Leadership Isn’t Always About Leading Others

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Leadership Isn’t Always About Leading Others - BillLentis.com

Contents

Introduction

We are currently hearing various individuals discussing “Leadership Training”. There are business courses, conferences, seminars, online courses and others that are willing to offer you boring and standard content in exchange of your money. The truth of the matter is that business clients have changed. The strategies that were functional in the 1970s and 1980s don’t work anymore.

When The Leaders Lead

The days whereby people believed that a “leader” can already lead by directing other people are long gone. Do not take that information in the wrong manner. There are firms that require the style of leadership that involves the boss being the boss who can’t be questioned. However, such businesses are diminishing on the way. What’s surprising is the fact that they’re quickly doing so or even encountering closure.

When the leaders are leading, they are able to share their excitement and vision to members of their team. They passionately inspire their followers. Excellent leaders also opt to lead through examples so as to provide their follows an image of how they can solve various circumstances in the best way possible.

Today’s employees are no longer interested in entering into a firm and staying there forever. The standard employee is only interested in making their ends meet by working for your firm until better opportunities come along. There is hardly any loyalty that is involved!

I am not saying this so as to downgrade the standard employee. It is simply implying that the culture has evolved. Having said that, the training on leadership that is currently being offered is basically based on what was considered being true for the past twenty or thirty years. Since there are employees coming from schools, training or colleges at around 20 years of age or so, they have not familiarized with that culture that their bosses have familiarized with.

So, What Can One Do On That Matter?

Excellent question! I am glad that you inquired! When the leader steps back and offers an opportunity to lead, it is mostly for various reasons like training, expertise or delegation.

Training

For one, our employees need training and not only on the tasks that they were employed for such as programmer, receptionist and so on. They should be trained to the extent that they can comfortably handle the tasks of their supervisors. This training should begin right from when the employees are proficient and competent in the tasks that they were employed to perform.

For instance, if an individual is hired to perform the receptionist task, what may be the chances that individual doesn’t want to remain being the receptionist of an organization for the following thirty years in their life? Chances are pretty high that they might need another task. This may leave you wondering, why then agree to the receptionist job? Since they wanted a “job”’ that would help them pay for their bills as they continued seeking for better jobs.

Why can’t you start offering them training “for the better job?” In doing so, once they are competent in the task that they were employed to perform, they’ll have the inspiration of learning even more.

Rather than just sitting there observing their phones when they aren’t busy, they may assist their supervisors in the minor tasks like record keeping, filling and others. That way, they’re learning to observe things at the perspective of their supervisors thus allowing them to start learning the employer’s culture.

Additionally, you may end up being the “back-up” of the supervisor. They’ve the ability of stepping in to temporarily fill in for the supervisor in case they are unavailable or otherwise sick.

This is more sensible instead of training an individual without the clue of what they are doing to perform the tasks of the supervisor on the temporary basis.

How Does This Help?

It develops an environment that is inviting to employees and certainly serves to enhance the overall morale of an organization/ business.

Rather than simply commanding (directing) people to perform certain tasks, you should train the leaders how they can train members of their team, with the aim of ‘replacing them. This happens both down and up the command chain.

From a file clerk responsible for training the receptionist to the boss responsible of training his VP (assistant), all employees should learn the duties of the immediate supervisor’s job. All levels of supervisors should be offering training to their own replacements.

Then, people starts to leave or the promotions happen your replacement of the next level will already have undergone training on basics of requirements of a next level task. Despite the fact that the replacements may not have the knowledge about everything, they will have the basic understanding of the routine activities. This will help to reduce the time that they will take to understand the responsibilities and duties that are more essential.

Generally, this method has proved that it is functional. It’s a method that simply involves “replacing yourself”. Additionally, it is a culture that may survive in the “current era” of managing a business.

Delegation

When the leader delegates certain tasks and responsibilities to a member of their team, that individual acquires the opportunity of functioning in the role of leadership. They can perform some tasks of the leaders and can be able to effectively improve their leadership skills. If a particular leader happens to be leading all the time, they lack the ability of delegating which simply indicates that they miss an essential opportunity of training members of their team.

Conclusion

Some leaders may find it hard when they are not leading others, although it is sometimes important to let others lead. It enables the leader to improve members of his team and also simplifies achievement of the organizational goals and objectives. However, this does not mean that a leader should escape the difficult situations by allowing other people to lead in such circumstances. It simply means that you’re in charge and you can comfortably let others to lead.