The Wandering Leader
“Are we there yet?”
“Where are we going?”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
If you think your children or spouse are the ones speaking, good for you, you can stop reading. If you have recently heard those things from your team…hang on… you are a wandering leader and your team probably needs you to hear the following 5 things:
stop for a moment, get focused, tell them where you are headed, don’t change directions every other day and celebrate arrivals.
When you are the leader your team needs certain things from you. They need vision. They need direction. They need confirmation. They need celebration. Then they need you to shampoo, rinse and repeat the process. It does not matter if you are leading rough necks, lawyers or burger flippers, people need and respond to good leadership, they begin to feel woozy and jump ship if the leader simply wanders around and teams take over and do it their way if the leader is a hand wringer. So, let’s talk about those 5 things briefly and if you would like more in-depth info contact me; Canvas Creek is here to help.
1.Stop for a moment. It is important to take a deep breath, look around and evaluate exactly who you are as a leader and as a company. What can you do? What can’t you do? Who is working with you and what are you going to accomplish? Are you a team, or do you need to become one?
2. Get focused. Once you know what you can and can’t do, who is with you and what you need, you need clear and specific goals. And as a matter of fact, don’t just set them, use the Canvas Creek 5 step goal setting method and develop those goals until they are clearly in focus and truly yours. The last thing you want is to lose sight of them and you won’t if you take the right steps.
3. Tell your team where you are headed. I believe in bottom up goal setting, but in order for it to be effective your team needs to know your focus. Bring them into the process, and then use your focus to remind them again and again of where you are going- together. If they feel like they are in the backseat, unable to see out a window they are not going to be comfortable with the ride.
4. Don’t change directions. Wandering leaders like this idea, then they like the next idea. They have no idea what they should do today, because they have no idea if what they did yesterday worked. Stick to the course and keep moving forward. This does not mean remain stuck in a rut, just know before you take a corner that it is in your best interest to turn. What is your strategic plan and why?
5. Celebrate arrivals- there are a lot of arrivals on the way to success and a good leader points each of them out to the team, the press, their customers. They know who contributed to the success, they know how to get to the next arrival point and they know saying “good job” is more effective than saying “get to work.”
There you have it. 5 steps to being a forward moving leader, not a wandering leader. Canvas Creek will help you and your team move through each of these stages with effective team building and reinforcement activities
