Leadership is about helping the people you lead succeed. In a previous post, I provided a list of tips for helping the people you lead succeed, grow and flourish. I’d like to discuss one of those leadership tips in more detail here.
Lead by removing obstacles to effective performance that your people face.
What Great Leaders Do
- Great leaders identify and change organizational policies, procedures and practices that prevent the people they lead from performing at a high level.
- Great leaders empower they lead to remove or overcome obstacles to performance.
How Great Leaders Do It
Great leaders review the policies, procedures and practices that impact the work of the people they lead to ensure that they are not hampering their ability to perform at a high level.
Great leaders identify and change policies, procedures and practices that make it difficult for the people they lead to perform at a high level.
Great leaders reinforce and publicly recognize they people they lead who take risks to point out and change problem policies, procedures and practices.
Great leaders reward the people they lead for identifying and overcoming obstacles.
Great leaders don’t make the people they lead struggle to get their attention.
Great leaders make sure that the people they lead have the skills necessary to do what it takes to perform at a high level. Great leaders set up the people they lead to succeed, not fail.
Great leaders help the people they lead develop the willingness and ability to perform at a high level.
- Willingness is all about commitment and confidence. Great leaders know that the people they lead need both in order to be able to perform at a high level. The example that leaders set, and the guidance leaders provide go a long way toward building the commitment and confidence of the people they lead.
- Ability, on the other hand is about skills. Great leaders realize that they need to develop and nurture the skills of the people they lead. Leaders do this through a combination of coaching, formal classes, on the job training and specific, ongoing feedback.
The common sense point here: great leaders do whatever they can to make it easy for the people they lead to do their jobs.
That’s it for today. Please log on to my other blog www.CareerSuperStar.com for common sense advice on becoming a leader and the star you are meant to be.
I’ll see you around the web, and at Alex’s Lemonade Stand.
Bud
PS: Speaking of Alex’s Lemonade Stand – my fundraising page is still open. Please go to www.FirstGiving.com/TheCommonSenseGuy to read Alex’s inspiring story and to donate if you can.
Comments