The term “company culture” has undoubtedly become a buzzword, but this doesn’t mean the concept lacks merit or importance. Indeed, the importance of company culture cannot be overstated. Unfortunately, it cannot be easily quantified either. Every company operates differently, after all, and there are no hard and fast rules for establishing, maintaining, or adjusting a company’s culture. That said, if your business is falling behind, losing employees, struggling to onboard solid people, etc., chances are your culture is the culprit, at least in part.
Conversely, a strong company culture often yields growth, boosts morale, increases reputation, and spurs innovation. Why? Simply put, humans are social creatures that thrive in environments that offer and encourage both freedom and collaboration. If we don’t feel comfortable expressing our ideas in an open, receptive environment, a lot will go unsaid, and a company can grow stale as a result. Likewise, people perform their best when they enjoy their work and the atmosphere in which they work — this atmosphere directly stems from culture.
So, the question remains: have you established a strong company culture? If you’re not sure, here are some ways to assess your current culture in order to improve it.
How to Establish a Strong Company Culture
Remember: Performance Often Reflects Culture
As just mentioned above, employee and team performance is inextricably linked to culture. Other factors come into play, of course, such as competence, how well someone fits their role, and elements that are mostly out of anyone’s control. For the most part, though, one way to gauge your current culture is to track performance. If you notice a decline or consistent lack of progress, these issues may stem from cultural issues. Perhaps employees do not feel adequately incentivized to perform better. Maybe there is a general lack of enthusiasm or morale. Team members may not feel well-connected, either, which can impede communication.
Turn to Your Turnover Rates
Your business’ turnover rates can also cue you into cultural problems. Some level of turnover is to be expected in any enterprise — people move, change careers, find better opportunities, and so on. However, if your company experiences high levels of turnover for your industry, this speaks to a weak, potentially toxic company culture. Strong company cultures make everyone feel welcomed and valued day in and day out. And team members are more likely to stick with a company that recognizes their contributions and compensates them accordingly. So, if you want to hang on to your best people, you must cultivate such a culture.
Recognize The Role of Human Resources
If your goal is to create and maintain a great company culture, you must properly invest in your human resources (HR) department. One of the main goals of HR departments is to build and influence a company’s culture for the betterment of all employees, teams, and the organization as a whole. In order to do this, HR leaders take on a number of responsibilities, such as facilitating training, education and communication; identifying, clarifying, and reinforcing company values; empowering individuals and teams; mediating, mitigating, and solving issues; recognizing individuals, teams, and organizational efforts, and more. HR leaders also play a pivotal role in the hiring process, helping to identify candidates that will fit into and/or enhance the existing company culture.
Hear From Your People
One of the best ways to get a pulse on your organization’s culture is to receive feedback from those within the company. You might distribute a standardized, anonymized company culture survey to collect key data. Your survey might feature a list of questions, prompts, and/or parameters for individuals to answer directly and/or rate on a scale of 1-5, “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree,” etc., such as:
- I feel like I have the opportunity to grow in this organization
- I like what I do
- I feel valued
- I trust my team
- I feel comfortable speaking my mind
- I feel heard
- etc.
This information can be used to make sweeping and granular changes within your business to improve and adjust the culture as needed.
Finding the Balance Between Stability and Flexibility
A strong company culture is not necessarily an unmovable company culture. Put another way, the best workplace cultures should be sturdy but flexible enough to adapt to new challenges and developments. While businesses should exercise caution when changing company culture, they should not fear doing so when it is truly called for. Finding this balance between stability and flexibility is not always easy, which is why it is so important to collaborate closely with your HR departments, employees, and teams to establish a set of shared values that will properly move the organization, and everyone in it, forward.At Leadership Resources, our purpose is making the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease stress levels and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow at times like these when you need it most.
Read More
We’re at a critical turning point in our global economy. New forces are shaking up our world and most companies are being forced to change how they operate.
What if your company could continue to grow and thrive despite these challenging circumstances? What if it could emerge on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic stronger than ever?
How Business Coaches Help Growth
Business Coaches: The Ultimate Team Players
With the help of a business coach, a good company becomes a great company – no matter what’s happening in the world. That’s because a coach helps your employees stay flexible, introspective, and motivated, day after day.
