Change Insights

We just love chatting to Business Leaders and finding out about the journey that has taken them to where they are today, and we wanted to share this Leaders story with you as it really does highlight the difference that can be made to performance, when we put people at the heart of what we do…

Tell us a bit about your Leadership journey so far…

“I stepped into leading others early in my career and I measured success on the results produced by the team, if I am honest I was quite a ‘task master’ and took a no nonsense approach to getting things done, after all that’s what I had seen others do. I’d often hear myself saying things like…just get it done…, why has it not been done…, that’s not good enough! Yes we got things done for our clients but at a cost, I’d created a team who were driven by fear & blame, and as a result I regularly had people issues & complaints to be dealing with…which took a lot of my time, frustrated me and just fuelled me to go harder!”

“Roll on 12 years and I will be honest with you, I see the world of Leadership very differently now, I take and trust much more of a ‘look after your people and the results will follow’ approach. As a result the team’s performance way exceeds those experienced during my earlier years, there are far less fires to put out and for me personally it takes less of my time and is so much more rewarding. I don’t always get it right but that’s ok as I know I can try something different next time!”

What are the top three things you have found to work for you?

1) “Get to know your people and what makes them tick (everyone is different)”

2) “Praise really does goes a long way (whatever the reason large or small)”

3) “Involve them in decision making and planning – buy in and motivation is key!”

So what changed for you along the way?

“Quite simply I started to invest in my skills and dare I say it ‘confidence’ as a leader, I was fortunate enough to have had some great training, mentoring/coaching along the way and I have always done self-development through reading. I wanted to find new and better ways to get the best out of teams, and as a result I switched my focus from looking at them to looking at ME, whilst driving performance through people and not solely the task! I now know that if I am to be successful in the future I need to keep learning – fact!”

We couldn’t agree more – knowing who you are, what makes you tick and how to get the best out of YOU and your TEAM(s) is critical to great Leadership…it always starts with YOU!

Here at Accelerated Change we coach both Leaders of TODAY and Leaders of TOMORROW to take huge leaps forward in their personal performance – it is never to early to start that journey of Leadership exploration, learning & development.

What could you do differently this week to boost the performance of your team? Let’s learn something new!