Leadership Matters, Talent Magnets, and More
Leadership Matters
When Jim Collins and his team began their research to find Good to Great companies, Collins didn't want the outcome to be about the leaders and leadership.
Yet he and the team couldn't ignore the facts. Leadership matters.
There were certain types of leaders who stood out in the data. What Collins coined as Level 5 Leaders.
Greatness starts at the top. But there is much more involved in creating a great company than just the top echelons of the company. Everyone in the organization has an impact on greatness, the perception of greatness, and the experience of greatness.
You have an executive team and each of them plays a significant role in the collective leadership effectiveness and the performance of the entire organization. Having the right leaders in the right positions gives you and the leadership team leverage to lead the company effectively, make improvements quickly, and achieve extraordinary success.
There is a collective intelligence that enables the company to innovate, create, and stay competitive. If the collective intelligence is low, success will likely be slow or non-existent.
Honest Conversations
You can't go it alone, not if you truly want to achieve success and greatness. You've got to build an effective team, one that works well together to achieve a level of brilliance beyond that of each of its members.
How do you level up the effectiveness of your team? Have honest conversations.
Seems simple enough but in practice, it's hard to do. It starts with you as the leader having the courage to hold these conversations when the circumstances and the situations call for them. (I have an easy-to-use tool that can help you have more effective conversations - The Engagement Accelerator™. You can grab the Free Engagement Accelerator™ here.)
Culture Defined
From my experience, culture is defined by: (1) What you tolerate, and (2) What you celebrate and acknowledge.
Culture defines your organization. And what defines your culture is the collective actions of everyone in the company.
Think of culture as an outcome or behavior. It results from what you believe to be most important, what you hold sacred, and the actions you take on a daily basis.
You can leverage your culture and its strength to make your company a talent magnet. How?
Be a Talent Magnet
According to a recent study by McKinsey Global Institute, the best-performing companies are the ones that grow their talent, challenge them, and invest heavily in their development including O-T-J training.
Their collective intelligence is communicated by the way people are treated and a culture that is characterized as consultative and challenging leadership, innovation and collaboration, positive work environment, inclusive, and rewards and advancement opportunities. This makes these companies talent magnets.
Firms that develop human capital and invest in organizational capital have the highest probability of resilience and success under any circumstances (like a pandemic, for example); and they attract top talent.
A culture that embraces consultative leadership, where people are challenged by their work and challenged to learn and grow leads to more engagement. Your people want to contribute to the success of the firm and something greater.
A culture that is characterized by bottom-up innovation where collaboration is the norm, and characterized by an inclusive work environment with strong belonging cues leads to more motivated employees.
Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity, AND Talent Scarcity
Not only are you leading in a time when volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) are accelerating, but too, you are also faced with talent scarcity.
At times, I know you feel like you're just spinning the plates to keep everything from falling. The challenges you face today are unprecedented.
My Best Advice
My best advice under these circumstances? Here are a few ideas.
Surround yourself with great people. You do this by hiring based on character not just the resume'.
Take 100 percent responsibility for defining the future of your firm. Then build consensus.
Be courageous. Have those difficult conversations. Be an example of what you want others to exemplify in behavior and in actions. (You can start with the Engagement Accelerator™.)
Slow it down. The U.S. Navy Seals have a motto:
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
With greater complexity and ambiguity, you need to slow down and take a moment to assess where you and your company are headed.
Take some time each day, just 5 minutes, to pause, breathe, and daydream about what greatness means to you and your company.
Until Next Time!
