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Effective Leadership and Reflection

The success of a business lies entirely in its leadership team and the relationship (bond) they build with their employee group.

Poor (unworthy leadership) will destroy a business before you can even recognise what is happening. Worthy leadership builds great businesses. Find any great business and at its core will be worthy leader who has in turn spore other worthy leaders throughout their business.  Leadership relies upon its centripetal authority to function effectively in that communities look inward towards their leader for guidance and example. But as a leader, your reach can only go so far and once you have reached your physical limits, there standing must be another worthy leader.

Leadership provides the moral value and strength of purpose to a business. Leadership is responsible for direction, alignment and inspiration. Leadership is responsible for energising and directing the employee effort but you can only achieve this through a strong bond of trust with the employee group. This trust arises from the fact that leadership is firstly and foremost concerned with the welfare of its employees.

“I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day” —  Harvey Spencer Lewis.
This is a great quote for leaders (especially those in a succession process as well) as it focuses them clearly on their task at hand and the key to building the bonds of trust that are so important to their ability to be effective leaders. Leaders are responsible for building the business and this is their sole task. All they do, is directed at this outcome. As the employee group see that their leaders are focused on building the business and not their own individual glory so  will the bond of trust be cemented.
But great businesses are not built overnight and therefore what leaders do today is really building the business of tomorrow. Compounding is also a key concept as their great business is built brick by brick day after day until one day you look back and see what has been created.
What does a worthy leader look like? Well they exhibit the following traits:
  • Wisdom
  • Sincerity and Humanity
  • Courage, and
  • Discipline.

What does a person who may be an unworthy leader look like? Well their traits are the opposite to those above:

  • Recklessness
  • Cowardice
  • Implusiveness
  • False pride
  • Weak compasssion

How do you know whether you are developing the traits of a worthy leader or beginning to allow the wrong traits to develop. Well I believe three key practices are essential:

  • firstly,  give permission to a few trusted colleagues to speak openly to you about what they see in your leadership practices ;
  • secondly, always check yourself on the integrity of your actions – are you placing the business ahead of yourself, and
  • thirdly, keep a journal of your daily reflections as a leader including your decisions, challenges and successes.

Keeping a journal as a leader can be an invaluable tool as you look back to understand your successes and failures and to discern where you need to grow. Bubba Page in a recent article in Inc., “Data; Plus 5 Other Reasons Startup Founders Should Keep a Daily Journal”, notes the reasons why he believes leaders should journal:

  1. Whatever you measure, you can improve;
  2. Learn from your past, as history often repeats itself;
  3. Everyone wants to know the nitty-gritty stuff that most people forget about after they succeed;
  4. Reflect, meditate, ponder;
  5. Memories are not just for you.

Wrapping this all together is the model of the Competitive Engine. As a leader you must always have to hand your model of what drives the performance of your business. You must always be looking to the agents that influence and impact each other and which will determine the success of your business. The competitive engine is dynamic and will change continuously with the shifting strength and relationship of its components. As you reflect on your leadership and journal your thoughts, relate it back to the engine and it will provide you with not only a constant reference point but also the answers to how you may be able to improve performance of your business and the outcomes of your leadership.