Posts Tagged ‘successful leadership’

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 .

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

Let me ask you a question: What’s your priority as leader?

Interestingly, when I ask clients this question they often struggle to come up with an answer.

Yet, without knowing your priorities, you will:

• Struggle with decisions on how to allocate your time.
• Carry on doing things that you should no longer be doing.
• Waste time and effort.
• Struggle to deliver the results you are expected to deliver.

So if you want to be a more successful leader, make a point of identifying your priorities.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

As a leader, you want to achieve great results. Right?

So what are 5 keys that can help you to achieve better results as a leader?

Key 1:
• Getting clear on the result that you want to achieve.

Key 2:

• Getting the insights from others who can help you to achieve the results you want.

Key 3:

• Involving others in the decision process.

Key 4:

• Building a good team around you and getting them to do what they do best.

Key 5:

• Being ready to adapt and be flexible when things are not going to plan.

I wonder what else you would add to the list?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

As a leader or manager, you probably appreciate that first and foremost you are assessed on the results that you deliver.

While this might seem unfair at times, if you expect to get the rewards you need to be willing to get results.

So the big question is, are you really taking responsibility for the results that you deliver?

Taking responsibility means different things to different people. Some of the signs that you are taking responsibility for the results you deliver include:

1. You don’t look to justify your position

   Even the best leaders and managers struggle at times. At the same time, they don’t deny that they are not delivering or try to justify why they are not delivering.

2. You don’t blame external factors

   In tougher economic times, it is easy to blame things like the economy for the failure to deliver results. Good leaders and managers, by contrast, focus on adapting to the circumstances.

3. You don’t blame others on the team

   Blaming others on the team merely alienates you from the team. Don’t forget that your role is to get the best from others. That’s why you are a leader or manager.

4. You take balanced risks and learn

   No successful leader or manager achieved anything without taking some risks. The key when taking any type of risk is to learn from the setbacks.

The Bottom Line: As a leader or manager, you need to take responsibility for achieving results.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

• HELPING others to achieve success in their careers.
• HOLDING people to account for what they have agreed to deliver.
• HAVING clear outcomes that you want to achieve.
• Managing the HAZARDS that stop the organisation from moving forward.
• HONESTY in the way you communicate with others.

What else would you add?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Today’s letter is H.

In terms of leadership success, H is about:

• Holding others to account for what they have agreed to deliver
• Helping others to succeed
• Highlighting the successes and achievements
• Helping others understand the reasons for certain decisions
• Holding the bigger agenda when everyone else is lost in the detail

What else would you add to the list?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

From the outside looking in, leading and managing can seem really easy.  How many times have you heard people who are not leading or managing anyone talk about how they could do a much better job?  Probably quite a few if you have been around in organisations for some time.  The reality is that when it is done well, leading and managing others can appear easy.  On the other hand what are 5 truths you need to keep at the forefront of your mind?

 

Truth 1: It is a lonely existence

 

When your role involves delivering results with fewer and fewer resources and lots of people with differing agendas, leading and managing can sometimes be quite a lonely existence.  After all there are always people senior to you with expectations as well as those that you lead or manage.  It can sometimes feel like you don’t have anyone to turn to.  This is why it is vital to build up some sort of support network.

 

Truth 2: Every choice will be unpopular with someone

 

People know on some level that you need to weigh up the options in each situation and take on balance what seems like the best decision from the choices available.  Despite this they will still react with some form of resistance in some cases when things do not go their way.  To address this cut yourself some slack and recognise you cannot please everyone all of the time.

 

Truth 3: People have short memories

 

You might have been the model boss for the last two years but you go through a sticky patch when you are struggling to get folks on board and move things forward.  Superiors in particular often have short memories so make sure that when your performance is being reviewed a balanced picture is presented.

 

Truth 4: You will mess it up at times

 

Every single one of us makes mistakes from time.  Few of these are terminal and it is important not to let mistakes stop you from taking balanced risks in the knowledge that you will sometimes get it wrong.  Clean up the mess, reflect and learn and then move on.  You cannot change the past but you can influence the future.

