Liberate your team from lockdown
Are your team locked down? Or liberated?
I am not talking pandemics here. I am talking about your leadership...
Locked down?
I am pretty sure most of us have experienced a COVID lockdown: stuck, limited, sad, alone. It makes you feel useless to have your wings clipped in that way. This is what it feels like for a team when managers don’t listen, fail to involve or include them. They become isolated.
I know this because I worked for a leader who didn’t listen or want any input. His leadership style was to dominate: his way or the highway. It was exhausting and demoralising to be locked out, for me and others in the team.
Many leaders persistently "lock down" their teams in this way. Their old school ways limit results, exclude ideas, lock out contribution and zap energy. Just like COVID lockdowns.
On the other hand, leaders that have powerful conversations with their team liberate them and experience better results.
Liberation
Leaders that liberate their teams achieve so much more. They get bigger results, have more energy, innovation and wins.
These leaders are open to ideas, contributions, they listen, encourage risk taking and devolve power to their team. Their style removes the limits to thinking and consequently lifts the ceiling of success for their employees. They also get time back to focus "on" the business, not get stuck working "in" it.
Communicating and leading with powerful conversations creates a culture in your business that yields trust and results. Higher trust is proven to magnify performance and activate employees. It is like putting rocket fuel in the tank when it comes to motivating employees to go further faster.
Powerful conversations can add as much as 20 points to customer score, 17% productivity and save millions of dollars every year. Read my book Switch for more on the price, profit and productivity of powerful conversations.
Prioritise your growth
I coach and mentor leaders at every stage of their career on ways to lift team performance and raise results. Remote team leadership and communication right now is not straightforward or easy. If you want to learn more about how the 2020s workforce wants to be led or how to communicate in a way that lifts team momentum, get in touch.
What conversations are you having this week? Are you liberating or locking down results?