Leadership can be defined as the ability to influence and guide others towards goals. At all levels, and in every corporation, corporate leadership can be improved. The end result is improved functioning, increased innovation, decreased attrition, simplified communication, and, most importantly, increased revenue.
What follows are three simple ways to improve corporate leadership-immediately.
- Hire better
Are you, or is your company, hiring for values instead of interviewing for correct answers? Too much time and money is wasted by companies who go through an interview and selection process that is only a bit more advanced than playing darts at the local pub. Take the following management candidate interview questions I have come across in my consulting work:
- Why should we hire you?
- What are your biggest strengths/weaknesses?
- Why do you want to work at ACME Corp.?
- What are your career goals, and how can ACME Corp help you achieve them?
- What would your previous employer say about you as a manager/leader?
These questions are absolutely useless in determining a solid fit between candidates and corporation, mostly because they provide little to no data regarding the behavioral attributes that would most benefit the company. What about the following questions?
- You catch an employee stealing from the company. What steps do you take?
- You run into a situation (any situation) where your personal ethics clash with corporate policy. What do you do?
- How do you influence others? What methods do you use?
- What motivates most people, in your opinion?
The second set of questions seeks data regarding the candidates value systems and the resulting behaviors that accompany those values. There are no right or wrong answers, nothing to be memorized, and the answers provided will be unique to each candidate. The answers that management or leadership interviewees provide can be compared and contrasted to corporate values, ensuring a goodness of fit and a solid investment. Make sense?
- Invest in internal candidates
If you want to improve your leadership within your company, start by looking within for candidates. Continue by investing resources (time, money, training) in those candidates that best mirror corporate mission and values. It is far easier and much better of an investment to seek leadership from within, as loyalty and understanding of corporate value sets will be superior in internal candidates than with external candidates.
Make certain that you understand your employees' values, career goals, employment history, educational background, etc. so that you can quickly identify candidates upon hiring, no matter the level at which they enter your corporate system. A full-time bank teller with excellent customer service scores, outstanding communication skills, and a educational background in finance is a potential management candidate compared to a part-timer with average scores, average communication skills, and a background unrelated to banking in any way. Invest in those candidates that have displayed company loyalty (turned down other positions at similar institutions), stayed late consistently even though they are a salaried employee, and have consistently provided results above the benchmarks of your company. These kind of investments are well worth the price.
- Empower at all levels
By empower, I mean that all leadership should be able to take action(s) that directly affects the outcome of his or her position. This means that local leadership can make decisions that directly affect local sales revenue, on a daily basis, without having to access the corporate ladder for a signature or an phone call for approval. On a smaller scale, it also means that every employee can make a decision that directly affects a customer (a refund, etc) without the same red-tape issues.
Companies that are empowered innovate and change according to the demands of their customer base. Companies that aren't get left behind, and institute change in a similar manner to the dinosaurs.
