The aim of this blog is not to criticise, assign blame or attack hard-working Team Leaders, Directors and CEOs merely to state how companies’ and organisational structures are failing hard-working team leaders. These failures are organisational not reflecting on hard-working men and women of your organisations. The point that is being made is best described by the American football coach Vince Lombardi “Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any worthwhile goal.” What this shows is that organisations are not adequately training their leaders to lead which affects team happiness, company culture and long-term prosperity but the professional and personal of Team Leaders, Directors and CEOs.
Six traits of an effective leader which can be developed
Being driven
A team leader, CEO or director to be an effective leader individual must be driven to succeed or driven by a higher purpose to paraphrase Steve jobs to succeed at life and to be happy an individual must have a purpose and engaging in work they enjoy (Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc ). Steve jobs can be used as an extreme example of what a high-performance and motivated individual can become but are important to understand and to know it’s not the destination that is important but the journey. To gain success in any ability takes time and dedication this path of learning and development is never-ending both personally and professionally.
The desire to Lead
Do you desire to lead this is an important question because without the desire to lead a leader will not be able to lead his or her team, company or yourself to your desired outcome it is important to know your desires and outcomes that best suit an individual’s desired outcomes? Also, according to Simon Oliver Sinek who is a British-American author and inspirational speaker stated that “people call you leaders because you took the risk to create a circle of safety first, you took risks to go towards the vision first that’s why we call you a leader because you took the element of risk first”. ( View https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQZP3Pzd9KM ).
Honesty and Integrity
To be a successful leader, leaders need the training, organisational support and acceptance that leaders on their leadership journeys will make mistakes and fail at times it is these failures that allow team leaders, directors and CEOs to become masters of leadership and team management. Leaders at the start of their journeys can sometimes become dishonest due to fear of losing their positions which they have worked hard to achieve but sadly only 39 per cent of new managers with fewer than 3 years on the job reported having received any leadership training. Just 34 per cent had received any mentoring. And a mere 31 per cent had received coaching( for more information please view https://leadingwithtrust.com/2016/10/09/infographic-new-managers-arent-getting-the-training-they-need-to-succeed/#:~:text=As%20a%20result%2C%20more%20than%20half%20of%20the,training.%20Just%2034%20percent%20had%20received%20any%20mentoring ).
Self-confidence
Building or rebuilding self-confidence can be hard to do depending on the reasons for the failure in other leaders’ self-confidence and personal belief in their successes. A failure of self-confidence can be caused by a lack of training or a case of burnout causing team leaders to lose their self-confidence.
Intelligence
Leaders need to be intelligent enough to gather, synthesize and interpret large amounts of information and to be able to create visions solve problems and make correct decisions.
Job-Relevant Knowledge
The goal of a Team Leader’s and Managers is not to micromanage a leader must understand their goal is to lead not to do a junior member of your team’s task or to constantly monitor what they’re doing. This comment is not meant to criticise or condemn but an individual moving from a non-managerial position towards a position where they are managing people with less experience doing their old tasks can be very tempting for team leaders, managers and CEOs to micromanage. Again we can take inspiration from the founder of Apple’s Steve Jobs, Mr Jobs as the CEO of Apple understood that his job was not to create but inspire his directors to work in a capacity that fulfils the dreams of Apple by trusting his subordinates to do the tasks professionally. (https://www.iedunote.com/trait-theory-of-leadership ).
Conclusion
if you have reached the end of this blog I hope you found the writing informative and relevant to your needs the objective of this piece is to highlight the lack of training and skills development team leaders and developing managers receive in their progress through a company’s ranks. Hopefully, the information in this blog is provided with some answers and solutions to problems faced by team leaders, managers, directors and CEOs. The important aspect to highlight from this piece is that leaders are forged not born it is a process of personal development, professional development and psychological development over a professional lifetime.