An organization’s success and advancement depends on the growth of its people. Without strong leaders with a shared vision, you can’t expect your company to adapt, evolve, and thrive in a dynamic environment. You must invest in all of your employees, especially those who display ambition and potential for taking over leadership roles in the future.
One of the most powerful ways to invest in your people is to provide them with a leadership development program suited to their individual needs and your company’s needs. Let’s go over four key benefits of leadership development.
How Leadership Development Helps Companies
1. Building Confidence
Not all people are natural-born leaders. This is okay, as there are plenty of candidates who do wish to rise up and take on more responsibility within your organization. However, becoming a strong leader is easier said than done. You might find that some of your potential leaders, though they want to learn and grow, lack the confidence required to take the next step. This is where leadership development training comes in handy.
With the right coaching and guidance, emerging leaders can enhance their communication skills, become more adept at planning, gain valuable hands-on experience, and more. All of these efforts will help the confidence of your potential leaders and prepare them for whatever comes next.
2. The Leadership Development Domino Effect
Investing in leadership development is a holistic effort, meaning the benefits don’t only impact those who receive training, but also spread across your entire organization. Those who receive training can go on to express and teach their newly learned skills to others, enhancing your organizational culture as a whole. This domino effect may even inspire less ambitious employees to take on new responsibilities and continue the cycle of development.
3. Encourage and Cultivate New Ideas
Stagnation is a company’s subtlest and most sinister enemy. Oftentimes, this lack of vitality stems from a lack of new leadership. Established leaders may ignore new ideas or opinions from their younger employees, however unintentionally. The status quo, while comfortable, can become restrictive.
Bringing in some new blood can really shake up a stale organization, but only if new leaders are ready to take on new roles. A solid leadership development regiment will encourage fresh faces to flourish and share their ideas with current leaders within the organization. Better yet, with enough training, these new leaders can help implement these changes with confidence and clarity.
4. Securing Your Company’s Future
Finally, if you want your company to continue its legacy, you must prepare accordingly with a succession planning model that focuses heavily on leadership development. Succession planning refers to the process by which an organization carefully transitions from the established leadership to new leadership. Without a fresh set of prepared leaders to grab the torch, your organization will likely experience a serious crisis when the time comes.
One of the great benefits of leadership development is that it secures your company’s future by curating strong leaders who are capable and confident enough to take over new and existing roles. For more insight into the many benefits of succession planning and leadership development, download our white paper entitled “Preparing New Leadership: A Successful Approach to Succession Planning”.
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.
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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 most successful organizations understand that their growth largely depends on their people and culture. Staff members must feel encouraged and empowered to go above and beyond the bare minimum that’s required of them each day.
Coaching and leadership go hand in hand. The best leaders make coaching a part of their job, helping employees grow as individuals and members of a team, while also utilizing a coach themselves. In fact, good coaching can have a tangible impact on a company’s bottom line. Here’s how.
The Benefits of Leadership Coaching on Your Bottom Line
Retaining Good People
Business leaders must focus on hiring the best, most fitting candidates for their enterprise. However, welcoming a new hire aboard doesn’t matter much if that person abandons ship. In fact, high turnover rates can wind up greatly costing a business. According to a 2012 study by the Center for American Progress, replacing a highly-trained or skilled employee can cost a company approximately twice as much of their annual salary. In other words, it’s not just about finding the right people, but retaining them.
One of the best ways to keep employees on board is by injecting a company culture with a strong emphasis on developing people, with coaching being an important part of that. Good coaches treat staff members as equals, encouraging them to take on new responsibilities that reinforce their purpose and importance in the company. As these employees learn and grow, they will provide more value and maybe even become coaches to new employees. More people will choose to stay in this mutually respectful, upwardly mobile, and positive environment.
Keeping Employees Engaged
It isn’t enough to simply keep employees around, however. Keeping them engaged is vital to improving a company’s bottom line, too. Team members who are actively invested in their work are more productive and positive, and less prone to costly accidents and mistakes than those who are mentally checked out on the job.
Coaches help keep employees engaged in several ways. First, they remind employees why their role matters. Additionally, coaches can forge a clear development path for employees to follow. If staff members want to contribute more, their coach can help them work towards achieving that. Leadership coaching in particular prepares employees to take on larger leadership roles in the company.
Improving Company Culture
Coaching and leadership development ultimately improve a company’s culture across the board, which yields net positive effects both internally and externally. Inside the organization, a positive culture spreads contagiously from employee to employee, naturally boosting productivity and engagement. From the outside, consumers and clients take notice of this atmosphere, which will gravitate them towards it. In this way, a brand’s culture and values and reputation are inextricably linked.
