For organisations to succeed in today’s ever changing competitive business environment, they must tap into the leadership potential of their people at all levels. Leadership throughout the organisation is essential for its overall competitiveness, profitability and sustainability.

This concept of ‘leadership at all levels’ should not be taken lightly. A culture of leaders developing leaders empowers the entire workforce, engages people’s discretionary effort and capitalises on the full potential of all employees. Therefore those in formal leadership roles have a tremendous responsibility to lead by example. As a result they must develop and exhibit the right leadership abilities and characteristics.

Everyone has the potential to be a leader. There is an old saying “Leaders are not born, they are made”. Progressive organisations encourage and commit to developing leadership abilities in all employees. There is nothing that restricts the development of people’s personal leadership potential more than the artificial limitations that people place on themselves. Everyone can develop their leadership potential and contribute greatly to the productivity, performance, success and sustainability of the organisation. When people let their determination, self-motivation, strengths and abilities drive them to improve their leadership skills, they improve their own work and contribute to those around them. They don’t need additional tools. They just need to develop their leadership abilities and characteristics.

Practice the following suggestions to improve your leadership effectiveness and success.

• Work with your team members to create a vision of excellence and meaningful values for your team.
• Share the specific goals and objectives for your team and show them how they contribute towards their accomplishment.
• Become genuinely interested in seeing them achieve their personal and career goals.
• Lead by example. Let your actions be those that you’d like your team to emulate and follow.
• Be a good teacher, student and communicator. Share your insights and experiences with others in your team.
• Respect others’ experience and ask for their ideas and suggestions – then , listen to these ideas and suggestions , really listen!. Some of the best ideas for improvement in the team’s operations will come from other members of the team. Show them that you value and care about their input and ideas.
• Trust the people you work with. Without trust and mutual respect between the team leader and team members, low performance and poor morale prevail.
• Provide opportunities for others to learn how to solve problems. Show that you trust them by empowering them to take on additional responsibilities in the areas of decision making and problem solving.
• Continue to extend and broaden your knowledge about technical advances or other issues that affect your field of operation.
• Talk to people at all levels within the organisation and seek and value their feedback.
• Coach and mentor your team members, share new information and up-skill them at every opportunity.
• In the area of making the most of your time, lead by example. Discipline yourself to use a daily planner, avoid interruptions and prioritise your activities during the day.
• Conduct meetings in a timely and efficient manner. Have an agenda prepared and distributed to everybody ahead of time.
• Work to keep the meetings focused on the Agenda and outcomes.
• Recognise team members for their efforts. Thank them for jobs well done and provide recognition and, if appropriate, rewards.
• Be available to your team.
• Be reliable. Do what you say you will do. Reliability shows integrity and provides stability, strength and confidence in your team members. You are also demonstrating another characteristic in which you are leading by example.

Please consider and use some, or all of the above suggestions to develop your leadership, and encourage others to develop their own leadership potential in the same way.

Leaders and managers often lament the “difficult conversations they have to have” with staff about performance – whether it be to address a specific behavioural problem or highlight an attitude that is less than ideal in the individual.

In almost all instances, this conversation seeks to bring about a change in the individual that has to come from them and to which they must commit.

Here’s a practical process for planning and conducting these conversations to achieve better outcomes:

Extracted from LMA’s High Performance Management, (Diploma of Management). To find details about the next High Performance Management course or our entire course range, please click here.

One of the greatest keys to success, in both your personal and professional life, is effective goal setting; and the way in which you express a goal can have a significant influence on your likelihood of achieving it. 

One of LMA’s key principles of effective goal setting is that your goals must be S.M.A.R.T. goals.

S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for the five qualities of an effective goal.  A S.M.A.R.T. goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Tangible. If you ensure that you set S.M.A.R.T. goals it will better enable you to devise specific Action Steps for the achievement of those goals.

S stands for SPECIFIC. One of the most important qualities of an effective goal is that it’s specific.  A specific goal clearly defines exactly what you want to accomplish, and therefore has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a vague goal.

To set a specific goal, ask yourself:

• WHO? List who is involved
• WHAT? Determine what you want to accomplish
• WHERE? Identify a location
• WHEN? Establish a time frame
• WHICH? Identify requirements and constraints
• WHY? Specify the reasons or purpose and the benefits of accomplishing the goal

One simple action you can take to make your goals more specific is to write them down. By writing them down in “black and white”, you will see more clearly where your goal is specific and where it isn’t.