A coach gives a giant dose of perspective when things feel overwhelming. They help people adapt to change and view it as an opportunity rather than a threat, reenergizing them to stay productive at work.
Jaye Stentz, a coach and leadership development specialist at Leadership Resources, explains that coaching provides an emotional outlet for employees who might not usually feel comfortable expressing themselves.
“We help them ‘peel back the layers of the onion,’ in coach terms,” Stentz explains. “It’s a metaphor for having a comfortable environment to sort of peel back those layers and get real – to be authentic about what’s difficult for you as an individual, in terms of change.”
Flexibility Fuels Growth
When a company’s employees are more open to the idea of change, they’re more open to other things that help a company succeed: teamwork, productivity, innovation, accountability. Suddenly, they’re devising new ways to burst through roadblocks that seemed impossible before.
Katie Maschmann, also a coach and leadership development specialist at Leadership Resources, says coaching helps people gain new insights and build flexibility in their thinking.
“We see the world not necessarily as it is, but as who we are,” Maschmann says. “A coach can help an individual see the world and situations from different perspectives and help them better identify issues that might have been hard to see from their perspective.”
How to Learn More About Coaching
Stentz, Maschmann, and other Leadership Resources experts share key insights about business coaching in our new whitepaper, 7 Ways a Coach Helps You Grow Your Company and Win. In the whitepaper, you’ll learn about the power of coaching and how it addresses the human side of business growth.
Explore topics like:
- How a coach calls a timeout and huddles with your employees
- Why coaching is important during and after a pandemic
- Coaching ourselves, then coaching others
- The importance of accountability
- Boosting sales and profitability
- Improving recruitment through coaching
- Common red flags and coaching tips
Download the Whitepaper: 7 Ways a Coach Helps You Grow Your Company and Win
For more information about business coaches and helping your employees succeed, connect with Leadership Resources. We provide coaching, strategic planning, EOS® implementation, leadership development, and proprietary technology called Accelerate. With our help, your company can achieve its larger vision.
Read More
A successful coach isn’t always a game-winning coach. I’ve seen evidence of this up-close in all of my experience coaching youth sports, where our team might lose but each individual child comes out of the game with more experience, focus, and positivity.
As a youth sports coach, this was always my goal: help each child feel like a winner, no matter what the scoreboard says. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve played twelve sports, coached eight sports, and officiated nine sports. I’ve also been a spectator and a parent of a youth player.
My diverse sports background has taught me the importance of helping people find the untapped potential within themselves. I’ve also discovered the power of communicating in a clear, simple way that resonates with a wide variety of people: children, parents, youth coaches, spectators, and referees.
Just like in youth sports, business professionals appreciate having complex concepts boiled down into basic terms. When I was a youth coach, I created something called: The MODEL Coach Concept which I now see how applicable it is to business and aligns with EOS®
How Coaching Sports and Business Overlap
The MODEL Coach Concept
This concept has five main elements:
Mentally Prepares
Organizes
Develops Every Player
Encourages
Leads by Example
As you understand more about what each part of this concept means, you’ll see many parallels for business.
First, a coach must mentally prepare, which means they must have the right mentality for every game, every day, and every winning moment. The same goes for every leader. Successful leaders apply the EOS Five Leadership Abilities to help them mentally prepare: Simplify, Delegate (and Elevate), Predict, Systemize, and Structure.
They must also have the organization it takes to get the most out of every coaching moment with the team. The overall EOS Process provides a variety of organization benefits through mastery of the EOS Toolbox Tools with a space learning approach. My favorite tool is the Issues Solving Track — a simplified approach to continuous improvement.
A great coach is focused on the development of every player, despite the fact that players develop and mature at various rates. The same goes for leaders living the EOS Process. It is hard to predict which team member has the most undeveloped talent. Work on clarifying expectations and challenging all team members to develop their natural talents, nurturing and coaching them along their journey.
A big dose of encouragement goes a long way too. Coaches must find ways to encourage and acknowledge players in a positive and productive way. Strong leaders apply the 24-hour rule when observing both desired and undesired behaviors with their team members. The observations are expressed within 24-hours of them occurring. This especially comes into play for the Core Values that warrant ongoing attention and appropriate reinforcement.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there’s leadership by example. A coach sets the tone for everything that happens and this requires a huge amount of leadership, consistency, and follow-through on your promises. This is a direct correlation to the EOS tool, LMA (Leadership, Management, and Accountability), which also ties in nicely with the Five Leadership Abilities mentioned previously.
