People perform best in an environment where they are coached, encouraged, inspired and supported to reach their full potential, and when that happens, the company reaches its full potential.
Some managers/owners might believe that constantly being on everyone’s case, having people treading on egg-shells all the time, constantly being on edge, in fear and micro-managing is the way forward. But this doesn’t bring out the best in people and it doesn’t create the sort of workplace environment that encourages growth, drive, passion and motivation. Instead it demotivates, creates stress, fear and panic and people feel under so much pressure that they start making mistakes, cannot think or perform clearly and they eventually burn out and go off sick, potentially long-term or even never to return. With the result being that you lose possibly years of valuable knowledge and experience and have to start all over again with someone new, and so the circle continues.
Leadership is about creating a vision and then inspiring people to follow it, it’s about taking charge of not only your own future but that of others too, encouraging them, supporting them and guiding them to reach their goals, it’s about listening to their goals and aspirations, because when combined with yours and with people placed into the right roles where they can flourish and grow they’ll drive the company to the next level for you of their own accord. But most of all it’s about being patient and kind and setting an inspiring example for those under you to follow.
All of this takes time, it means building trust with your team, talking to them, finding out what really makes them tick, where their true passions lie and then helping them to utilize their drive, passion and motivation for the benefit of both. This is where you will achieve a high-performing workforce who are truly engaged with the business and want to see it succeed, who take pride in their work and in a job well done and all of this off their own backs. However, it takes a leader who will trust their teams to perform well, who will create the vision and then step back and let them get on with getting there in their own way and in their own time. If people are given the tools, training, opportunity, autonomy and time to complete the work assigned then you’ll have a much happier and therefore healthier and more productive, engaged workforce.
A great leader encourages team work and collaboration, encouraging and supporting them to work together to achieve common goals, motivating them to get together to brain-storm with the aim of finding solutions to problems, issues and systems that aren’t working correctly or efficiently, but also giving them the time and space to actually figure it out for themselves, and appreciating their efforts not jumping on them from a great height if change isn’t achieved overnight or on your own timescales, if things do end up taking too long then you step in and support, teach, encourage and guide. It’s about each person being made to feel valued, knowing that their contribution, in whatever way is essential to the smooth running of the business. With the result being that the targets you’re aiming to achieve will naturally follow, not overnight, but once you’ve got the basics of a great place to work in place they will.
Are things always going to go to plan? No, absolutely not.
Are you always going to have fantastic employees? No, no company ever does, there will always be an exception to every rule, and that’s why there are systems in place to deal with it on the rare occasion that this happens. But on the whole, this is all a great starting point in creating a great, healthy, happy, productive, motivated and engaging working environment and has been proven time and time again to work.
Is this just a nice ideal? I hope not!