M stands for MEASURABLE. A goal is measurable when it can be quantified. Establish concrete criteria and a process for measuring your progress toward the attainment of each goal you set.

To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as:

• “How much?”
• “How many?”
• “How will I know when it is accomplished?”
• “What methods of measurement will I use?”

When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued improvement and ongoing success.

A stands for ATTAINABLE. A goal is attainable when it is humanly possible to accomplish. When you identify the goals that are most important to you, you begin to find ways to make them come true. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals and you develop the abilities, skills and financial capability to reach them.

You can attain most of the goals you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them. When you list your goals, you build your self-image, you see yourself as worthy of these goals and you develop the traits and personality that allow you to possess them.

R stands for REALISTIC. A goal is realistic when it represents an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work towards. Realistic is relative to each person based on their own situation at a given point in time.  If you rarely exercise it would be an unrealistic goal to complete a marathon this weekend.

A goal is realistic when you truly believe that it can be accomplished with the time and resources available to you. One way to know if your goal is realistic is to determine if you have accomplished anything similar in the past. Another way to help you determine if a goal is realistic is to ask yourself what conditions would have to exist to accomplish this goal.

A goal can be both high and realistic. You are the only one who can decide just how high your goal should be, but be sure that every goal represents substantial progress. A high goal is frequently easier to reach than a low one because a low goal exerts a low motivational force. Some of the hardest jobs you ever accomplished actually seemed easy, simply because they were a labour of love and motivated you.  So, if you love to run, perhaps a more realistic goal is to complete a half-marathon in three months time… and so on.

T stands for TANGIBLE. A goal is tangible when you can experience it with one of the senses: taste, touch, smell, sight or hearing.  In other words, you must be able to feel and sense what it will be like when your goal is accomplished.

When you make your goal specific, you’re usually able to “see it.”  But to truly make your goal tangible, you must add one or more of the other senses.  Then you’ll actually be able to experience it “in advance”, giving yourself sufficient “pull” to help overcome present road blocks or behaviour patterns.

When your goal is tangible, or when you tie an intangible goal to a tangible, you have a better chance of making it specific and measurable and thus attainable.

Intangible goals are your goals for the internal changes required to reach more tangible goals. They are the personality characteristics and the behaviour patterns you must develop to pave the way to success and the achievement of your other goals. Since intangible goals are vital for improving your effectiveness, give close attention to tangible ways of measuring them. Ask yourself “What evidence of accomplishment will there be when I reach this goal?”

If you are interested in knowing more about this and other keys to success that will dramatically improve your leadership, productivity, and performance, contact LMA today.

High performing employees at all levels know the value of their own time. Everyday interruptions that remove a person’s focus from their most important, High Payoff Activities (HPA’s), are costly to both personal and team productivity.

One of the biggest issues with interruptions is that they break your focus, which means you spend time realigning your thought process to where it was before you were interrupted. Research shows that this can take up to 11 minutes. Furthermore, since the number of hours each of us has in our workday is limited, unplanned interruptions have the potential to add additional pressure to meet key deadlines and targets.

The following basic strategies, that we call “The Five Ds of Disruptions” will assist you to reduce the time and productivity cost of unplanned interruptions.

The Five Ds of Disruptions:

Decide: If a tasks requires 100% of your attention, schedule it when you are least likely to be disturbed.

Defer: Learn to say ‘No’ in an assertive way. If an interruption is not critical, agree to meet and discuss the issue at a time that suits you. Saying something like, “I am happy to meet and discuss this at 3.00pm today. Are you available then?” will not offend anyone, and you defer the interruption to a time that better suits you.

Discourage: Focus on controlling others’ accessibility to you. Close your door if this is possible. If not, communicate realistic boundaries and expectations to those around you by letting them know that you have an HPA to work on, and what time of day you will be available.

Deal with it: There are times when you will have no choice but to respond to the interruption. In these instances, focus conversations of action and results, then return your attention to your HPAs.

Delegate: If you are losing a lot of your productive time through interruptions that relate to tasks that someone else could do, start the process of delegating these.

LMA has  a wide variety of course to help you deal with disruptions and their management.  Click here to find more information on our courses and how they can help.