It’s Friday again and today I am fortunate enough to have a day to get a few things in order and of course write this weekly blog. This week is a reflection of my coaching work with a fabulous City based Professional Services organisation who Mindset Leadership (https://mindsetleadership.co.uk/) are supporting with the development of their Middle Management Team.
Essentially, their senior leaders have recognised the importance of investing in their future leaders, not just with one off workshops and weekly yoga classes but with ongoing coaching support to develop themselves as people first and understand their true identity so that they can, in turn, become better leaders. This is music to our ears and I would say very much the trend in organisations which are being led by Transformational Leaders. It’s interesting, in fact, that their CEO is regularly coached, she sees this as a must have in order to perform her role well. It is also a fact that her people first approach has seen her company grow exponentially over the past few years and become a competitive market leader.
I have pondered the reasons why this organisation is SO successful a lot this week. It’s a human reaction (especially in the corporate world) to look for tangible evidence to back this success up. I found myself having conversations about system and workflow optimisation, communication strategies and so on, so forth until one powerful conversation with their Managing Director made me realise EXACTLY why their reality was so. Transformational Leadership. His words, “Transformational Leadership is in our DNA and has been for the past ten years – we want our leaders to influence not command, we want all of our leaders to leave an imprint on their teams’ lives and go home and tell their families how lucky they are to have a boss like that and how much inspiration they take from their boss, it may sound cliché” he said, “but this has been a core value in the firm for years now and our employees are engaged and our bottom line is merely a reflection of our people’s engagement”. He went on to say that as part of their induction all members of staff, no matter what their role may be in the organisation are told this so it is clear to all what their ethos is around this.
How simple yet so effective! Aside from wanting to hug this director, my thoughts led me straight into the simple psychology of the mind, which is something I used to hold close in all of the leadership roles I have been privileged to hold and even more so now in my coaching work. This is that your thoughts and words shape your reality. These strong core values and beliefs have shaped their positive reality since they are communicated from the onboarding stage, consistently reinforced through the use of external coaching and some internal coaching and valued by every single member of the organisation. This has in a way been effortless and continues to be so because it is in their DNA – printed not just on a mission statement and posted on the kitchen wall but present in the actions of its team. People feel it and are living it because they hear it from their senior management regularly and they feel it from their leaders with every interaction they have – growth and profitability is merely a result of this. It is their reality!
At Mindset, our interventions are underpinned by the values of transformational leadership and the benefits of incorporating this approach into the organisation for the greater good. I can liken Transformational Leaders to Haydn’s concept of the Microleader, in his book, Microleadership he says “Microleaders understand their principle role is to build great connections with each member of their team […]. Microleaders build their team so they can build their business”. – I was yet to meet a firm whose established success had been completely born of this approach until this week.
Transformational Leaders or Microleaders will influence NOT command or use their authority as a means to get things done. Transformational leadership has a high payout as it positively impacts innovation, the heart of success and growth within an organisation. It also increases organisational performance as well as job performance and satisfaction too. This was definitely the case with my client this week. There’s a great exercise we often ask leaders to do when embarking upon one of our transformational coaching programs and that is to answer a series of questions relating to the childhood and tragedies of their team members, their triumphs and their victories, their values and the things that keep them up at night. Our objective here is to create an awareness of how little people know about their team members on a level which is deep enough to truly transform. A lot of leaders operate on a transactional level not because they have a particular desire to but often because they don’t have time to get to know their team. Sometimes it is because their boss is sceptical and they have never been led in a transformational way before. I understand that but it doesn’t make it right!
Microleadership Lessons have been inspired by many years of working with transactional leaders on a journey to transformational leadership. At Mindset Leadership, we are helping organisations transform their businesses by sharing these simple lessons with them. If you are interested in knowing more, please visit our website https://mindsetleadership.co.uk/ and send us an email to hello@mindsetleadership.co.uk.
If you would like a copy of Microleadership so you yourself can learn these valuable lessons, please click through our website and grab your copy from Amazon here: https://mindsetleadership.co.uk/
I look forward to meeting many more organisations like this and moreover supporting more companies in their quest for transformational leadership.
Suzy