Are you passionate about your work as a leader? You know the answer, and what may come as a surprise, so does your team. If you aren’t, you may be frustrated, ineffective, and struggling to get results. It may be the reason you are not making progress.
Leaders need to have a passion for their work, and have a vision for their organization, exuding the essence of it in all thoughts and expressions to all stakeholders, at all times. S/he needs to be passionate and stay focused like a laser on bridging the gap that exists between that vision, and the mission…what the company actually does day to day.
To help bridge that gap, S/he must create alignment with all team members in support of the vision. If leaders are not developing, articulating and living a clear vision, with meaningful and appropriate core values that are aligned with all stakeholders, then getting from where you are (mission) to where you want to be (vision) will be a much more complicated and frustrating process. If the teams of employees are not in alignment with the core values, and the vision, then those team members will do whatever they want without direction based on their own view of mission. Not surprisingly, results will be very mixed.
Once the vision is understood, and the employees are in alignment with the core values, appropriate goals that are mutually negotiated with team members can be established and implemented, and the team can then be held accountable to achieve their targets.
A command and control (top down) philosophy of leadership generally doesn’t work in business settings today… we need to hire people who are in alignment with the vision, core values, and mission, and require them to execute on plans, to be innovative and creative, and to work independently.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
