Nov 8

What Do Successful Leaders Need to Engage People and Excel?

Stephan Polomski
Stephan Polomski is director human resources, coach and trainer

The answer is simple – they need:

  1. Leadership skills and methods that support individuals, groups, and organizations to outperform
  2. A clear picture of their own task, role and path that inspires others and creates endurance
  3. A self reflected inner why based on personal vision and personal strengths

The way a leader thinks and behaves – expression of his identity – has a resonating major impact on the organizational field he operates in. Social reactions and engagement of employees are directly linked to the role model the leader delivers. If his attitude is negative or disengaged employees will mirror this back in their own way of thinking and feeling about their job and organization. A negative focus, resignation, blaming, a bore-out mentality, all these examples will drag employee morale down, especially when the leader is not willing or able to create a bond with people.

Managing employee relations means to open a space of credibility, trust, security, responsibility and courage to face change and to take risks beyond personal comfort zones.

“Managing employee relations means to open a space of credibility, trust, security, responsibility and courage to face change and to take risks beyond personal comfort zones.”

Change can be managed if people are kept emtionally safe because the leader is anticipating the consequences of the challenge ahead. And that means developping relationships and informing transparently about the way and the benefit which are waiting for team if they embark.

Solution orientation is the silver bullet of success and employee engagement.

“Solution orientation is the silver bullet of success and employee engagement.”

And only on this track, individuals, groups, and organizations will achieve their moment of excellence. Only on this track, there will flow, which, in the end, spinns off excelling results. By this approach, leaders form organizations which play to win where others play not to lose. Not anxiety, frustration or fatigue, is the platform of motivation but a space of creative freedom, exploration of new areas and compassion for the cause. The latter enable humans to overcome themselves, to even stand temporarily fear and pain and thus to reach new levels of personnel performance. Unthinkable yesterday – and already reality today.

To achieve this, it is important to constructively move people forward by learning and integrating new, cut edge themes. These may be personel, they may structural, they may be philosophical.

“To achieve this, it is important to constructively move people forward by learning and integrating new, cut edge themes.”

However, the bottom line with figures and facts normally drives leaders most of their time, and the cultural grounding where the seeds of motivation are to be found – the emotional side of the organization – often is  too quickly out of sight. Just by driving growth and profits no leader will unleash the power of intrinsic motivation which strives for a genuine cause. And here starts the vicious circle: if the leader himself is not driven by a genuine cause, if he himself is not instrinsically driven by values and his inner why, his genuine purpose, and, furthermore, if he is not conveying all this through an authentic behavior, he simply looses that what he wants in the first place: great parts of the potential for growth and profit… simply because employees will not be positive and fully engaged and they will not push boundaries, as the leader is not ready to do this for this himself, as the leader does not inspire anything.

How to transform stagnation and decline into competitiveness, creativity, and innovation?

  1. Step: Diagnose your own leadership style and your leadership personality: stress yourself.
  2. Step: Know where you stand with strengths and weaknesses and start your learning and re-conception program
  3. Step: Come up with a refreshed leadership model: a transparent cause, a vision, a path, and values that secure your authenticity and integrity
  4. Step: Advance your leaderships skills in communication, dialogue and self-management, and may be change leadership paradigms by adopting the latest approaches in leadership thinking and practice
  5. Step: Give yourself time and the curiosity to experiment with your new findings
  6. Step: Find personal mastery

Starting change within yourself will lead you to excellence and highly engaged organization.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 at 08:00 and is filed under Human Resources, Leadership, Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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