Why Hire a Leader?
If You Don’t Already Know,
You Need to be Thinking Differently
Perhaps you’ve wondered, “What do leaders actually get paid for?”
Day to day, not many people think about this seriously. It’s part of the “things are the way they are” 19th century corporate culture. It’s accepted. Bosses, CEO’s, managers -- they all get paid more because well….they do. Some of you will think of concrete answers - leaders get paid to produce results, increase quarterly earnings, inspire their teams to make greater sales. But the reality is far deeper than surface level earnings or figures.
In his excellent book, “Leadership B.S.”, Jeffrey Pfeffer blows this notion out of the water. He explains that, because of how we humans are, time and again, things like politics, networking, communication decide who gets to thrive in the “old corporate culture”. For example, people are still hired based on their looks, and rise to leadership positions based on seniority level - reasons that aren’t performance-based at all!
While we can’t completely do away with subjectivity, remote working does bring a few things into sharp focus -- how is each member of this team actually contributing to the whole? And in that vein -- how is our team leader handling this crisis and supporting us during this time? What are they still getting paid for? This recent article in Forbes sums it up nicely, “We’ve arrived at, ‘What matters to you now?’” With an all-time high amount of remote teams, this is a question every leader should be ready to answer.
Leading Remotely is MORE than Creating a Team To-Do List
It’s easy to come up with tasks you must accomplish each day, or team members you should check in with or clients you should follow up with. But leading a remote team is so much more than ticking tasks off a list. You must begin to think beyond your to-do list. That may have worked best in the industrial age when employees were almost literally cogs in a machine. It’s the boss’s job to keep the cogs moving, and replace one when one is worn down, or broken. And keep on running them as long as they do the tasks they are told to do. But we’re in the digital age...which in some ways is shockingly more human.
In a remote team, as with a traditional office set up, of course you have to focus on results. The problem is many leaders will focus ONLY on results, instead of HOW those results are accomplished.
Focus on METHOD -- not just RESULTS
How you interact with your team each day is far more important in the long run than the results produced. In fact, when done correctly, it will produce even better results than a leader who’s only focused on team output. How’s that for irony? The more you focus on people -- the more your team will thrive.
You can’t do this with the old-fashioned command and control tell-and-yell mode. These methods may temporarily provide improved results from your team, but for one reason only -- you’re instilling fear, which is a temporary strategy at best. Leaders who rely on fear as a control tactic cannot sustain improved performance for one reason: They don’t trust their team. You know this kind of leader -- the one who wants to hover over their team’s shoulders at work because they believe without constant oversight employees will be lazy and not accomplish anything.
And that’s the secret ingredient: Trust. You MUST TRUST your team and give them good reason to trust you if you’re looking for long-term improved output and performance. Trust is the hidden variable in an organization’s success, the furtive facilitator of favorable results. Stephen M.R. Covey in “The Speed of Trust”, explains it thus: ”like a ripple in the pond, the speed of trust begins with each of us personally, continues into our relationships, expands into our organizations, extends into our marketplace relationships, and ultimately encompasses our global community at large.” Put simply, if you have trust within a team, the cost of doing business goes down, and the speed of doing business goes up.
So now it’s time to ask the tough questions:
Do you trust your team?
And more importantly -- do they trust you?
If not, don’t fret. I’ve been leading remote teams in the telehealth sector for over a decade and coaching others to be successful as well. If you’re ready to have a remote team that trusts you and delivers results, while cutting costs and improving the speed of business, you can re-frame this current crisis as an opportunity to start fresh.
In my six-week training “Remote Leadership Survival”, I guide participants through how to build trust, using structured and tested methodology. Real leaders think beyond survival in a crisis -- using this time as an opportunity to THRIVE. This is how you create a community with a culture of trust, yes, even remotely. And that, my friends, is what leaders are paid for!
REMOTE LEADERSHIP SURVIVAL
CREATE VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES THAT DELIVER RESULTS
MOVE BEYOND CRISIS INTO OPPORTUNITY
6-WEEK TRAINING PROGRAM FOR REMOTE LEADERS
DOWNLOAD THE INFO PACKET NOW, AND CONTACT US TODAY TO START YOUR TEAM’S TRANSFORMATION
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