Tolerating Poor Management or Leadership – It’s Not a Winning Strategy
Monday, October 31st, 2011
In a challenging business environment, many organisations need to deliver significant change, improvement or results with diminished resources. Whether they achieve this or not will largely depend on the ability of their leaders and managers to engage, inspire and influence.
Yet in many businesses where there are critical imperatives that need to be achieved, leaders and managers performing at a mediocre level are being tolerated. This may be because it is felt addressing mediocre leadership performance is “too hard”.
My observations as a Leadership Coach lead me to believe that putting up with or ignoring deficiencies in leadership is too hard. It is too hard on the individual concerned, it is too hard on the affected staff, and over time it is too hard on the results of the organisation.
For real and sustainable leadership development to occur the areas that need to be addressed will be different for each leader. It may for example be their leadership presence or confidence, their behaviours, their self awareness, their interpersonal and relationship skills or their ability to inspire and influence others. The approach taken for them to optimise their leadership will need to be tailored specifically to them.
However the catalyst for these executives to address and improve their leadership is often the same. That is a willingness by someone, typically a senior leader, to communicate honestly the need for them to take a step up in their leadership. This is invariably the first important step in the process of leadership improvement.
Take a moment to ask yourself where and with whom you need to have this sort of honest conversation. It may seem difficult to tackle the issue, but is likely to be a conversation that will have benefits for them, for you and for the whole business.
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