Improving organizational leadership can be an ambiguous goal…Here are three practical ways to improve your organizational leadership this week, or even today:
One: Know your target audience. The better you understand employees or team members. The more you can help them improve their personal and professional effectiveness, accountability, and most of all, productivity.
Two: Take stock of your network resiliency. Whether you manage 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 look to them for problem solving , you’ll often get canned solutions. Start to interact with more people across the organization or more tangential contacts if you work remotely.
Remember to consider “Network Theory.” First researched by sociologist Mark Grenovetter in The Strength of Weak Ties, “A paper Google Scholar reports is often republished and cited over 27,000 times.” Grenovetter shows that weak social ties are responsible for the majority of social networks as well as the transmission of information through these networks.
Three: Foster a culture of accountability. Accountability for professional presence, work results, communication effectiveness is the hallmark of a robust organizational culture. When every member of a team feels totally responsible for a project’s outcome, they won’t point fingers or damage relationships if the project doesn’t go well. Instead, they quickly regain their composure and start to look for solutions. The ultimate and most powerful type of accountability is accountability for oneself.
