Motivation, commitment, discretionary effort, and employee engagement can’t be commanded.
If those desirable traits are not a reality on your team, the right starting point to correcting it is a hard look in the mirror.
While there are many things that high performing leaders do to create and maintain the big four above, all are based on the five foundational principles that are shared by the best leaders. No promises that all will be roses, but life as a leader gets easier and more satisfying if you embody these five strategies:
- Create and articulate a compelling business vision that inspires talented people to want to participate in making it a reality.
- Engage the right people to help make it so.
- Create and maintain a sense of community and teamwork where trust is the coin of the realm.
- Develop clear boundaries within which people can make individual and team decisions. Expect talented, creative people to push up against those boundaries.
- Convey optimism.
These five actions of high performing leaders are not only for senior executives. While it is not unreasonable for a CEO or founder/owner to mandate the above, the thinking is better and engagement is stronger if others are involved in the defining the specifics of those five principles. People are more likely to commit to things they had a role in developing. Top floor to shop floor, involving leaders is essential to achieving the high value that comes from building a culture around these five principles.
Effective leaders earn discretionary effort. Ineffective leaders deceive themselves into believing that such effort can be commanded and then blame subordinates when it doesn’t work.
I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.
