Essential Leadership Principles Often Neglected

I often hear and read that a key to effective leadership is to create a shared vision. Sure, that is important, and senior executives develop the vision and believe they have communicated it throughout their company/organization. Yet, morale within the company is low, often much lower than they realize, and results are inconsistent.

Leadership encompasses so many more principles than a shared vision! And just some of the principles frequently neglected are:

• Connecting with our people
• Helping our people learn, grow and succeed
• Timely responsiveness to our people
• One-on-one conversations with our people
• Asking our people purposeful questions and for their ideas, and
• Listening to understand and learn
• Letting our people know they are appreciated and valued
• Creating a culture of ideas flowing up
• Creating a culture where offering and accepting feedback is appreciated
• Addressing problems, conflict and difficult team members promptly
• Being positive and encouraging
• Having the humility and inner-confidence to admit mistakes, accepting blame
• Not seeking credit
• Being kind – kindness is motivating

These principles, really leadership practices are all important, each one of them.

If we fail to pay attention to these principles and our people do not feel important and heard, our vision means little. We will have a poor organizational culture, and our organizational culture, which reflects the spirit of our people, will adversely affect our company and our ability to earn consistently favorable results.

Every senior executive, and I mean every, brags about her/his open-door policy. Yet the people doing the work of the company too infrequently see the senior executives, as they are in their offices and on the executive floor. The only effective open-door policy is when we leave our office and walk around visiting with our people, letting them know they are valued and asking for their ideas and what could help them.

Senior people are subject to endless meetings. Well, we must make these meetings more efficient and more effective, and we likely can reduce the number of these meetings. Ask our people in these meetings. They certainly want to maximize their productivity and will have ideas.

We would be wise and would be doing our people and our companies a favor by learning the art of conducting efficient and successful meetings.

What prompts this article is the all too common view that our vision means everything. To me, way more important are our people and helping them be successful.

Everyone wants to do good work and be successful. But in an environment of low morale, their drive diminishes. In fact, a recent extensive survey of the workplace across industries reveals that 80% of the people do not feel fully engaged. Four out of five are not fully engaged!

It’s our responsibility, our duty, as leaders to do all we can to continue to improve the culture of our companies. Let’s try to walk the halls every day and have conversations with our people so they know they are appreciated and valued, and heard, and that their success and well-being are important to us.

I am fortunate to facilitate a significant number of assessments of the leadership of senior executives as well as the organizational culture of their teams and companies. When I hear favorable reports about the senior executives and their companies, it is invariably that the executives are out amongst their people, having two-way conversations and these executives have humility, recognize that they too are teammates, and, clearly, their internal relationships matter significantly. This is the rhythm of successful leadership.