Archive for the ‘Leading’ Category

Teams, as we know, have the potential to contribute significantly to organisational performance. On the other hand they often fail to deliver to optimal performance levels.

While there may be whole host of barriers to success, I have found that some of the real barriers include the following:

• A Lack Of Listening

  So often people say that the problem is a lack of communication. Yes, communication matters but what I have found is the real barrier is the inability to listen to each other. When we stop listening, we close our mind to insights and ideas that could make a big difference.

• The Know It All

  You might have met this person: the individual who has the answer to every possible challenge that the team could have or face. The trouble is, they tend to steam roll through their ideas and end up alienating people.

• Pessimism

  Achieving anything of significance is tough and let’s not pretend otherwise. At the same time, if you are overly pessimistic you never do anything because you worry as to if you are doing the right thing.

• Promising A Lot, Delivering Little

  The people who used to frustrate me were the people who promised to do a lot of things but just let the team down time and time again. If you are the leader, you need to hold these individuals to account.

• A Lack Of Trust

  Trust takes time to build and can be destroyed in minutes. Delivering what you say and going out of your way to help others builds and maintains trust.

I would love to hear your experiences of what gets in the way of team success and, if you have a moment, I invite you to leave a comment.

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

We are increasingly hearing about the financial challenges facing organisations and how difficult it is for employees to get funding for leadership development.

While it is always great to have the opportunity to take formal training, there are many simple and effective ways to develop your leadership capability.

• Shadow Someone At a Senior Level

  I am amazed just how underutilised this is as a way of developing leadership capability. Spending a day shadowing someone at a senior level will give you great insights into the reality of the role and also the opportunity to see the strategies they use to handle different situations. Often the only thing that stops people from doing this is that they don’t ask.

• Take A Secondment

  Bigger organisations can provide opportunities for people to take a secondment to another part of the business. This might be for 3 months or even a year. It’s ideal when you want to build your skill set and step out of your comfort zone.

• Be Part Of A Project Team

  I used to love being part of project teams as you got to interact with people from different disciplines, learned a bundle of new skills and developed yourself as a person.

• Be A Mentor For Someone

  It is amazing how mentoring someone else can also be a great opportunity for you to grow and develop a host of skills like listening, questioning, providing feedback and constructively challenging. Who in your organisation is looking for a mentor like you?

The truth is that the best person to take responsibility for your leadership development is you. So what are you waiting for?

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

When I am working with groups of people on improving leadership skills, one of the things I always get them to do is to identify what the best leaders they have come across do.

As well as identifying what they do, they always highlight a number of things that they have that make a difference.

From working with literally hundreds of emerging leaders, some of the most common things that they do include:

1. Clearly allocate roles and responsibilities
2. Give regular feedback to people
3. Set clear goals and outcomes
4. Make expectations clear
5. Focus on what they do best
6. Make good use of the time they have available
7. Empower others

Some of the most common things that they have include:

1. A real interest in others
2. A willingness to make time for people
3. Personal drive
4. Determination
5. Professionalism
6. The ability to motivate and inspire
7. A passion for delivering results

The truth is leading is as much about behaviours as it is about knowing how to do things. In fact, some research would suggest that almost all of the results that leaders achieve are down to their levels of emotional intelligence rather than how smart they are.

Discover 20 more ways to stand out as a leader

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

Anyone who makes it to the role of the leader is good at what they do. At the same time, not everyone stands out as a leader.

So I thought it might be interesting to share my thoughts and invite your thoughts on what it takes to stand out as a leader.

1. Focus on delivering results rather than personal survival
2. Learn to recognise when to step in and when to step back
3. Take responsibility for the results that are and are not achieved
4. Support your people publicly when things don’t go to plan
5. Encourage and support others to achieve what they want from their career
6. Avoid blaming others or circumstances when things are not going well
7. Be consistent in the way that you deal with people
8. Be an expert listener, not just an expert communicator
9. Make the most of the time that you have available
10. Make your expectations clear
11. Be a role model for the behaviours you expect from others
12. Give feedback promptly and regularly
13. Seek regular feedback on your own performance
14. Learn from your mistakes and move on
15. Take decisions and action even when you don’t have all the information you would like
16. Balance the here and now with the longer term
17. Anticipate barriers and obstacles and plan for responding to them
18. Don’t ask others to do what you won’t do yourself
19. Keep yourself up to date
20. Be professional and act with integrity.

The reality is that standing out as a leader is not just about skills and knowledge.  Great qualities are also a huge contributor.

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

The pace at which things move these days means that, to ensure that their organisations stay ahead of the pack, leaders need to embrace and encourage creativity.

Sadly in some organisations there are real barriers to creativity. So what are some of those barriers to which you need to be alert?

Barrier 1: We Are Not In A Creative Sector

You may not be an organisation that is in the creative sector but that does not mean that you should not be looking at different ways of doing things.

Barrier 2: I Don’t Have Time

As a leader there are two very distinct but interrelated roles to consider: taking care of the present and building long term sustained success in the future. It is easy to fill your schedule with the here and now and fool yourself into believing you have no time.

Barrier 3: Being Passive

By that I mean waiting for someone else to come up with the answer and then trying to lift it and shoe horn it into your organisation.

Barrier 4: Over Control

Much is said and written about employee engagement. The fact is employees will only engage if they feel that if they come up with an idea it will be given appropriate consideration. If you want to control everything you will never get creativity.