Envision Success and Focus on Small Things
Whether you’re gearing up for the big game or preparing for a business project, take some time to envision the future. Instead of just focusing on the win, focus on the things that are within your control – what you’ll win, even if you’re on the losing side. There can be periods of time a business is failing or struggling to hit its goals. Within the EOS Process, the Vision/Traction Organizer does a spectacular job simplifying the vision and goals of a business. This provides all team members with an opportunity to discover how they contribute to the success of the business, even in challenging times.
Now I know this sounds odd. Why would we focus on what we can control even while we’re losing?
When I coached football, I taught the players to envision scoring a touchdown. As they practiced the plays and made the movements on the field toward the end zone, they could focus on the amazing feeling of reaching it.
This is a way of building the muscle memory it takes to accomplish a goal. If you build a clear mental vision of what it takes to succeed, your mind and body are primed to get there. That’s so much more productive than simply listening to a coach drown on and on or watching other players run down the field. It’s also much more productive than always focusing on winning the big game.
Just like working as a team toward business goals, when muscle memory is built, everyone is more apt to attain goals for themselves and the collective organization as a whole. The second page of the Vision/Traction Organizer (Traction page), focuses on the shorter-term goals for the year, priorities for the current quarter, and sets aside certain issues for future consideration in the Issues List. It is just as important to know what is to be focused on, as well as what is not to focus on!
The EOS® Connection
In business, if you’re a leader and you don’t know what success looks like for your team, you won’t get there. You won’t know what you want from your team and they won’t know what you want from them.
Learn more about Dan’s work and the Entrepreneurial Operating System now!
Read More
Over the past year, Leadership Resources has seen tremendous growth in its strategic planning services. To assist with this expansion, we have recently welcomed Brian Olson to our team of Strategic Growth Advisors. Utilizing a wide variety of strategic tools, Olson will work directly with organizations and their executive leadership teams to develop a clear vision and strategic plan.
Olson, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln alumnus, brings over 17 years of executive leadership training and business experience to Leadership Resources. Having served as the Chief Operating Officer at Pen-Link in Lincoln, Nebraska, Olson knows how to implement key practices into an organization to ensure success. Olson understands the importance of organizational alignment and is proficient at developing a strategic plan to provide clarity, direction, and focus to organizations.
About Our Custom Strategic Planning Solutions
A strategic plan is like a blueprint that outlines priorities, procedures, goals, and outcomes designed to lead an organization to both short- and long-term success. This framework only functions if members within the organization align their values and unite around a cohesive, clear vision.
As new developments occur inside and outside the company, it’s crucial to perform routine evaluations of the current plan and adjust it if necessary. Our strategic planning offerings incorporate various tools and operating systems to give leaders the resources they need to develop and maintain a plan that works for their organization.
The need to expand our strategic planning team is a testament to the value of our services. Our clients benefit from our strategic planning solutions in several ways. With a strong focus on leadership development, we help organizations refine their vision, define their direction, achieve their goals both large and small, and identify key performance indicators that they can actively track and focus on. When leadership development is properly aligned with a company’s vision, strategic direction, business goals, and personal ambitions, growth is inevitable.
What Else Can Leadership Resources Do for You?
If the growth we’ve seen in 2019 is any indication of what’s to come, Leadership Resources looks forward to expanding its reach in the near future, helping more organizations flourish. In addition to our strategic planning solutions, we also offer the Accelerate Leadership Program, an 18-month multilevel pathway that instructs upcoming and current leaders on ways to improve their leadership qualities both within their organization and outside the workplace.
The program focuses on three elements of leadership development: self-leading, true leadership development, and emotional intelligence. The education, tools, and community cultivated by the Accelerate Leadership Program are invaluable to an organization looking to improve its decision-making, employee engagement and accountability, and company culture.
We’re thrilled to bring Brian Olson on board to the Strategic Planning team, and we’re eager to see what new developments and growth opportunities await us in the year to come.
At Leadership Resources, our purpose is making the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease stress levels and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow.