Great coaches work hard to maintain these values by reinforcing them in their actions, discussions, and lessons. By demonstrating what strong leadership looks like, coaches provide an example that their team can follow as they learn and grow within the company. Businesses might also invest in an employee leadership development program, where employees can learn important skills and methods from leaders and coaches.
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 the business world, you’ll find many passionate leaders who seem unlikely to ever leave the company. But our time here is limited, and life has a way of throwing curveballs at us whether we like them or not. It’s simply a fact that if you own a business, one day you and your fellow leaders will have to leave it, whether due to age, health concerns, or personal reasons. Of course, just because you’ll eventually exit the company doesn’t mean the enterprise should shut down too. If you want your business’ legacy to thrive, you’ll have to focus your efforts on succession planning.
What You Need to Know About Succession Planning
What is Succession Planning?
Right now, you may be asking yourself, “what is succession planning?” Simply put, succession planning is how a company secures its future by hiring, promoting, and/or training individuals to take on leadership roles as current leaders leave the enterprise. You might think of it as a ceremonial passing of the torch. As one team leaves, a new team steps in to carry on the business’ mission. Without proper succession planning, a business will struggle to continue its operation, as there will be no one available or remotely prepared to take on these vital leadership roles.
How Do Companies Develop Succession Plans?
The importance of succession planning should be abundantly clear. However, successfully crafting and implementing a succession planning strategy is a different story altogether. Every company differs in size, scope, location, and potential leadership candidates, meaning each organization must create a plan that suits its individual needs. Still, there are certain general guidelines every business should follow when forming a strategy for succession planning.
Start Early
The sooner you consider your exit strategy, the better. You won’t be shipping off tomorrow, of course, but by being ahead of the curve you can outline a plan for how to go about finding optimal replacements. This head start also allows you to start focusing on the leadership development of your current staff members. It takes time to identify the right candidates, let alone train and evaluate them thoroughly enough for the new role. By starting early, you have more time to ensure the right people are on board.
Clearly Identify Roles, Duties, and Vision
One of the major challenges in succession planning is knowing and clearly communicating what roles and duties need to be fulfilled and how they will help steer the company into the future. If you started the business, you and your partners might know these things inherently. But when it’s time to bring new blood into the fold, you need to flex your leadership communication skills to get everyone on the same page. You might start including potential candidates in more closed-door meetings to help them gain insight into the company’s operations, for instance.
Consider the Plan When Hiring
If you already have a solid team, you’ll have an easier time finding the right people to take over in your absence. However, you’ll likely have to hire some new faces every now and then. With a solid succession planning model, you can hire new recruits with this template in mind. In other words, you’ll be able to hone in on specific traits and leadership qualities present in high-quality employees. Your succession plan should inform every hiring decision you make so you don’t waste any time finding and training the best people for the role.
When your business is growing, the last thing you might think about is leaving. However, failing to consider an exit strategy is a mistake that may cost the legacy of your organization. With proper succession planning, you can develop leaders within the enterprise and ensure the continued development of your business.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.
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Communication is one of the most powerful aspects of an organization. Strong communication keeps staff members accountable and helps maintain clarity. Poor communication can muddy the waters on every level. Without good leadership communication skills, your team might not know what to do next, or why they should do it. And if they fail to give you honest feedback, you might not even know that your message is unclear. This is a negative feedback loop that stifles productivity.
To get ahead of this potential confusion, it’s important to know some of the warning signs that suggest a disconnect in understanding. Here we’ll take a look at some of these signs and outline a few ways to course correct.
How to Tell Your Team Isn’t Getting Your Message
Lack of Engagement
We’ve all been told that there’s no such thing as a stupid question. Still, most of us don’t like being the first or only one to ask for clarification on something. If a team member isn’t grasping a message or a concept, they might hold still and wait for someone else to do it instead. The problem here is that this sometimes results in no one asking common questions at all. The leader in charge of team management is then unaware of the confusion that several team members might be feeling.
If your team isn’t super responsive or seems hesitant to ask questions, take this as a sign that something is unclear. To remedy this disengagement, try asking specific team members what they think the goal or task is about. If they can’t do this, they’ll most likely ask for further instruction rather than pretend to know the answer.
Repeated Questions
On the opposite end of this spectrum, you may receive too many questions, some of which echo questions you’ve already answered. This is a big red flag for team culture, too, as it suggests that team members aren’t listening well to each other and that they’re having a hard time grasping your message.
