Leadership - a team sport

Much has been made of the individual leader. But we think leadership is more like football than long distance running, much more like a morris dance than a ballet solo, much more like group hugging than rocking gently in a corner by oneself. It's no secret now – ask any research from the last 3 years that the secrets to commercial high performance are the clarity and engagement created by leaders. What we know is that this is done by a cohort of leaders at the top of the organisation – say the top 50 or so. So working on the extent to which things are shared between them (like purpose, like stories, like norms of behaviour) is a faster route to high performance than simply honing their individual muscles.

Driving results

You can drive a car, you can drive a golf ball, you can drive a wedge between two people (I know I can), you can drive people crazy, you can drive a horse and cart through my logic but you can't 'drive results'. Results indicate what has happened and they are the 'result' of people's performance. So stop trying to work on the result and instead help your people develop their performance, i.e how they do their work, and see if that affects the result.

Ideas Unlimited Thinks goes to Blog

You can now find Ideas Unlimited's thoughts on organisations, performance, leadership, engagement, development and the price of apples on this blog.