Elite Leadership-Part 2
Part two of the tips and tricks to get your leadership skills operating at the elite level. It’s all about the team (of teams)…
Organisations will not and are unable to grow or change by themselves. People make a business and change needs someone to make it happen, good or bad.
As we saw in Part 1, this takes effective leadership. A person who is courageous, consistent, resilient, engaging and inspiring.
But one person can not change everything in an organisation of 200,000, 20,000 or even 200 people. For that you need an effective team and a vision.
Your Vision
You need to paint the picture of your target operating model, it needs to inspire your followers and make a positive difference. It must also put the team before the individual with:
- Free flowing engagement
- Freedom to act
- Trust to deliver
- Coaching and feedback.
With global, networked teams change, like leadership, is no longer delivered through command and control. The empowered team will deliver outcomes and benefits and collectively lead other teams.
Note: Your team is only as strong as its weakest leader. If one fails, the team fails. The team must work together to take everyone of the journey.
A good vision incorporates:
- Things that are important to your team
- Your reasons for doing it
- Where you want to go (not necessarily how you want to get there)
- Your passion
Leaders set a tone and give followers clarity on what good looks like.
Your team should have their own visions to deliver their changes, coming together to create a nested vision covering the organisation.
Your Team
If your leadership is effective you will make time for yourself and be able to get things done through others. This will apply to your team of leaders too, and their teams; and so on.
This is known as team of teams and you can draw parallels with Sun Tzu and the Art of War. But again, this is leadership through vision, not command and control. You will not be the hero though title or org chart — you will be the hero from relationships and respect.
Another useful model here is John Adair’s Action-Centred Leadership, which provides a blueprint for how to manage. We should always remember though that Leadership is a lot more than just the sum of management tasks.
As leader your focus should be the people and enabling and empowering them to self actualise. Give them boundaries to have their own vision and innovation to achieve the shared outcomes and benefits. Support their personal, emotional and intellectual development to improve their productivity and optimisation. Work for them because their capacity will deliver more than yours alone.
One leader standing alone is not a leader
