Build a Strong Foundation for Success

When you participate in leadership development training, you’re building on your previous experience and success. Your improved skills will enable you to get more done in less time and with less wasted effort, and as a result, you will become increasingly valuable to your chosen organisation.  Improved skills means less stress related to your responsibilities, so you will find yourself enjoying your job even more.

As you grow as a Leader, you will have a positive influence in three areas:

1. In the organisation overall,
2. With your own team members, and
3. The work climate as a whole.

• Your influence in the organisation: Organisations are much like human beings. Each copes with challenges in its own characteristic way and, operates in a manner designed to preserve its existence and succeed. An organisation is simply two or more people working toward a common goal. Regardless of the size of your organisation, being a leader calls for willingness to identify with your organisation’s purpose, to support it with your attitudes and your actions, and to facilitate the changes needed for the organisation’s ongoing success. Regardless of the type of your organisation – whether it’s a provider of services, a distributor of goods, or a manufacturer – you’re expected first of all to get results through your people in order to operate at a profit. Given defined human and financial resources, you must reach certain productivity goals. The nature of “profit” takes different forms according to the nature of the organisation, but the principle is the same.  “You are effective as a leader only when you manage the available resources to make the product or service worth more to the organisation than the cost of producing it.”  Although your personality characteristics and skills are important, your value to the organisation is generally measured by how effectively you’re fulfilling its mission and achieving cost-effective results.

• Your influence on team members: In addition to understanding your responsibility to the organisation, you must also understand the needs and wants of the members of your work group. If you concentrate exclusively on your own needs and goals and neglect those of your team members, a deep rift in team relationships could develop. If you’re achievement oriented, you may be tempted to boost your own self-esteem by downplaying the contributions made by other team members. But when other team members feel that their efforts have been ignored or that their value has gone unrecognised, they view themselves as relatively unimportant to the organisation. Consequently, they feel less responsibility for being personally productive. Avoid this destructive pattern at all costs! Both you and your team members will enjoy the positive results of shared responsibility, achievement and recognition.

• Your influence on the work climate: When you adopt a no-limitations belief in the potential and worth of every individual, you begin coaching each team member with an enthusiasm that says, “You can do it!” Your confidence in them gives them maximum opportunity to grow, to meet their own needs, and to contribute to the success of your department or work group. When you believe in the ability of people to perform productively, your expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy. People tend to live up to what’s expected of them by others, especially by those they consider authority figures. When you demonstrate that you believe your team members can succeed, they’re willing to take more growth risks. A no-limitations belief in people also makes it easier for you to delegate various responsibilities and to trust your team members to get the help, resources and training they may need to successfully complete the tasks you assign. When you demonstrate your confidence in their ability to perform successfully, they will accept the challenge and work harder to meet your expectations.