Blog Post: Springtime & Leadership: It's a New Season!

Evaluate the Current Leadership Team

Who makes up your leadership team?  Were many of them promoted from within? Congratulations, today we need to grow our own leaders whenever possible. 

Have you provided leadership development?  Many people are promoted to leadership positions without the proper training or many times without any training.  This is very risky.  Some will figure it out and succeed, though usually taking longer and at a much greater cost than necessary.  Others struggle and sometimes are lost both as a productive worker and a potentially great leader.  Even new leaders who do okay may never fully make the transition without learning effective leadership skills. 

Have you had formal leadership development yourself? Have you asked the members of your team for feedback on what works well with your leadership style and what changes you could make to increase their success or the company’s success? 

Cultivate Leadership Skills

A leader’s job is to get the right people in the right jobs doing the right things for the right reasons.  Matching the right person to the right job is imperative.  Using the nature analogy, plants thrive when they are in the right location with the right light and food.  People also thrive when their natural strengths match the job requirements and support is provided.

Does every employee know the right things to do? Do they know daily if they are winning or losing without you telling them? Don’t assume that because you have worked with someone for a long time that they know your priorities; ask them.

A leader needs skills in three overall areas: technical, process or strategic thinking and human skills.  The higher the leadership position, the less technical skills are of value. >>>>Without formal leadership development, leaders tend to rely on their technical skills and end up doing their people's job instead of their own. 

Here are the symptoms that leadership development may be needed: 

To continue reading this article, and other articles on leadership, employee motivation and increasing productivity, please see here www.attainmentinc.com/articles.html 

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