Read More
A motivated individual can accomplish many things. But we all have our limitations. This is in part why specialization and division of labor are so crucial to a thriving enterprise. If someone falls short on a given day, someone else can pick up the slack and keep things on course. That said, a business’ success cannot simply rely on different people performing different roles. Continuous improvement and leadership development are also key.
People get better at their jobs and hobbies in a number of ways. One of the best ways to improve is to understand areas that need improvement and implement the attitudes and behaviors to make those changes happen. However, if you’re unaware of the areas in which you are lacking, or you don’t know what attitudes and behaviors are holding you back, improvement becomes difficult if not impossible. This is where coaching comes into play. And, as it turns out, coaches are not just for managers and executives, but everyone looking to enhance their skills and knowledge.
What to Know About Business Coaching
Who Needs a Coach?
In short: everyone, from the newest intern to the CEO. More importantly, everyone needs a good coach suited to their individual or team’s needs and goals. An employee just out of college who is entering the field needs a coach who understands their situation, and who is willing to figure out what they want out of their job, career, or life as a whole. The same applies to the high-ranking manager or CEO. Their coach should be able to help them work through issues of business operations at the highest levels.
Why Have a Business Coach?
So, why have a business coach? Good coaches can objectively point out the flaws in a given process, individual, or team, and find ways to make lasting improvements. This applies to coaches in any field. More specifically, a business coach will look at everything from marketing strategies, internal culture, reputation management, sales numbers, and much more. The coach will help their client analyze this information, determine the root causes, and outline potential solutions. Because it is not possible to be an expert in all areas, good coaches help guide their clients to solutions themselves by questioning their actions and providing feedback.
But the best coaches and business consulting services do more than just identify issues and propose solutions. All industries and companies are dynamic, meaning something that works today might not work tomorrow. Coaches must stay on their toes in this way, and, more importantly, impart this wisdom to their clients. In other words, coaching is about helping people learn how to think and adapt to emergent situations. You can’t predict everything that will happen, but you can at least be prepared with the help of your coach.
The Power of an Outsider
Coaches come in many forms and places, but the best coaches often come from outside your organization. The term “outsider” should not be taken as derogatory. On the contrary, a coach from the outside often sees things more clearly and objectively than you or anyone else on your team can. Plus, this coach will have a much different background, using his/her unique experiences to improve your operations.
In a TED Talk from April 2017, surgeon Atul Gawande recounts a powerful story of birth attendants in North India who lacked the equipment and knowledge to consistently deliver healthy babies or protect their mothers. Eventually, Gawande decided to team up with part of the Indian government to deliver rigorous coaching to nurses, physicians, and managers in these birth centers. Over time, the results spoke for themselves with a massive increase in the quality of outcome for both babies and mothers.
While not directly related to business coaching, Gawande’s story speaks to the power of coaching more broadly. These birth centers sorely lacked methods of performance management. Nurses and doctors struggled to communicate, and the results were sometimes devastating. But with proper leadership development coaching, things turned around quickly for the better.
Good coaches are invaluable to any organization. At Leadership Resources, our purpose is making the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease stress levels and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow.
The best leaders know how important it is to recognize their team members and partners whenever someone goes above and beyond. Simply put, recognition is rewarding in and of itself. That’s why we’re honored to be recognized by HR Tech Outlook as their company of the year within their category of the Top 10 Leadership Development Training/Coaching Companies.
HR Tech Outlook is a publication focused on the technological advancements and changes occurring in the human resources industry, and in the business world more broadly. To be considered a top leadership development firm in their eyes, a company must be forward-thinking, open to change, and willing to use cutting-edge technology to achieve its goals. Here at Leadership Resources, we’re proud to fit this bill through our Accelerate Program and EOS® Implementation.
Our Accelerate Leadership Program
Leadership development is an ongoing process that can occur wherever you are, at every stage of life. In a world where more and more individuals are working remotely, traveling constantly, and bouncing between roles and careers, leadership development coaching should be more accessible and flexible for everyone’s lifestyle.
With our Accelerate Leadership Program, the resources, experts, and support necessary for developing leadership skills are available for each client as they embark on their unique development journey, regardless of their location or position. Users can go it alone or join a real-life or virtual cohort to grow together, taking courses, working with coaches, and tracking their individual and organizational progress via the Accelerate software.
