With businesses ever changing and growing, there is a lot of movement, promotion and hiring happening. While opportunities are great for employee engagement and career growth, I’m not convinced that we are doing a great job of preparing our new leaders, both internal and external hires, for their new roles.
Leadership programs are almost always among the first to get cut when the budget is tight as many senior leaders don’t always appreciate the value they have in the workplace. Supplying people with on line courses on process and policies is nice, but it doesn’t replace the in person workshops of the past. New leaders often feel overwhelmed, under trained and unsupported by their employers.
I’ve had the pleasure to create and deliver leadership courses across Canada and overseas and I can tell you from my experience that the learning my colleagues took away will stay with them long after the course has ended. Discussions on topics such as core values, coaching, time management and discipline tend to be much more productive when you can role play and practice what you’ve learned. Sharing experiences and knowledge with other leaders in a group setting cannot be replaced by taking a course on your laptop.
I will leave you with a summary of the best take aways from our sessions and I hope you will share them with other leaders in your organizations.
* Seek first to understand before expecting to be understood
* Before changing a process, find out what the current process is and why it is that way
* Get to know your team individually
* Communicate clearly, both in writing and verbally
* If you say you are going to do something, do it
* Always be on time
* Lead by example (Working 80 hours a week is not setting a good example by the way… this will only make your team feel that you expect the same of them)
* Respect the ideas and opinions of others, even if they are different from your own
* Count to 10 before you react
* Give and receive timely feedback to and from all levels of your organization
* Make decisions
* If you make a mistake, take accountability and learn from it
* Be available. Make time for your staff
* If you don’t know an answer, admit it, find it out and report back
* Give credit where credit is due
* Say thank you and reward often
