How To Grow a Leadership Culture in Your Company: 3 Easy Steps
Having a culture of leadership is an important element to success, at least if you want that success to be maintained over the long term in today’s Australian economy.
It was once the case that a company looked to one leader to inspire them by his or her example, much as a rugby or football coach could take a team of average players and lead them on to a championship victory. Those days, sadly, are nearly gone. Business moves so fast these days with so much data to keep track of and so many new products and services continually emerging that there simply cannot be just one leader in many companies. Instead, a company needs a whole culture of leadership within itself which promotes those who take initiative to make things happen for the company when called upon to do so. Each department within a company, in fact, requires a leader or leaders of its own.
This new business culture is an important one to adopt, given the fast growth and global ties of the New South Wales economy as the state and the country of Australia move on into the 21st century. As the economic plan of NSW itself states: “a strong economy allows us to provide the excellent services such as healthcare, education, and policing which the public expects…we are…innovative people who want a society built on fairness, equity, and collaboration…(a) society built on these principles will be more productive, wealthier, and fairer.”
A company in this new century should also be run in this fashion.
FIRST STEP: BUILDING TRUST AND A SHARED VISION
In every company, top management need to ensure that every person within the company is all working towards a common goal and shares one vision of success for the company. When everyone is on the same page and works together, interdepartmental conflict ceases and productivity skyrockets. When people feel that they are working towards a goal which is worthwhile, they will strive hard to ensure the continued success of the company. Having this kind of corporate culture will cause natural leadership talent to emerge in those who have it, benefiting the entire organisation.
In a company where everyone shares a vision for the future of the organisation, trust will flourish, as will innovation and the willingness to take calculated risks which can cause explosive growth,
Since people are so conditioned to always be in competition with one another in the business world, this can at first be a difficult thing to bring about. The top management must give people a push towards this goal by encouraging them to share their insights and feelings among their departments and perhaps even on a company wide level.
STEP TWO: EXPLORING THE POSSIBILITIES
People within the company must be brought around to a way of thinking which lets them take new and different possibilities into account. This is the way that top management thinks, but this view must be inculcated company wide. People have to be shown that it is OK to think outside the box and come up with truly new ways of doing things. One way to do this is to get people to sit down and think about some questions which pertain to them personally. These can include: “where do you see yourself in five years? In ten? How about your retirement party, what do you think will be said about you?” Questions about what are the positives – and the negatives of the company could be asked, along with questions dealing with how to handle unforeseen events are good ways to foster this sort of creative thinking.
Management should then sit down and look carefully at what people have said. This should be shared with team leaders and department heads and then on down to everyone, who can then think more about what has been learned through this exercise.
STEP THREE: ESTABLISHING AN ACTION PLAN
Once everyone is working towards the same goal and management have an idea what things they may want to explore to further the goals of the company, a plan of action can then be drawn up with a part for all to play. Different teams can be assigned different goals which help the company move towards the common goals, with the top management at the helm.
Having a culture of leadership firmly in place will lead to greater productivity and profitability through the use of creative, forward looking thinking by everyone in the company.
Filed under: Management