Building a strong leadership team matters, here are notes from Arlin Sorensen’s
presentation on building a great leadership team:
- Leadership makes the followers want to achieve high goals.
- It takes significant cash flow to cover the salaries of high-impact leaders… Getting the right people is going to cost money.
- Often, we do things on “faith” and not on good financial principles – be careful.
- Hire slow – don’t settle (Be patient to find the right person – your future depends on it).
- Leaders need to be able to influence a group of people to a common goal. When looking for potential leaders, have they demonstrated that people will actually follow them?
- Good leaders are made, not born. It takes ongoing investment into yourself and your team to build effective leaders.
- It’s all about the communication - we need to learn to communicate effectively when working with our team… it sounds like it’s cliche’, but your team can’t read your mind.
- Often too much information is held within a small group of people in an organization – that information needs to get to the rest of the team.
- 3 Things our team wants to know: What’s the strategy? How do I contribute? How is the company and how am I doing relative to the strategy? (Feedback)
- Does everyone on your team know what their targets are and how they align with the overall strategy? How is the company doing against its targets? Are they able to see how they’re doing anytime and getting feedback/reviews quarterly?
- We need to be able to paint the picture of “Why” we exist as an organization? People want to be part of something bigger than simply a job or career.
- The biggest challenge in building team is the culture. In all M & A activity, the battle was culture.
- See Zappos Core Values for great example of establishing culture.
- Your style of leadership is less important than being consistent with whatever your style is, so your team can know what to expect.
- “I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.”- Lee Iacocca
- Have an organization chart of the future in place, 18-24 months out… what does the future hold?
- Building Your Team: Don’t expand too early, set thresholds to tell you when you’ll expand, look for holes in your expertise’ (variety is good), think about culture fit, hire the best and let them do the job, and find your own replacement.
- Make a Difference - recommended book by Dr. Larry Little, personality profile.
- 32% of people hate or are completely out-of-line in their work.
- 3 R’s: Reframe (look at your job in a new or different way), Refine (adjust certain aspects of your job to align with your core needs), and Retrench (transition to a new job that is aligned with your core needs).
- A strong leadership team can allow for more “think” and strategic time can free you up to do that.
7 key things to Learn & Teach:
- Manage energy & activity
- Effective Communication- 80% listening, 20% talking
- Delegation- help people understand the “why” and let them do it
- Motivation- people want to be led, not managed
- Goal Setting & Periodic Reviews- people want to know they’re winning
- Recruiting & Interviewing
- Customer Centric