Leadership Is A Daily Conversation

My company is going through amazing changes as we grow, evolve our product mix and enhance service delivery. Although our team knew the changes would happen that doesn’t make the changes any less traumatic because you still have to endure the actual changes. Helping people navigate these changes requires vision, constant course corrections and a steely focus on the objective that made you decide to make the changes in the first place. In short, it requires leadership.

How often does your team require your leadership? In every conversation! Being a leader is more than just deciding a direction to go in, which doesn’t always fall solely on the shoulders of the figure-head leader. Leadership means showing belief, confidence and faith in the decision you’ve just made, especially the big ones. After you ask your team to follow your lead, it will help you be a better leader if you have the expectation that every person on your team, including yourself, will question the changes as they are being made.

“Why are we doing this?” “Where is this all leading to?” “Will this really work?”. These are all questions you will hear in varying forms and in some cases multiple times from the same person. Your job is to remind them of where you’re going, why you’re going there and to demonstrate unwavering confidence that the change will work. The way you answer questions, deal with someone else’s insecurity towards the objective and handle outright rejection of the change is the true measurement of your leadership ability. But all of this comes down to the conversation you’re having and how you have it.

The first step to consistent leadership communication is to lead yourself. Recognize that you too are going through the changes and may be having the same reactions everyone else is – you are human after all. In recognizing your own reactions you can remind yourself of why you’re feeling the stress and the benefits you will soon realize. Once you’ve lead yourself you will have a better gauge as to how you can help others address their own reactions.

The second step to consistent leadership communication is to keep your focus on your goal and not allow yourself to become too distracted by the changes everyone else is also enduring. Naturally your team will not be looking forward – they’ll look back to where they were last comfortable and seemingly everywhere else except where you’re taking them. Now remind them of why you chose to make the changes and the benefits they and everyone will realize as a result. Your communication during these moments should be just as crystalline and targeted on the goal as it was when you took those first steps towards the new goal.

The difference between success and failure is the slight difference between practicing good habits and bad habits. If your conversations lack confidence and faith then your team will doubt their own abilities to reach the goal. Choose to lead in your daily conversations and your team will leverage your strength, confidence and faith to carry themselves forward to success.

Thanks for reading,

Richard Walker

(CEO/President of Quikforms)

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