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Four steps to leadership

1) Assess context

a) Analyse strategic assets

• Get your team together to assess your strategic assets.
• Which ones give you the competitive edge? These can include cultural, intellectual, operational and market capital
• Discuss how to preserve and build on these assets.

b) Scope external opportunities and threats

• Get your team together to assess any opportunities or threats. These might be political, economic, social or technological.
• Discuss how to maximise the opportunities and minimise the threats.

2) Envision the future

a) Sense emerging future

• Let go of rigid thinking. Open your mind to new possibilities.
• Go for open dialogue about what is, and isn't changing.
• Encourage everyone to notice changes in the marketplace.
• Sense the mood in your teams.

b) Create a shared vision

• Present a compelling reason for change
• Get your staff deeply involved in creating a shared vision.
• Make sure this vision:-
  - is realistic and credible
  - will attract commitment and energy
  - links to their hopes and dreams

3) Align people

a) Motivate through change

• Avoid telling people what to do.
• Encourage them to believe in the possibility of change.
• Emphasise that they have choice.
• Challenge people to be the best they can be.
• Indicate what isn't changing.
• Address any fears that people have about change.

b) Be authentic

• Be true to yourself.
• Deliver what you promise.
• Live your life according to your beliefs.
• Express what you truly feel.
• Don't brag or put people down.
• Empathise.

4) Show the way

a) Decide priorities

• Think about how you typically spend your time.
• Analyse what's important and unimportant, and what's urgent and non-urgent.
• Focus on the important.
• Spend 20% of your time on the important and non-urgent.
• Decide what you can delegate.

b) Turn knowledge into doing

• Make sure meetings are outcome-driven.
• Make it permissible to object and criticise.
• Establish mechanisms to track progress against defined outcomes.
• Encourage a can-do attitude.
• Build in quick wins.

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© Copyright 2003 Trans4mation. Reproduced with permission. Any opinions or views contained in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Training Reference.

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