This program is designed for people at all levels, whether they’re aspiring to become a leader, recently entered a leadership role, or want to expand their knowledge as an established leader.
EOS® Implementation
Another way Leadership Resources embraces modern methods is through our implementation of the Entrepreneurial Operating System®, which provides prospective and current leaders with a top leadership development consultant (EOS Implementer™). EOS Implementers™ help leaders establish a cohesive vision for their organization and improve their team culture by establishing habits and skills that can be used in a practical, day-to-day way.
Read HR Tech Outlook’s Write-Up on Our Company
For more on how Leadership Resources is blazing a trail in the leadership development industry, check out HR Tech Outlook’s article which recognizes Leadership Resources as the top leadership development firm of 2019. This article features several insights from Boyd Ober, President and CEO of Leadership Resources, regarding the importance of accountability, strategic planning, and specialized coaching for organizational success.
As technology improves and the business landscape changes, one thing will remain constant: the need for good leaders. We thank HR Tech Outlook for recognizing our efforts in establishing a model for ongoing organizational growth through modern approaches to business consulting services and leadership development. We aim to continue innovating into the future.
At Leadership Resources, our purpose is making the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease stress levels and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow.
In this informative video, Jessica Langenberg, Director of Leadership Development at Leadership Resources, talks about how to achieve greater success using the Success Chain.
What to Know About the Success Chain
What is Success?
Langenberg defines success as the feeling of accomplishment one gets after achieving a positive outcome or result. This means that success can look different for everyone. Understanding the Success Chain can help an individual target certain ways of thinking and behaving that can lead them to more success.
The Success Chain is broken into five ascending components: conditioning experiences, attitudes and habits of thought, actions and behaviors, results and outcomes, and, finally, success. Let’s go over what each of these entails and how they lead to the next step toward more success.
Conditioning Experience
As Langenberg describes in the video, a conditioning experience is something (or several things) that occur in one’s life that trigger particular patterns of thought. These experiences may be positive or negative, and tend to occur with some repetition, shaping the way leaders think about themselves, their abilities, and the people around them. In the video, Langenberg outlines the conditioning experience of a project manager who struggled in school. Because of this negative experience, he carried a sense of inferiority and doubt with him into his career.
Attitudes and Habits of Thought
The conditioning experiences described above create one’s attitudes and habits of thought towards people, assignments, and situations. Like the experiences themselves, these habits can be positive and productive, negative and limiting. Maintaining positive habits of thought is one of the most important leadership skills to acquire.
Without this skill, negative conditioning experiences can quickly lead to negative thought patterns. In the example above, the project manager might have formed limiting beliefs about his own abilities due to his negative experiences in school. These habits of thought could lead to doubts about his intelligence and his ability to communicate effectively with his clients.
Actions and Behaviors
The way one thinks or feels about something has a direct impact on what one chooses to do, or not do. Unproductive habits of thought can result in undesirable leadership behaviors. In the case of our project manager, he may struggle with direct communication with his clients for fear of coming off as uninformed or indecisive. He instead did most of his communication via email and deferred to others when asked certain questions directly.
Results and Outcomes
One’s actions inevitably lead to one’s outcomes. Unproductive actions or limiting behaviors will often lead to undesirable results. The project manager in this scenario might experience poor results due to his inability to communicate effectively with his clients. Conversely, positive and productive actions or behaviors will lead to desirable results. For instance, if the project manager decides to be more responsive and take ownership of problems rather than avoiding them, his results will likely improve.
Success
The better one’s results, the more likely one is to feel a sense of success. The Success Chain helps us to understand the impact of our thinking and behaviors on our results – as well as the power one has to intentionally get better results. The Success Chain clearly shows that even a simple change in one’s way of thinking or behaviors can result in greater success. The challenge is recognizing those patterns of thinking and choosing the right behaviors to achieve one’s leadership development goals.
At Leadership Resources, our purpose is to make the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that reduce stress levels and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow.
Be sure to watch the video breakdown below:
Read More
Most of us have heard the phrase, “I’m my own worst enemy.” Indeed, many of us can probably relate to this idea. To be one’s own worst enemy is a common human pitfall because we are ultimately the one in control of our actions. Some of the decisions we make may satisfy us in the short term but harm us in the long run, like ordering pizza instead of cooking those vegetables in the fridge, or avoiding that phone call. We can defeat ourselves more easily than any mustache-twirling villain could attempt.
