The Ancient Art of Bonsai Growing and Business Growth
March 26, 2010Culture and values can be a great base for growth. For some it’s everything.
March 30, 2010I’m a great believer in openness, transparency and honesty with the people that I know and trust. I, also, believe that in being that way builds trust, understanding and intimacy. However, one added benefit that I have found is that it also builds a whole army of potential helpers when you get other people involved in your life, who are more than happy to help you achieve your dreams and goals.
This can be a great leadership strategy when running a business or just managing a team. Involving your team, colleagues and peers in how things are going, what you think needs to happen, asking for suggestions/new ideas and where you could use some help can produce some fantastic improvements in results, engagement, motivation and productivity.
Some entrepreneurs and business executives find this leadership style difficult for all sorts of reasons including:
- Time
- Pride
- Politics
- Ego
- etc
If one of those reasons, or any other, is stopping you from involving and engaging the people in your business and asking for their help then you are potentially missing out on a huge opportunity. One of my clients developed a more-open book approach to their business and saw that, in a tough operating environment, their business “saw a sales increase of 48% in the first half of our financial year with a more unified and focused team.” They learnt that by adopting a more open book style of leadership and management that they could engage their team more, more directly influence their behaviour, encourage them to take ownership of business issues and thus drive growth.
How could you be more open with the people around you in your business?
Thanks to Horia Varlan for the photo
5 Comments
Leadership and Your Team: Open book or closed book? @ http://bit.ly/cb4KqK
This is great advice, Adrian, and I wish more people in management or leadership positions would heed this.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had managers where their ego, pride and politics got in the way of leading their team. There was no leading nor was there any managing in these situations. Can you say ‘toxic environment’?
I think we all want to follow someone who inspires us, who is just a little bit larger than life, but who we can also relate to. Knowing that that person is only human and is allowed to make mistakes (and is transparent about it) just allows us to rally behind them. That’s why there are companies who have such loyal workers with very low turnover.
There is the premise that the #1 reason leave companies is due to having a bad boss. That says it all right there.
Karen
.-= Karen´s last blog ..Warning: Following These 5 Tips May Get You Out Of Your Rut =-.
Leadership and Your Team: Open book or closed book? http://bit.ly/cqNVP7 via @adrianswinscoe
I completely agree with Karen here Adrian – what great advice.
Transparency and honesty are so important in a leader or a brand. With everything being online these days there is no room for not being transparent.
You need to be open with your team if you want to produce the results you desire.
.-= Ben´s last blog ..6 outstanding ways to support someone in their dreams =-.
Hi Karen and Ben,
Thank you for your responses. I think you are both right on target. For me, I think the challenge is that there is a difference between management and leadership but when people are promoted or assume positions of authority the training they get can be restricted to management and not enough on leadership. I think we could really benefit by switching that balance round as it seems that is where the real need is. The challenge with that is that it becomes harder to tie down and measure its impact….perhaps, the solution would be to revisit the performance measurement system to allow for this.
What do you think?
Adrian