makers that there is sufficient capability to project manage the case to successful completion.
5. The benefits that will arise are poorly presented.
6. They carry too high a level of risk or uncertainty.
7. They are out of line with organisational priorities.
8. They don’t have the support of all the stakeholders who are needed to make it happen.

The truth is that as a leader or manager you need to be able to create and present the case for resources compellingly, otherwise it is always going to be a struggle to delivers the results that you know you are really capable of delivering.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

“People are our greatest asset”. How many times have you heard that said by a leader or seen it written in an organisation’s annual report?

On one level I truly believe that leaders really get the importance of people to the success of the business.

On the other hand, I notice that many organisations these days take an accounting approach to people. So what do I mean by that? Quite simply:

“They treat people as an expense rather than an asset”.

Take a look at the financial statements of any organisation and you will see:

• The costs of salaries and benefits of staff being shown on the profit and loss account as an expense.
• The premises, machinery, equipment and vehicles being shown as an asset on the balance sheet.

Yes, in accounting terms premises, equipment, machinery and vehicles are assets. However by themselves they create nothing. Someone needs to switch on equipment and check that it is functioning as expected. Buildings need something being created or delivered from them to generate income.

More often than not it is the efforts of people that turn these assets into useful resources that generate income and profits for organisations.

When we invest in the purchase of assets we make sure we utilise them and maintain them so they continuously operate at peak performance. We also heavily invest in salaries of the people we employ. In reality, it is the single area of ongoing expense for many organisations. Yet we don’t always make the investment to get the best from people.

So what’s the answer?

1. Sit down and look at the investment being made in the payroll each month.
2. Look at the percentage of salaries that you are investing in developing people.
3. Change your perception of people in the organisation. Start to see them as assets or value creators.
4. Make a commitment to get the best from people by providing the best development opportunities you can. Not only will you have more capable people but more than likely you will reduce staff turnover, improve morale, improve the bottom line and gain competitive advantage in your industry or marketplace.

The truth is this is a basic business mistake that you can rectify with ease if you really want to get the best return from the biggest single recurrent investment you make.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

As someone who has extensive experience of leading and helps others to achieve success as a leader or manager, I am a pretty avid reader around the topic. While there are many great insights and words of wisdom, there are many myths too. Here are 15 of my favourites:

1. Your ability to lead depends on how senior you are in the organisation.
2. People will naturally follow you if you are at the right level in the organisation.
3. You are born a leader. I have yet to hear about the parents of the new born being told in the delivery room that their little boy or girl has the leadership gene.
4. You need to be an extrovert to lead. In fact research undertaken by Jim Collins for the excellent book ‘Good To Great’ suggests the complete opposite.
5. It’s all about strategy, vision and long term. Yes this is important, but look at the financial pages of a good quality newspaper and you will see how much focus there is on short term. It is all about balance.
6. When you become a leader your job becomes easier.
7. You need to know the detail as to how things work. It helps but it can also be a barrier.
8. You can cut back on your learning, development and personal growth. The reality is that learning is lifelong.
9. It’s easy to please all stakeholders.
10. You don’t have to make sacrifices.
11. You can do it all alone.
12. You need to be extremely knowledgeable.
13. You need to be really smart. One thing you do need to have in spade loads is emotional intelligence.
14. Being a leader and an entrepreneur are the same thing. As long as you are salaried and are not investing personally your risk is different.
15. You need to keep collecting more and more academic qualifications. Often it is experience that counts.

Well that’s my list, what else would you add?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk