January 2024

 

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Question Of The Month

How do you keep people motivated when the metrics are going south and management’s response is to impose the following cost savings on everything: a recruitment freeze, no bonuses, no promotions, no travel, no spending on training, etc?

Is One Style Of Leadership Appropriate For All Individuals And All Phases Of An Organisation, From Start-Up To Maturity?

You may experience very different strategic and operational leadership challenges depending on your stage in the business lifecycle. But whatever your business, the characteristics of an effective people leader remain broadly the same.

All Leaders Have Courage

We talk about vision and charisma – yes these are important, but I’ve known some wonderful leaders who don’t have huge world-changing vision; I’ve known some wonderful leaders that are quiet and sit in the corner.

But they all have courage – the courage to advance a vision; the courage to ignore the short-term ups and downs of the business; the courage to take risks on people; the courage to believe in people; the courage to speak truth to power; the courage to do the right thing and have integrity.

I think courage is a very undervalued characteristic of leadership.


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Question Of The Month 

By Sean Hagger , Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: How do you keep people motivated when the metrics are going south and management’s response is to impose the following cost savings on everything: a recruitment freeze, no bonuses, no promotions, no travel, no spending on training, etc?

Answer: Move away your focus from the three small p’s (parking, pension and pay), towards the three big P’s (Purpose, Passion and People).

  • Recruitment freeze – this hardly ever happens on direct personnel (that is, people who are needed to meet demand). It is normally a freeze on recruitment of indirect staff, which in my experience is often an over-populated area anyway. Focus the support teams back on their purpose, why they exist and what they are supposed to do to support the value adding teams; re-prioritise their activities to the absolute key work (they can tell you what that is – because of passion for the craft); be brave and remove any non-value adding work that has crept in from the centre and get them on the pitch (means, ability and accountability), helping the value stream (with problem solving activities, improving flow, communications, internal training/coaching, audit actions, etc). In one case, my engineers had lost their will to live – they had become engineers to work with machines and over the years we had systematically removed a large part of these responsibilities. Do the same with the quality people, for instance – get them back to doing what they love.
  • Training – there are lots of opportunities to train in-house with no external spend.  Read full answer by clicking here.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 


Article: Is One Style Of Leadership Appropriate For All Individuals And All Phases Of An Organisation, From Start-Up To Maturity?

By Stuart Foulds, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

You may experience very different strategic and operational leadership challenges depending on your stage in the business lifecycle. But whatever your business, the characteristics of an effective people leader remain broadly the same.
To run a successful business, broadly speaking one needs three kinds of leadership:

•    Strategic leadership – assessing opportunities and threats in the business environment and crafting a plan that will lead the organisation towards long term success.
•    Operational leadership – organising, structuring and equipping the business to deliver on its identified strategic objectives.
•    People leadership – building and sustaining a team of willing, capable and accountable employees who will go the extra mile to turn the strategy into reality.

The first two types of leadership often involve very different styles and strengths, depending on the stage of the business lifecycle.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE



Video: All Leaders Have Courage

By Simon Sinek, American author on leadership and motivational speaker.

COMMENT BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP, ON THIS VIDEO:  There are two must-haves for leaders generally, but particularly in a crisis. They are generosity (a giving of things) and courage (laying oneself on the line). Of the two, courage is more difficult because the price you may have to pay is greater. Courage is also in shorter supply. But without courage – ‘benevolence in the hand but steel in the hand’ – you cannot lead.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO: We talk about vision and charisma – yes these are important, but I’ve known some wonderful leaders who don’t have huge world-changing vision; I’ve known some wonderful leaders that are quiet and sit in the corner.

But they all have courage – the courage to advance a vision; the courage to ignore the short-term ups and downs of the business; the courage to take risks on people; the courage to believe in people; the courage to speak truth to power; the courage to do the right thing and have integrity.
I think courage is a very undervalued characteristic of leadership.

Leadership is perhaps one of the most misunderstood subjects in business. Leadership has nothing to do with rank. I know many people who sit at the highest levels of organizations but who are not leaders. We do as they tell us because they have authority over us but we do not trust them and we do not follow them.

READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO BY CLICKING HERE
TO VIEW THE VIDEO CLICK HERE