Four people-leadership resolutions that will change your business in 2015
Like most people, you probably started 2015 resolving to lose weight or to spend more time with your family. As a leader, you probably made some resolutions, too. Maybe you want to spend more time coaching your people or to complete your payment-managemen
The question is, are these resolutions any more likely to succeed than your resolution to lose 5 kilograms? Probably not.
If you want to make your leadership resolutions stick, make commitments – specific goals with clear steps – instead of mere resolutions. With that in mind, here are four leadership commitments you should make to help your people reach their full potential in 2015.
Shift your focus from training to development
Training is important to give people new skills. But looking at people’s per?formance only through the training lens provides a very short-term, event-based perspective. Development is bigger-picture and considers the larger journey of learning and growth.
The more you think about people development within the larger context of people in their jobs rather than as discrete training events, the more successful that development will be.
Shift your focus from weaknesses to blind spots
Trying to improve a person’s weaknesses is generally a wasted effort. Adults do not change much. Instead of trying to improve weaknesses, help people recognise what their blind spots are. Blind spots are those potentially debilitating weaknesses of which they are unaware, but that can be avoided.
Your role is to put people in positions that allow them to play to their strengths, while minimising the situations where their weaknesses can undermine them. Work with your employee to identify ways they can increase their awareness of blind spots and create ways to avoid them.
Shift from doing individual development plans to having ongoing development conversations
Most organisations pull out the individual develop?ment plan once or twice a year and as soon as they finish updating it, it goes back on the shelf, only to gather dust. Instead of thinking about development only occasionally, we need to start talking about it all the time.
Make development a small but important topic in addition to whatever else you're doing. For example, when you talk about an upcoming project, ask team members what they anticipate learning from the project. When reviewing sales performance, ask what contributed to the performance and what lessons we can apply elsewhere. At the end of each meeting, ask participants how the meeting was of value to them.
Shift from developing your employees to developing yourself
Others will model the behaviour that you demonstrate as a leader. By making your development a priority, by reflecting regularly on lessons learned, and by asking your team for feedback on your performance, not only will you become a better leader, you will also show your people how important development is. Most important, you will demonstrate that development really is an everyday, on-going process.
To get your organisation and your people ready for 2015, the beginning of the year, which marks the time for New Year resolutions, is the perfect moment to reformulate your strategy. By doing so, don’t forget to include these four commitments mentioned, backed up by a plan to implement them that will certainly help you and your organisation succeed in 2015.
Christopher Schultz is a principal consultant at APM Group. He can be reached at [email protected].