Repeated questions may derive from a flaw in your communication, however. Perhaps similar questions keep popping up because your answers lack clarity. Take these repetitive questions as a sign that you need to step back and explain yourself more clearly.
Overlapping Tasks
Once a project is in motion, there are a number of signs that indicate team members aren’t fully clear on the task at hand. The most glaring of these is when staff members assigned distinct tasks end up overlapping. For instance, one team member may be in charge of taking research notes while another is tasked with reaching out to contacts. If either person ends up doing something that’s in the others’ jurisdiction, there is probably need for better communication and performance management.
If you notice this happening, go back to the drawing board and reassign clearly distinguished tasks to your team members. Make sure everyone is clear on what they should be doing, how to report on it, etc.
Goals Aren’t Being Met and Productivity is Suffering
This final warning sign stems from the previous one. When team members fail to do their job or accidentally do someone else’s, productivity suffers. Failing to meet goals and deadlines can occur for a number of reasons, but it’s most commonly from miscommunication and lack of understanding. People struggle to achieve goals if they’re not sure what those goals are, or why they matter. One of the most important leadership qualities is knowing how to set and frame goals so that every team member can get on board.
Knowing how to manage communication in teams is easier said than done. For one thing, every team is different, and within each team are unique individuals with various strengths and weaknesses. It takes time to learn the subtle cues of each team member and recognize when your team is veering off course. Leadership Resources provides tools for leadership development that can help better equip you to handle these situations and get your team back on track. For instance, our team includes certified implementers of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)®, a system which promotes clarity and cohesion in organizations.
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.
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If you’re in the business of developing new products, it’s not always easy to know if an idea will be a winner. In fact, you can’t really know if a new product will sell until it’s out in the market and the numbers start rolling in. This is why it’s so important to thoroughly test an idea before sending it out into the world for public consumption. After all, you wouldn’t drive or walk across a bridge that hadn’t been stress tested beforehand.
But how exactly should you go about testing an idea? Let’s look at 3 innovative ways you and your team can test a new product idea.
How to Test a Product Idea
1. Ask Your Team: What Problem is Being Solved?
A successful product tends to solve a common problem, no matter how small. Therefore, this should be the starting point of your discussion with your project management team. Hold a brainstorming session where each team member individually writes down what problem they think the product will solve. Then, discuss each team member’s answers to see if there are any glaring differences. If one or more team members can’t come up with an answer, there may be a problem with the product idea itself.
Running this team management exercise will help foster a productive discussion that can help hone in on the product’s main function and trim its fat. A product may, in fact, be useful for solving multiple problems. But it’s important to know this beforehand so the marketing team can craft a strategy that touches on all of these aspects.
2. Hire a Focus Group
Ultimately, you want your product to appeal to a wide group of people once it’s on the market. Holding several meetings with your team is great for cultivating a team culture, but it’s not enough to get a sense of how consumers will feel about your product. Hiring a focus group can be a powerful way to get objective, external feedback on your new product idea.
Focus groups come in all shapes and sizes. They might be made up of a random selection of people, or they might be a more targeted group based on the product’s ideal market demographic. Those in the group can learn about the product, test it out, and give direct feedback to a moderator. Participants are also often encouraged to speak with one another about their experience. These conversations can reveal powerful insights into a product’s shortcomings and strong points.
3. Test it in the Field
Focus groups provide one way to let several people try out your new product idea in a controlled setting. But why not also take your product out of the office and out into the world? Nothing is stopping you from going up to people and asking them if they’d like to try a sample of something or play around with a product for a little bit. You can even incentivize them with discounts or other offers. This is also a good exercise in sales leadership training.
If a product hasn’t been built yet and is still in the design phase, you can still test the idea by asking people if they would be interested in such a product. If enough people show interest, it’s a good indicator that the idea has value. You might then move forward with an online presale campaign that allows consumers to invest in the idea and receive the product once completed.
If you’re not around enough people to test out your product or answer your questions, try calling and emailing potential leads, asking them if they would be interested in receiving a product from you free of charge. In exchange, you can ask them to send back their thoughts on the product. Combining this feedback with your focus group results will give you the optimal pool of data to improve or change your product idea.
New product ideas are improved over time with the help of many people, both internally and externally. A large part of leadership development is understanding the importance of this additional input. Even if you’re in charge of overseeing the new product idea, it takes more than one person to bring that idea to its fullest potential.
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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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