 

Truth 5: You are leading and managing for a reason

 

You were promoted into a leadership and management role because people believed that you had something to offer, not because they wanted to be nice to you and do you a favour.  When self doubt appears remind yourself of all the brilliant things you do and focus on looking for ways to do even better.

 

Bottom Line- Leading and managing is challenging but don’t let temporary setbacks get in the way of your long term success.

 

 

 

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers.  For more information click here

As a leader you are ultimately judged on the results that you deliver.  The further you climb the career ladder the more you earn.  This higher level of earning can sometimes lead to complacency which can result in performance going down rather than up.  So how can you transform the results that you deliver and stay on the high performance track?

 

Get clear on the goals

 

What are you ultimately judged on?  Contrary to what many of us believe, we rarely have a crystal clear picture or understanding of what it is we are expected to deliver.  Clear goals allow you to say explicitly whether you have or have not delivered.  They are not vague, fuzzy or a list of activities.  If you are not crystal clear on what you are to deliver or on what your success is to be measured, make a pint of finding out straight away.

 

Allocate your time to things that contribute to results

 

Time is everyone’s ultimate limiting factor.  We can buy more of it even if we wish we could.  Before you can start to decide how to allocate your time, you need to know what the critical things are that contribute to you delivering results.  We can all keep ourselves busy doing stuff but are you doing stuff that contributes to results?  Remember the 80:20 rule.  In essence, 20% of the things that you do contribute to about 80% of the results you achieve.  So what’s your 20% that contributes towards 80% of the results you achieve?

 

Coach your team and provide feedback

 

It does not matter how driven or committed you are, you cannot do it all by yourself.  You need a team around you that you empower, can solve their own problems and make their own decisions so that you deliver.  Invest time coaching your employees and providing feedback on how they are doing and how to get better, so that they become more valuable to you and the organisation.

 

Develop a what’s possible mindset

 

Ask people to come up with 1 solution and chances are that you will get 10 problems.  It is natural to focus attention on the obstacles rather than on what can be done.  When you see yourself falling into this trap, step back and think about what is possible from where you are right now. Even a small step can act as a catalyst for moving forward and once you have momentum you start to make rapid progress.

 

Bottom Line – Leadership is ultimately about results and by having a clear direction, investing your time wisely, equipping others to be more self sufficient and focusing on the possibilities you can make huge steps forward to achieving more success as a leader.

 

 

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective managers and leaders.  For more information click here

Whether you are already a leader or an aspiring leader, chances are you want to achieve success over a long period of time.  These days it is not uncommon for people to find that they are in senior level roles in their early to mid thirties.  On one hand this is positive on the other hand you still probably have 30 plus years of your career ahead of you.

 

While it is relatively easy to achieve individual successes, the real challenge is how to have sustained success as a leader over the longer term.  This means being able to thrive despite changes in the economy, customer or client preferences, setbacks or even major failures.

 

Truth is there no guarantees when it comes to leadership success in the long term.  At the same time there are things that you can do and actions that you can take to increase the likelihood of sustained success over the longer term.  So what are some of the things that you can do?

 

Recognise you are never the finished article

 

Be honest it is a great feeling when you achieve a promotion and especially when you move into leadership for the first time.  Yet the truth is that until this point you have been on path that is all about getting that first break into a formal leadership role.  Once you achieve this you step on to a very different path, where the expectations, demands and pressures change.  As you conquer some of these challenges new and different demands arise.

 

What this means for you as a leader is that you need to be willing to continue work on your growth and development, even when you are in a leadership role, so see leadership success as being ongoing work in progress.

 

Identify the building blocks

 

When we take on something new it always seems like a huge mountain.  After a while when we have done it a few times it just comes naturally.  When planning your career and success strategy, it is important to identify the building blocks.  These are simply the types of skills, experience, knowledge and attributes that you will need to work on to achieve the longer term success you desire.

 

Don’t expect to find a shortcut 

 

Being a leader carries with it huge responsibility.  You are no longer just responsible for your own self but also have responsibilities to employees, customers or clients, service users, shareholders and stakeholders to name just a few.  Becoming highly competent in each of these areas of responsibility takes time, so don’t expect to find a shortcut.

 

Bottom Line – You can either choose to achieve sporadic or sustained success as a leader.  What choice do you make?