Some of us, however, have a hard time admitting this inherent and common flaw. We claim that we don’t need external influences to guide us on our way or prevent us from making poor choices. While some people are more self-aware than others, everyone can benefit from having a coach in any aspect of life. Being your own coach comes with a number of caveats that can stifle or even harm your progress. This is especially true when it comes to leadership development. Let’s examine some of these pitfalls of self-coaching.
The Pitfalls of Being Your Own Coach
Falling Back Into Bad Habits
We all form habits in our lives and they both serve us and stunt us in significant ways. These habits allow us to operate efficiently, but mindlessly. For instance, one may wake up at 6 AM every day, shower, brush their teeth, get dressed, have breakfast, and head out the door, but do it all without a moment of reflection. And this normal morning routine just outlines a neutral habit.
Bad habits are those that we fall into at our lowest moments, or that negatively affect us in some way. These might include avoiding difficult conversations, smoking a pack of cigarettes each day, or spending too much time on social media at work. Whatever they may be, bad habits can be difficult for a person to notice, admit, and/or change on one’s own. If you’re your own business coach, you’ll have a much harder time breaking or even recognizing these regular behaviors.
Limitations of a Single Perspective
No matter how much empathy we have, we’re ultimately restricted by our own point of view. Reading, listening, attending conferences, and speaking with others helps one gain perspective and perhaps address personal shortcomings. But by avoiding external leadership coaching, one has a much harder time seeing oneself in an objective light.
Having a business coach greatly helps us improve ourselves and our leadership skills. It gives us an additional perspective that calls out our bad habits while showing us another way of operating. We can use our mentors as exemplars of better behavior.
Lack of Direction
Even if we discover our bad habits, eliminate them, and manage to gain perspective without having a dedicated coach, there is still a problem: where do we go next? The hardest part of achieving lasting leadership growth on one’s own is seeing a clear path forward. We can set goals for ourselves, but they may not be the best goals or the right goals at that moment.
We Need Someone to Challenge and Push Us
Again, an outside perspective is invaluable for development of any kind. We can’t exactly give ourselves a proper performance management evaluation. We need a coach to point out the places where we’ve improved, and the places that could still use some work. By focusing on the latter, we can map out the best direction for continued growth and success.
In other words, an outside coach will challenge us, pushing against our bad habits and calling us out when we try to make excuses. Both our actions and our ways of thinking need to be kept in check. This is both a short- and long-term project. A good coach will keep us on our toes on a daily basis. This daily accountability will add up and eventually become a successful routine. By challenging our negative thoughts and habits, an outside coach can ultimately transform our actions in the long-term.Everyone needs a coach to help defeat our own worst enemies. At Leadership Resources, our purpose is making the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease stress levels and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow.
Read More
A common stereotype of corporate culture from years gone by is that of an unhealthy hierarchy where employees do the most work for the least pay and upper management sits in their corner office, with their feet up, drinking Scotch. While this is uncommon, examples of this structure can certainly be found in history, but in reality, companies would have a hard time operating this way for long. Such actions by a business owner or executive
If a business is to thrive, employee and management development must be viewed as an
Keeping the Company Strong
The negative outlook described above leads one to believe that business owners benefit when their underlings are suppressed. This couldn’t be further from the truth. A strong company culture relies on cooperation, transparency, and mobility. Employees must always have a direct line of communication to management and vice versa. Every staff member should feel encouraged to make contributions and suggestions without fear of judgment. If not, problems get left unchecked, teamwork suffers, productivity falls, brand reputation takes hit after hit, and the whole thing eventually collapses.
Truly investing in leadership training provides an antidote to this potential disaster by decreasing turnover and increasing opportunity. Employees will feel empowered to learn new things, open new doors, and take on new responsibilities. Some staff members may fall short, but others will thrive in this environment and make their way to new positions within the company, strengthening it from the inside. This mobility shouldn’t threaten upper management. The more people with valuable skills, the better. While continued development might lead to some internal restructuring, it’s bound to benefit the business.
Staying Ahead of the Competition
Ultimately, every business wants to have a leg up on its direct competition. Devising a leadership development program offers the best way to do so.
