The importance of having the right people on the bus
A question every leader has to ask is:
- Do I have the right people on the bus?
What separates good companies from great are the people. If you want to build and grow your business, you need to improve your people.
However, you cannot grow them by command.
You can, though, influence and motivate them to grow.
To be motivated is the same thing as to be willing to do something. It is the set of psychological forces that compel you to take action. It is your job as the leader to unleash this intrinsic motivation in every leader around you.
When leaders grow their skills, they will be able to create teams, improve engagement, foster collaboration, continuous improvements, etc., all the requiring attributes that define great people working for a great company.
Identify the informal leaders
If you are an experienced leader, you will pretty fast identify the informal leader/leaders in a group. You need to show them that you are not a threat and that they can trust you. When you have established a connection, you can start launching your vision.
I have mentioned earlier in my blog-posts that; first people buy into the leader then the vision.
If you are dealing with leaders with average leadership skills, buying into your vision might be a bit of a problem.
The reason is that the average leaders create results based on their leadership skills. They don't know the skills they haven't learned yet.
Therefore, your vision might come across as a threat to them. The average leaders' brain is telling them that this is not the way we do things around here. To follow the vision, they realize that they need to change.
A consequence could be that the leaders say that they follow the vision (their conscious mind), but in practice, they don't (their subconscious mind guides them).
Consequences with a bad apple in a group
Attitude is like perfume; you cannot see it by you can sense it. If you have a negative leader in a group, the performance of the whole group will be affected.
The negative person drains energy from the others, and the overall engagement decreases.
Cynical leaders don't express hope for the future, and hence no action for improvements will be created in the present.
Having the courage to act
My experience is that the majority will follow and buy into the vision.
When you see resistance and have been clear on your expectations, you can coach the leaders and see if they adopt their behaviors and performance towards the vision. Usually, this pays off.
However, if a leader still doesn't comply with your vision, you need to remove them from their position.
You might lose trust with the leader you are relieving from the position. However, if you don't act, the others in the group will see you as not credible. You don't walk the talk regarding your expectations of leaders addressing deviations.
You could also experience social pressure for keeping the average leader. People who are following these leaders could have done that for a long time. They might also be happy with it even though they don't know what great leadership looks like, but you do.
I have both experienced and witnessed tremendous and poor outcomes after relieving leaders from their position. Nevertheless, in all cases, change was necessary.
My point is that you need to find the courage to remove the bad apple and be convinced that you are doing the right thing.
When you have established a great management team, it will affect the whole organization for the better, and the overall result will be a guiding star in the business.
