Deborah Kleinert

Develop the Leader Within

Recently I helped a business owner who was expressing disappointment and frustration at her team letting her down.

Over recent months she had experienced a revolving door of team members that were not delivering or leaving, and projects ending badly.

She was saying it’s been challenging hiring good people, developing them to do the role and getting them excited about the business vision.

Whilst our natural inclination is to blame the team, 90% of effective leadership is the ability to effectively lead our-selves first.

Your team and clients are ultimately a reflection of you and your leadership abilities.

As Brad Sugars once said, “you often get the people you deserve”.

To that end, how can we lead someone else to accomplish something if we are not able to follow through to completion or behave in a professional manner?

If you are working towards becoming a great leader, first look internally at what you can improve, change or do differently.

Next, help your team to THINK so that they can:

  • Solve problems, develop good judgement and make sound decisions
  • Uphold the business values and standards
  • Contribute to improvements and innovations of the business
  • Work smarter and improve their personal performance
  • Achieve job satisfaction

Teaching team members to THINK means that you don’t have to be there all the time to do the thinking for them.

As the saying goes “If you give a person a fish, they eats for a day; if you teach a person to fish, they eat for a lifetime”.

Ultimately this frees you up to focus on other things such as scaling and growing the business.

This means that as leaders we must continuously upgrade our thinking so that we can recognise the different levels of thinking in others and effectively teach.

Where do you think you need to grow and develop as a leader?

Deborah Kleinert
Deborah Kleinert