I’m so surprised at how little education, influence, time, and money is put into developing decent leaders within businesses. All too often people think leaders just appear, as though it is a natural born skill that every person has. I believe that there are people who have a natural predisposition to leadership, and I also believe there are people who should never be in charge of leading other humans. Unfortunately, often the people who are good at a particular skill are promoted through a business structure, or a government structure to then be a senior member of management for those people with the similar skill.
For instance, in my background as a police officer, people who were promoted through those ranks to be in the leadership levels, to manage people, didn’t always have that leadership and management skill. Similarly, in the corporate environment I worked in, this was even more evident. People who are high performers at the professional skill are often very selfish, quite narcissistic and self-involved. They then become the leaders and managers of these industries and perpetuate a horrible team culture and very much a dog-eat-dog world where at the end of the day, the result for the business is negative. If the people within your business are unhappy, and that is often due to lack of good leadership, then the results will be poor. You can whip people for as long as you have the stomach for it, but that will not bring the results you want.
A great saying I’ve heard recently is “the whippings will continue until morale improves”. This is a strategy employed by many business leaders and managers. Leadership does not involve standing over people and threatening them with job security to motivate them. Good leaders inspire people to follow them and want to work hard for them because of who they are.
Leadership is something that you learn like any other skill in your life. It is not something that comes naturally to most people. And the ultimate goal for leadership is to inspire or motivate the people around you.
You will only be a successful leader when you have your heart and soul in what’s best for your staff and the people that work for you. When you are focused 100% on the end result, and you do not care about the people around you, then the goals of your business will not be achieved. You will not get the results you want. You will not have the success that you want.
You will have a high rate of staff turnover. You will have low productivity, low morale, and this leads long-term to very poor business results. People only look at the next week, or the next month, or the next year, and poor team leaders do not have the courage to look at a five year investment horizon into their staff and people around them to create them to be the best people they can possible be. Shit leaders definitely create shit results.
