Improving organizational leadership can seem like an ambiguous goal, difficult to pin down. Here are three practical ways you can improve your organization leadership this week -or even today!

1. Know your target audience. According to a recent Forbes article, New Approaches to Customer Data Can Improve the Effectiveness of Marketing,  “We are entering an era of marketing where effectiveness will depend on creating highly personalized experiences at every touch point. To do this, marketers must have both the processes and tools needed to operationalize coherent views of prospects and customers.”

The same can be said about improving organizational effectiveness and leadership. The greater understanding of the target audience (your employees or team members), the better equipped you will be to help them improve their personal (and professional) effectiveness, accountability and most of all, productivity.

“Operationalizing coherent views” of your employees translates easily into learning their personality style and flexing it according to the person and situation. It also means fostering an awareness of the important role personality and work style play in the success of almost every project, meeting, or initiative. The DiSC (or a similar tool) can help you and your employees make great strides in active listening, effective communication, employee motivation, and engagement. EDSI integrates various assessments into its programs. The results help us to customize the programs to each organization.

2. Take stock of your network resiliency. Whether managing remotely or in a traditional corporate setting, network resiliency is usually overlooked. How many players are in your business network? Do you always communicate with the same core group of people? If you continually go to the same people for problem solving assistance, you’ll get a canned set of solutions. Instead, start to interact with more people across the organization (or more tangential contacts, if you’re working remotely).

Consider “Network theory” that was first researched by the sociologist, Mark Grenovetter, in The Strength of Weak Ties, a paper that has been republished many times and has been cited over 27,000 times, according to Google Scholar. Grenovetter has shown that weak social ties are responsible for the majority of the social networks in society as well as the transmission of information through these networks:

“Specifically, more novel information flows to individuals through weak rather than strong ties. Because our close friends (and colleagues) tend to move in the same circles that we do, the information they receive overlaps considerably with what we already know. Acquaintances, by contrast, know people that we do not, and thus receive more novel information.”

Essentially, we need to always expand our cache of resources and connections, both in and outside of our own organization, to keep ideas flowing and fresh perspectives, leading to more effective organizational leadership and a more robust organizational culture. What can you do this week to start expanding your “weak” ties and using the power of a network to increase your effectiveness?

3. Foster a culture of accountability. Accountability for one’s professional presence, work results, and communication effectiveness is the hallmark of a robust organizational culture. When every member of a team feels 100% responsible for the outcome of a project, they will not spend time point fingers or damaging their relationships, should the project not go according to plan.  Instead, they will quickly regain composure and start to look for solutions. The ultimate and most powerful type of accountability is accountability for oneself. Many attendees of our programs, such as Increasing Personal Effectiveness have walked out of the program with a new found freedom – the freedom to hold themselves accountable for their position, performance, and career. In the words of Stephen Covey, “Accountability creates response-ability.”

“If you are building a culture where honest expectations are communicated and peer accountability is the norm, then the group will address poor performance and attitudes.”
(Henry Cloud)

At EDSI, we have been resolving employee development, leadership, generational, professional presence, and personal effectiveness issues for over 30 years. Contact us to learn how we can help increase productivity and profits in your organization. 800-282-3374 www.employeedevelopmentsystems.com