How do you improve leadership results?

In our book Bottom Line Focus,  we talk about effective leadership being scarce. There are literally hundreds of books written on the subject, with no shortage of ideas and programs. Why then is effective leadership so hard to find?

I think first you have to clarify exactly what does effective leadership mean to you and your organization? In order to improve anything you have to have a clear understanding of three things.

• What does it look like when it’s better?
• Where is it now?
•  How do you measure progress?

So what constitutes and effective leader?

First and foremost a leader gets results. If he or she doesn’t they may be popular but they won’t be a leader long. The difference between a leader and an effective leader is how those results are attained.

In todays highly complex, highly technical, and global environment effective leaders must learn to make use of all resources around them. This is a change from the days when the top person was expected to know everything and touch everything.

To do that you need to attract and retain excellent people, you need to create an environment that is open to communication and innovation, and you must allow them to fail. Innovation with penalties for failure creates a “don’t rock the boat” mentality.

So an effective leader gets results, develops great people and is an active listener and communicator. They are open minded, non –threatening and just as important non-threatened.

So the next step is where is your organization now? One way to tell other than simply results is to look for warning signs:

Take an honest look inside your organization. How many of these issues are present?

• Excessive meetings with no agenda and no results
• Consensus-driven decision making (CYA for all us older folks)
• Lack of personal accountability
• Poor communication between entities
• Reluctance to terminate poor performers
• Misaligned and uncoordinated efforts (silo effect)
• Personality conflicts and power struggles
• Apathetic and unmotivated employees
• Inconsistent results
• Poor time management
• Reactive rather than proactive effort
• Micro-management
• Declining sales and / or market share
• Lack of teamwork
• Duplication of effort
• High employee turnover
• Substandard quality
• Numerous unresolved issues and postponed decisions

All of these are symptoms of leadership issues.

Effective leadership creates an environment where things get accomplished, employees feel valued and part of an overall team.

If you want to be successful, you must be supported by an energized and competent management team. If you’re not, your flow of communications is hindered in two directions. Your instructions don’t go down the chain of command the way they should, so things aren’t done the way you want. And communications from below don’t come up to you in an accurate and timely manner, so you find out about important matters too late or not at all.

In order to be an effective leader of others you must first learn to lead yourself.