LEADING IN A FAST-PACED WORLD

Are you ready to be a Leader?

Understanding passionate leadership

“A leader is a dealer in hope.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Today everyone is focusing on delivering the best product or service. Companies set up objectives, structures, processes, teams, and then kick-off. In a fast-paced environment like today, issues crop up and drama knocks the door. Turnover and "employees who quit but don’t leave" increase impacting revenue and growth — but what is wrong?

Organizations fail to understand that delivering the best service means to build the best team first.

A manager is a role, a Leader is a choice.

Managers fill important roles in companies. They have to be effective and efficient towards the organizational business goals.

Their main responsibilities include defining objectives and outlining and executing precise plans to reach them. For that, they need to be great at several skills: communication, assertiveness, proactiveness, and focus. Specially being able to delegate with trust in the team.

But roadmaps often get pretty tight and the projects become at risk. The need to deliver becomes a priority and the output eats the outcome. That is when team issues appear: passiveness, apathy, low morale, underperformance — and the list goes on.

Making teams succeed is complex. A team gathers humans together on a mission. And as humans, we have the intrinsic need for guidance. To follow someone who can show us the path to go.

Making teams succeed requires Leadership, and that is not a role.

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” ~ Peter Drucker

Managers are not leaders by default. Being a Manager means fulfilling a role with well-defined responsibilities. While being a Leader means mastering a skill.

There is a trend to praise Leaders and undermine Managers:

• Managers follow processes. Leaders challenge the status quo.
• Managers control risks. Leaders take risks.
• Managers focus on tasks. Leaders focus on people.
• Managers assign. Leaders influence.
• Managers guide. Leaders mentor.
• Managers delegate. Leaders empower.
• Managers create structure. Leaders create culture.

This is a complete misconception. There's no room to antagonize them. Managers are not opposed to leaders. Managers can — and should — be Leaders. And there lies the secret ingredient for companies: bringing balance to the force.

So, you want to be a Leader?

Being a leader means having a cause. Having the ability to inspire your team to follow it. To be able to share that vision that inspires them so much, that they want to build it together with you.

That each day they go to work, they think they contribute to a cause. That they will go with a smile on their face.

A place where they can be honest to say: “I don’t understand” or “I made a mistake”. And still, feel safe.

An environment that puts “people first”, where they can stand up by themselves and grow.

It’s not your job to control. You don’t have to focus on changing processes or flows. You are not supposed to make all the decisions and solve all the problems.

There will always be objectives and initiatives. Still, that’s not your ultimate goal. Surrender to your cause, and be the source of truth your followers need.

Allow them to discuss ideas, to be their true selves. Comfort them knowing that first of all, we are humans. And that we have bad days, and yes we fail. That’s part of the game of being honest.

You are responsible for all of this to happen. And for that, you need to change mindsets.

If it doesn’t scale you are doing it wrong

Most companies are struggling to scale. As a leader, this is a reality that should be always present in your strategy.

Once Companies start scaling it’s important to remain in focus. You’ll feel that you get buried in initiatives, meetings, reports, syncs …

STOP — you can’t be everywhere.

There is no scaling in a controlled environment. No team member wants to work in a micromanaged space. Control means a lack of confidence in the team and that is the opposite direction every leader should go.

First, you have to work on building your structure. As a leader, you’ll have followers, but you won’t be able to directly reach all of them. To achieve this you need to form leaders, so they can influence others and share your cause.

Identify those who have potential leadership skills. Specifically, the ones who have that fire inside. They will be your leaders to influence others.

“If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.” ~Simon Sinek

Build your future leaders with trust, empowerment, confidence, and creativeness. A trusted team is an engaged team.

For them to succeed you have to communicate, and over-communicate. Information is power, holding it prevents growth. Make every piece of information you have available for them so they can make decisions.

Inspire them. Let them step up and take ownership. Begin “leading by example” showing your experience with confidence and coach them along the way.

Your greatest challenge is to build self-sustained teams. Define guidelines so they understand boundaries. Get your hands dirty to train them on the job. Motivate them to take ownership and step back. Delegate them so they can take action and make decisions — you have to empower them.

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists so when the work is done, they will say: we did it ourselves” ~ Lao Tzu

At the end of the day, work must be done as if you don’t exist.

Fail. It’s an important part of the learning process.

You can’t build a culture of innovation if you punish failure. The last thing you want to do is undermine people that work with you.

Your team has to take risks, and they have to fail. There is no learning without failure. Create a culture of honesty, where this can happen and everyone feels safe about it.

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” ~ Winston Churchill

Foster confidence. Show trust in them. Encourage your team to learn from mistakes. Inspire them by telling them about your mistakes, your biggest failures, and how you stood up after all.

It’s easy to say but hard to adopt. Especially when revenue is at risk.

Build a safety net framework to start fostering this culture of learning by experience. Soon your team will be confident enough to take adequate risks.

You aim to build a culture of “fail fast, learn fast”. That’s when your company becomes agile, it’s not about ceremonies, story points, or burndown charts. It’s about setting the confidence on your followers to take risks, make decisions, fail, and learn by experience.

Few takeaways to dig in about passionate leadership:

• Have a cause
• Inspire with passion
• Share a vision
• Lead yourself
• Be Honest
• Lead by example
• Coach and mentor
• Empower others
• Master your time
• Be reachable
• Practice active listening
• Be the first and the last

Always remember… it’s Not About You. It’s About Them.

Are you passionate about Leadership? Let’s continue this conversation! Drop me a note below or contact me on Twitter or Linkedin