Leadership Through Conversations

Conversations are the work of a leader

Ideally, a leader has regular one-on-one conversations with each of her team members.

This wonderful leadership practice is important as it seems a great many business leaders are focused on numbers, i.e., their financial results. Let’s realize the great value of focusing our attention on our people, on helping them learn, grow and be successful. It’s our people who achieve our financial results.

Marcus Buckingham, author and formerly with Gallup, recommends that in our regular conversations with each of our team members, we ask about near-term upcoming work with such questions as “What are your priorities and goals for this week?” and “How can I help?”

As time permits, there could be a myriad of helpful questions that we could ask, and certainly including questions beyond business. We want to be as helpful as we can with helping each team member excel, and we also want to assure them that we care about them personally and their wellbeing.

Of course, these regular individual conversations sound great in a perfect world, and they may well be challenging. If that is because we are too busy to speak with our people every week or two, are we really an effective leader? Again, our mission as leaders is to help our people excel.

The renowned leadership consultant and author, Ken Blanchard, in his description of servant leadership advocates that we, as leaders, should have a one-on-one conversation with each of our team members at least every two weeks; best even weekly, even if a short conversation.

Circumstances will dictate whether these conversations are every week or every two weeks. The point is the foundation of leadership are conversations, one-on-one conversations. Let’s commit to this. Where we have a will to do it, we will find a way.

It is important that senior leaders spend less time in meetings. We can’t avoid meetings, but we can ask those in the meetings how we can have fewer and more efficient meetings. They’ll know.

I recommend that we try to keep our calendar open for these one-on-one meetings rather than having them all scheduled. I often hear “Tomorrow is Tuesday and that means I have to meet with my boss at 10 am.” It sounds as if it’s an obligation. Rather, I’d like leaders to say “Let’s grab a coffee, talk about the week you have coming up and how I might help.”

Subtle difference, I know. I just want this to be a conversation that we, as leaders, want to have as we want to help each team member succeed.

Blanchard, in his description of servant leadership, advocates clarity of goals and expectatiocns, empowering and trusting our team members with the responsibility to get their work done well and meet goals, and then the leader is to be responsive to her team members as they progress in their work.

Let’s all of us commit to put an end to our constant busyness and be intentional about conversations with each of our team members on a regular basis so we may help them develop, empower them, mentor and coach them and be responsive to their needs…….and watch the acceleration of energy and enthusiasm in our company.