Barrier 5: No Incentive

Take a look at the reward structures in your organisation. Do they reward people who come up with good solutions or do they just treat people as if they are all the same?

Barrier 6: Fear of Failure

Every organisation needs to take some degree of risk. Those risks might result in successes sometimes and failure at other times. If you fear failure, your organisation, team or function will always be sub-optimal in terms of results. We often learn more when we fail than when we succeed.

Barrier 7: Complacency

The minute you think you have it cracked you are in dangerous waters. Just look at organisations that were around in the past who are not any longer. Don’t ever think that you have it all cracked.

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

Building relationships is often highlighted as an important part of your success as a leader. As a leader you have many varied relationships to consider including:

• Relationships with those in your team
• Relationships with your peers
• Relationships with key suppliers
• Relationships with key customers

As you reach the more senior levels in the organisation your relationships extend even further to include:

• Shareholders or stakeholders
• The media in the widest sense
• Funders such as banks
• Analysts whose views influence share prices
• Employee bodies such as trade unions

So why do you need to build relationships?

The first reason is that when you invest time getting to know those who you have key relationships with you get insights. For example, with employees you get to hear about things that are concerning employees. With suppliers you can often get insights into upcoming developments that might just give you a real opportunity in your market.

Secondly when things go wrong, which they will from time to time, it will help you to manage the communications more effectively if you have a good relationship with the media rather than being a complete stranger to them.

Thirdly if you have invested in relationships and taken an interest in others they are more likely to respond proactively when the chips are down.

Finally, people have a natural tendency to be attracted to people who are genuinely interested in them.

So what could you do today to start building better relationships or what have you found works well when it comes to building relationships?

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.

Many people make it to leadership roles while others get stuck and fail to realise their potential. In my experience those who make the breakthrough have most of the following qualities:

1. Clarity

   Good leaders have clarity about what they want to achieve personally, professionally and for the organisations in which they work.

2. Talent

   Being a leader requires a high level of competence in a wide range of areas. While they might not be brilliant at everything, they need to be as comfortable sitting in front of the media as they are drawing themes from a performance report.

3. Belief

   Frequently it is what people believe about themselves that separates the successful from the unsuccessful.

4. Opportunity Spotters

   Good leaders have a great knack for spotting and capitalising on a gap in the market.

5. Adaptable

   They are able to adapt to changing circumstances within the organisation or externally within the market or environment in which the organisation operates.

6. Dedication

   Dedication is about making the choices, sacrifices and having the discipline to keep going even when it all appears like a lost cause.

7. Caring

   This might not be one that you would have expected to find on the list. However, in my experience leaders care about others’ success and bringing out the best in others.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. You can sign up for his free audio e-course at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

As you are climbing the career ladder towards senior management and leadership roles, it can sometimes feel like you are doing all of the hard work while the more senior people are cruising.

While you will without doubt be working hard, some of the delusions I have noticed people having about leading include:

It’s Easy

• In actual fact it is really tough. You can never really take your foot off the gas. Each time you achieve a milestone there is another one to tackle.

People Respect You More

• What I found is that people only give you respect when you respect them. Status in itself does not mean guaranteed respect.

It Is All Strategic

• The reality is that just like every other role there is a lot of routine. You also find that you are in response mode more often than you expect.

You Don’t Need To Make Sacrifices

• Long days and leadership often go hand in hand. Each hour you have to allocate to work means one hour less to do something else. Sacrifice in my experience goes with the territory.

The Bottom Line: Leadership is not for the faint hearted so make sure you step into a leadership role with your eyes open.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. You can sign up for his free audio e-course at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

Look at some of the qualities of some of the most successful leaders in your organisation and chances are a high level of personal drive will be one of their main qualities.

Personal drive matters to your results and success for a number of reasons:

1. It’s your personal drive that turns ideas into action and action into results.
2. It keeps you going even when times are tough and challenging.
3. It sets the tone for what you are seeking from others in the organisation.
4. It enables you to bounce back from disappointments and setbacks.

While personal drive does matter, remember that having a strong personal drive is not about being a nightmare to work with, bullying or destroying people. For me it is about pushing forward with others to deliver great results.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. You can sign up for his free audio e-course at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

As a leader you know that you need to keep on top of your game. So what are 7 positive things that you can do to be an even better leader?

1. Set Out Clearly What You Aim To Achieve

   It not only makes a difference to you but provides clarity of direction for others.

2. Listen More

   The team of people that you lead are likely to have great ideas to help you get better results. The question is whether you are willing to listen more and leverage the benefits.

3. Work On Winning Support

   It is great to have a vision but if you cannot win the support of others, it never translates into anything. Make winning the support of others a priority as they can make it happen.

4. Do What You Do Best

   Time is the ultimate limiting factor, so don’t waste it trying to do things you are not good at.

5. Focus On Others

   The best leaders I worked for were always interested in the success of others. If you help others to progress you will get that returned in bucket loads.

6. Treat Others Well

   Yes there will be times when you need to be tough but that does not mean you cannot treat people with respect.

7. Keep Growing and Developing

   Just because you are a leader does not mean you can stop growing and developing. The challenges merely get bigger the further you progress.

The reality is that leading is challenging but often simple changes can hugely influence the results you get.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. You can sign up for his free audio e-course at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk