Major Insights
- Workplace Attitudes supported by Great Leadership Behaviour have the biggest impact on viability, productivity and sustainability.
- Structures, systems, product and service creation, productivity, acquisition and use of resources and talent, and stakeholder relationships are all dependent upon these two wings.
- Without these wings, the organisation is like a dodo – can’t fly, can’t survive.
- We can easily train for Great Attitudes (Attitudinal Competence)
- We can easily train for Great Leadership Behaviour (Effective Leadership Behaviour).
Issues
- Workplace attitudes are a result of the leadership – what they model and what they tolerate.
- Most people are rewarded with leadership roles due to their technical or operational performance.
- Leadership is not a reward for service – it is a commitment to serve the people to achieve the vision.
- Leadership selection has become an elitist cause, where privileges are expected.
- Most aspiring leaders are not aware of the loneliness, the lifelong learning, the difference between respect and popularity, the unsavoury decisions they must be responsible for, and the need to give credit to others and accept responsibility for others’ shortfalls.
Solutions
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- Collect data that reveals the true lived attitudes in place, not assumed or stated attitudes.
- Develop Attitudinal Competence in everybody, through training coaching and modelling.
- Reward streams of career development for technical and operational performance that doesn’t require leadership functions.
- Potential leaders require proper selection and development according to their choice to:
- Serve others and their willingness and ability to influence and persuade and go first;
- Live the example (including values);
- See on the ground, up above and over the horizon and be humble yet courageous;
- They need to be superb candid communicators who can always be respectful of others, no matter what the situation is;
- Above all they need to be competent in earning trust and respect and ensuring they have available the right people and the right resources to achieve the vision whilst operating from the values; and
- These cannot be learned in a classroom.
- Because recruitment and retention of talent and succession planning remain key issues, if we were to offer basic leadership training to all staff who been there for a time deemed appropriate, say three years, they would be informed of the real requirements of leadership, giving them informed choices; we’d see their potential; those who do not proceed to leadership would better team members because they understand better the rigours of leadership.
- Can you imagine the return on investment for such solutions?
- You have the measuring tools for this – your ability to measure key results or performance areas!
- Once these wings are in place, your structures, systems and all the other key results areas will manifest in a manner that underwrites sustainable success.
The Bottom Line
You can acquire experiential training and coaching for both attitudes and leadership that delivers a significant return on investment. Improvement in all other areas then becomes much simpler and more effective.
