Expectations, Accountability and Leadership
As a leader, you are required to clearly set expectations and standards for your team and each individual employee.
We continue to see that this is an area within organisations that is not as effectively applied as it should be.
n our short video you will learn why setting expectations is more important than ever to ensure that your team members are not only aware of but understand what is required and expected of them in their role. We have observed some organisations and leaders who hold their employees to account unfairly, sometimes for things that have not been established clearly or understood in the first place.
Leadership: Setting Standards and Expectations
One of the biggest challenges for managers who are learning to lead is developing the ability to set expectations and standards and then hold people accountable to these expectations.
Understanding the benefits and why to apply a model such as the one highlighted in this blog is relatively simple, however application, consistency and follow-through can be a challenge for many.
Know Your History, Purpose and Direction
Why do you do what you do?
Understanding your purpose, what motivates you and most importantly using this knowledge to advantage is key to your success, both professionally and personally.
What does that even mean? To explain this concept, Sinek has developed what he calls the “Golden Circle,”. The golden circle has three layers:
The Leader / Employee Divide: Who’s Managing Who?
One of the biggest challenges for any manager or leader is the relationship they have with their team members.
We often read about the need for leaders to be open, self-aware, honest and possess similar traits.
But what about the employee? What is their responsibility?
Managing people and teams is challenging, there is no doubt. Understanding why people do what they do and behave in certain ways can reduce the challenge and assist in managing situations as they arise.
Leadership Reflection – What I Learned This Year
Reflection: to think through the implications of action, or non-action; what went well; and the things we might have changed or may alter in the future provides opportunity for growth and change. Developing as a person and leader requires this type of reflection and consideration. Taking the time to reflect is an important step in development. If we continue to ‘just do’ and get caught up in the routines and day-to-day details it is easy for time to pass us by and miss the chance for growth. Making the time to reflect matters!
Coaching and Mentoring – The Need For Accountability
To genuinely succeed in business, leaders must know their role, continuously develop their skills and be constantly supported to achieve the best they can as a leader and employee.
Finding your own development pathway takes ownership, effort and clarity. However, it is not something you need to do on your own. Whether it is developing yourself or your team, coaching and mentoring can be a powerful tool to enable change and growth, both personally and professionally. When it comes to leadership development, however, one of the keys to success is to start developing deliberately and early.
The Complexity of Business Communication
We may well be over-complicating the language of leadership and business. Poor communication leads to confusion, mixed-messages and a lack of buy-in from our employees.
After attending the Future of Leadership – Workplace Culture conference in Brisbane last week I have been reflecting on the content from some of the speakers. Gabrielle Dolan, in particular, caught my imagination. Not only because she is a very compelling and funny speaker but also because her key points seem so intuitively right. Reduce complex language and jargon. Communicate messages that people understand – tailor to you audience. Be comfortable and confident in your own style. Use stories to embed the key messages. They are all very useful tips that can make a sustained difference to how your teams perform.
Are We Setting Our Leaders Up For Success?
People get hired or promoted into leadership roles every day. Sadly, when they get the job they may get little or no training on how to lead a team.
The opportunity to develop our future leaders before placing them into leadership roles is an obvious one. Building employee skills, capability and awareness to be ready for leadership is ideal, yet is rarely applied well in practice. Based on recent coaching conversations and discussions with clients, it would appear little has changed regarding leadership development in the years since.
13 Challenges to the Current State of Leadership
It’s hard to identify why but there are currently major gaps in leadership, in Australia at least.
Actually, it’s not that difficult to understand really. The things we want from work are not that different to what we are looking for from life in general. The difficulty is not in the knowing, it is in the application and doing. It seems that employees in the modern workplace are screaming for a certain style and capability of leadership, but current cultures are challenged in delivering it.
Does Leadership Intent Equal Business Success?
Not really! The consistently large gap between behaviours, intent, desired culture and reality remains an issue. I was flying home to Brisbane last week and had the opportunity to read the latest ‘Inside HR’ magazine from cover to cover. It is always an interesting read with much that grabs my attention. However on this occasion, by the time I was towards the end of the magazine a theme had started to form in my mind. There were various articles and highlights within the content that rang alarm bells for me. Or maybe it was more that the messages were articulating many of my own recent thoughts more clearly.
Leadership Benefits: Self-Awareness and ROI
Does self-awareness and an understanding of leadership impact really matter to organisations?
demonstrate that leaders overstate their value and influence.
One of the core traits observed in the best leaders I have worked with is self-awareness. This is tightly linked to a willingness to be honest with themselves as well as others. There are also points such as decision making beliefs and biases that influence our position on many topics. Our actions are also reinforced by these biases.
CoachStation: Contact Centre Case Study
Too often organisations implement new technology and expect that this, in itself, will be the game changer.
As with many things in life…a balance between often conflicting demands and beliefs had to be challenged.
How we went about changing this was to understand what our clients and customers want…by asking!
The National Customer Solutions Contact Centre (NCSC) within Toyota Finance Australia (TFA) has gone through significant cultural, personnel and technological change over the past 18 months. This has proven to be a significant challenge and also provided a rewarding outcome as the business begins the next phase of its transformation.
