Leadership - Inspiring the Team to Achieve Goals
In Business, Leadership is about inspiring followers to achieve Team or Organizational goals. You may be a Team Leader or Manager in a Business, and you may have built the respect of your Team. Your next challenge is to get them focused in the right direction, the direction that will achieve their organizational goals.
How does a Team Leader persuade the Team to do this - to see the goals and to want to get there? How does a Leader inspire the Team? The ability to be inspirational is a key Leadership competency that can be practiced and learnt. There two critical keys to work on to provide inspirational leadership - selling the vision and persuading the Team that this is worth doing.
People want to know where they are going and why they should bother going there - what is in it for them. A poor Leader will state the targets and the objectives - figures this week, figures this month. An effective Leader can get higher figures and more committed followers by selling a positive outcome in a way that inspires.
Step 1 is to paint a positive picture of what exactly the end goal is. The goal must be positive - rather than negative, or what we should avoid doing. The art of always using positive language rather than negative is essential to leadership. For example we tell a Team Member what to do or ask for them for the right way - we don't tell them what not to do. The reason is simple, it doesn't work! If the waiter puts a very hot plate down in front of you and says - 'Don't touch that plate, it is very hot', what will we do? Yes, we touch it!
When we are selling the goal, we paint the picture of the positive outcome - where we are going rather than not going. 'I want us to be the highest performing Team in the business' - rather than 'We can't be in the middle of the league this year'.
Paint a very clear picture of the end goal - the follower can see it and clearly visualize it. Make it really attractive and relevant for your particular group. 'We are going to achieve so much that every new hire will want to come on this Team'.
Step 2 is to have a plan. How are we going to get there? You don't have to have the whole plan - but you need step 1 and step 2 - and both of these must make sense to the Team. Identify quick wins - preferably generated from the Team itself, and present those as the first steps.
Step 3 is to sell it, to persuade them that it is worth doing and gain their buy-in. The language we use in effective leadership is real 'selling' language - all positive language and very relevant to your Team members. We state the 'benefits' of the end goal and the 'benefits' of the effort. First prepare a list of the benefits, then choose 2-3 under each heading, and then work out how to word these in a way that will come across well to your Team.
When identifying benefits, cover 5 areas -
1. The Company - what are the benefits to the Company of us achieving this goal? What is in it for them?
2. The Customer - what are the benefits for the Customer?
3. The Team - if we achieve this goal, in what way will the Team benefit?
4. The Team Leader / Manager - how will I benefit if the Team achieves achieve this goal?
5. The Team Member - what is in it for this Team Member / each Team Member?
Paint the picture of the goal first - what it is. Next comes the benefits, in the order listed above. Then bottom line the success vision and the 'can do' element.
Practice this and sell it well - you will definitely be on a path to providing effective leadership and to inspiring your Team.
Author: Kate Tammemagi
About the author:
Kate Tammemagi is a well respected Consultant and Trainer with Focus Training. She has extensive experience designing and delivering customized leadership training programmes. For further information see http://www.focustraining.ie
Article source: Free Management Articles.
More free articles under
Management
What makes a project a success?
Let us start by looking at
When is a project a "success"?
The answer to this question will vary based on to whom this questions is address. A project manager will usually s...
Against All Odds -Tips On How To Protect Your Assets
With so many bad things happening in our society today, it is important to obtain safety measure needed to protect our lives, our business, or simply the things we own. That is why a lot of people are finding asset protection as vital in one's economic growth and stability.
The Power of Employee Recognition
A discussion of how to motivate employees and inspire them to become more punctual, productive, and loyal.
Use End Cap Displays to Sell other Merchandise when you Own a Dollar Store
If you own a dollar store then you know the challenge of continually building sales in your store. In fact growing year-to-year sales is one of the most important actions you need to take to have a he...
Why Your Projects Are Not Being Completed
The overwhelming number of projects fail to deliver. That's a fact. Gain a strategic advantage over your competitors, by not being a statistic by honing your project management skills and abilities.
Customer Management Relationship
The catch phrase of the 1990s, Customer relationship management, was an instant darling of large and medium business houses, which in theory promised to develop and manage a happy and cordial relationship with customers. Now a decade and more into customer relationship management, organizations are slowly realizing that the unwieldy process is no longer easy to handle easily, as they initially thought, and forging a relationship forever is not gaining ground.
Can A Learning Management System Help Your Business?
It is well known in today's time that knowledge is power and the more training your employee's receive, the better the employee, thus having a more successful company. Businesses today need to be constantly looking for a more efficient way to manage their business and it's a smart idea to invest in a learning management system that will help those within the business run a better business. The more knowledgeable the employee the stronger partnership between boss and employee,...