Leadership Tip on Process and Planning

Dear Leaders,

In the past few weeks we’ve been highlighting components of the 5 P’s of Leadership demonstrated by courageous leaders. The 5 P’s are Passion, Persistence, People, Process and Profit. This week’s topic is PROCESS (which also incorporates planning).

The Courageous Leaders we’ve observed have the ability to influence their teams or co workers to achieve a common goal, obtain results, and overall become a high performing unit. To ensure a high level of success leaders must:

 Be consistent
 Establish priorities
 Have written vision, mission and goal statements with the metrics to track progress
 Ensure their staff has a clear understanding of their roles and how they support the goals
 Communicate on a regular basis in differing forums ex. one on ones, staff meetings, town-halls, email, newsletters
 Reward based on results that support the vision, mission and goals
 Accept and help others deal with change and conflict
 Strive to function in a proactive vs. reactive mode
 Evaluate individual performance by providing feedback and the opportunity for growth
 Review and update development plans (both your own and those of your staff)

In order to effectively lead your team to success you as a leader must help them understand how they support the “big picture”. Their goals and roles must be clearly aligned with those of the organization and used as the basis of rewards and development planning.

Accepting and leading through change can be very challenging. Courageous leaders help others understand that change is a must, and makes them aware of how the change will impact them and the organization; they also link ALL of their behaviors and actions to their vision and strategy.

Successful leaders build a plan and use it. We use the “brown paper process”. This plan uses seven steps to help you easily identify where you are and gets you to where you want to be. (For those not familiar with the plan the 7 steps are:
Step 1 - Agree on mission/objective
Step 2 - Agree on focus areas (we suggest 3 -5)
Step 3 - Agree on the desired result for each focus area
Step 4 - List the CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS (pre-requisites or dependencies)
Step 5 - Identify the ‘AS IS' for each focus area
Step 6 - Brainstorm and prioritize the “HOW TO's” for each focus area
Step 7 - Ensure accountability by assigning owners to each focus area


The key takeaway to remember is that effective and courageous leadership is a process, not an event, and planning leads to success!

Michael W. Kublin and Jan Mayer-Rodriguez
PeopleTek LEARNING LEADING SUCCEEDING
www.peopletekcoaching.com