Executive Presence : Assessment, Coaching, Training

3 Strategies To Leverage You Executive Presence And Instantly Increase Your Team Performance

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Summary: As a leader, lift those around you upwards rather than staying on a pedestal yourself. That’s how you gain trust, have loyal followers that are proactive, and bring your leadership to success.  Research on and training leaders is a 366 billion dollar industry.1 We are so obsessed with leadership that we forget the critical value of followers: devoted employees who will bring the leader’s ideas and visions to fruition with their skills and efforts. Leadership is projected as a hero when it’s more about recognizing the capacities of followers and enabling them to do great work.

The performance of enterprises will improve, and society as a whole will be more involved if you put your employees’ welfare and pleasure first. A truly riveting story follows a large commercial bank once disturbed by declining profits and a sudden increase in competition. It had to cut its workforce and reorganize all its operations amidst the background of experienced managers being occupied directly with clients almost all the time. Driven to the edge, one department head handed over this responsibility of intense reorganization to his employees and followers without any managerial or leadership positions. They had to write job descriptions, plan operations, and design training and performance evaluations. It worked out! The bank remained a crucial player in the region after coming so close to running on fumes. Essentially, once followers were given the right resources and opportunities, they could take care of themselves, freeing up the managers to take care of other things and stay afloat.2

If you want your employees to be able to help you, you must first help them. This means enabling them to do better, uplifting them to key positions where they can prove themselves. Here are 3 strategies that you can use to leverage your presence and improve employee performance :

Help your employees find meaning in their work

Whether old experienced workers or recruits, your job as a leader is to ensure they find genuine satisfaction in knowing they are doing something valuable. It is clear that when followers believe that their efforts are making an impactful difference and fulfilling some larger goal outside themselves, they perform their best.3 So make a convincing case of how the work you are all doing together is essential, and how each one of you is a cog in the wheel without which there would be no motion.

Let decision-making be more collaborative

When employees are consulted on operational and strategic decisions, they are more motivated and less likely to leave the organisation.4 When you empower your followers to make critical decisions and count their opinions as necessary, you instill a culture of mutual warmth and respect. This personal identification helps “subordinates” see leaders and coworkers as allies, inducing them to cooperate for the greater good rather than compete for narrow, self-centered goals.

Be Cognizant of Your Employees’ Potential

When you have a tremendously talented person working under you, you should know how to channel that talent to the best of your abilities by rightly investing in it. Some companies send their exceptional employees to study in top universities, both international and local, so they can use their advanced degrees to step up the hierarchy in the same company. Then others offer employees access to various seminars and conferences to help them better understand the business and their role in particular.

Impact on Leadership

Being a leader often means being at the forefront, but this should not be confused with being the most important facet of your department or organization. Rather than creating a story for self-aggrandizement, create a culture of compassion and care for each other where everyone has the opportunity to come forward and prove themselves. That is how people look out for each other, feel a close connection to their team and work and become great followers.

Leadership Mindset

A true leader is accountable for inspiring motivation and self-assurance in any organization’s workforce. Due to his traits and his own actions as a leader, he is able to influence the conduct of his employees at work and maintain good discipline among them. A strong leader forges a friendship between the group and the followers. To the greatest extent possible, he assists others in selecting and achieving mutual goals.

3 Immediately Applicable Action Steps

  1. Emphasize on larger goals you want to fulfill with the team and make them feel important in achieving the same.
  2. Consult with your employees on operational and strategic decisions, assuring them that their voice counts.
  3. Spot out employees with potential that could be furthered with more training for moving up the hierarchy and secure them such opportunities.

References

  1. Westfall, C. (2020, April 15). Leadership Development Is A $366 Billion Industry: Here’s Why Most Programs Don’t Work. YouTube. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2019/06/20/leadership-development-why-most-programs-dont-work/?sh=16c7ad461de4
  2. Kelley, R. (1988, November). In Praise of Followers. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/1988/11/in-praise-of-followers
  3. Kellerman, B. (2007, December). What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2007/12/what-every-leader-needs-to-know-about-followers
  4. Riordan, C. M., Vandenberg, R. J., & Richardson, H. A. (2020, April 15). Employee involvement climate and organizational effectiveness. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hrm.20085

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