Companies everywhere are becoming more selective about who they hire. Every business wants to employ the best people with the most experience, as this will immediately give it an edge in the market. One of the most powerful ways for a company to captivate ideal new hires is by making it clear that it offers such leadership development courses. This will bring in people who already hunger to learn more and to grow as professionals. This way, a business will get the most out of its people and the most out of its training regiment.
To truly maintain a competitive edge, a company must invest in the leadership skills of all its staff members. The more people learn and grow within the company, the more ideas will flourish. New ideas lead to product innovation, creative marketing tactics, bold partnerships, and more.
At Leadership Resources, our purpose is making the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease stress levels and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow.
Read More
Individuals and businesses should always strive to improve, learn, and grow. This process often occurs naturally as we gain experience and deal with adversity. However, progress can become stunted if we don’t know where we’re headed, or why. By setting goals for ourselves and our business, we can dot a path that helps us navigate our progress and keep better track of it.
But the goals we choose to set and the way in which we set these goals matters. If a goal is meaningless, arbitrary, or practically unattainable, it doesn’t matter if we reach the goal or not. If your goal-setting strategy seems to be broken, consider these potential problems.
Your Goals aren’t Concrete Enough
It feels good to set goals. This, however, can lead to problems if you aren’t careful in choosing what these goals are. Many people fall into the trap of setting broad, lofty goals that look great on paper, but cannot truly be achieved. And if they are achievable, the way forward is foggy. In other words, the goal is nebulous and not actionable. For business leaders, this makes team management difficult since no one has any clear direction.
If you find that your goals aren’t concrete enough, consider setting several smaller, actionable goals that can lead or add up to the broader goal or vision. This will leave you with a larger number of goals, but they will be easier to grasp and act upon, greatly reducing leadership stress and getting you where you want to go more effectively.
You Have Too Many or Too Few Goals
There is, of course, a caveat of setting too many goals: it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Additionally, placing a myriad of goalposts along the path can create a false sense of progress, like checking off “take a shower” on your daily to-do list. Sure, it counts, but it doesn’t hold much value. Each goal must be meaningful, worthy, and related to improving the company culture.
Conversely, setting too few goals can leave you and your team feeling lost and directionless. There should always be a clear goal ahead. Striking the Goldilocks balance between too many and not enough goals is key to staying on track and growing steadily.
You Have Trouble Setting New Goals
Of all the leadership skills one should have, being able to set new goals is among the most important. This is how you revitalize your team, shake things up, and keep the business dynamic and alive. However, you might find yourself a bit lost after finally crossing the finish line of some major goals, asking yourself, what comes next?
One way to avoid this stagnation is to always set one or a few goals ahead of the goal you’re most closely facing. Again, you don’t want to set too many goals, but you always want to be moving toward something. Stay focused on the task at hand, but know that there’s always another level after you’ve beaten the current one. The goals you set should always be related to a greater vision or purpose. Use each goal as a springboard for the next one you set.
Enhance Your Goal-Setting Strategy with Accelerate
In today’s digital age, we can rely on technology to help us create, organize, measure, and react to goals. Leadership Resources’ proprietary software Accelerate helps businesses set, manage, and track goals in real time. This program separates goals into categories: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. After being categorized, each goal can be defined and optimized with specific information and steps that will lead toward reaching it.
Team members can give and receive updates on these goals and specific tasks within them, increasing accountability. Reporting occurs in real-time, so everyone can stay up to date on a specific goal’s current progress via percentages and graphs. Leaders can see which members are falling short, where goals are heading off track, and which behavioral changes may be necessary for a reset. By putting goals into visual, tangible terms, Accelerate makes the goal-setting more transparent and navigable.
If your goal-setting strategy isn’t cutting it for you or your business, you might be running into one of these roadblocks. If your goals are too broad, break them up into smaller, tangible chunks. If you’re facing too many or too few goals, find a digestible medium. And if you’re running out of goals to set, think of the big picture.
Leadership Resources, with the aid of Accelerate, can help you reset your goal-setting strategy and achieve those goals. We would love to play a part in your continued leadership development. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and why.
SCHEDULE A CALL TO LEARN MORE
OR COMPLETE THE FORM BELOW
Let us help you achieve your vision. A member of our team will respond within 24 business hours to arrange an initial discovery session with one of our growth consultants.
