A Leader’s Priorities
I know almost nothing about leadership. Making that clear up front may be bad sales strategy, but it’s the plain truth. However, I observe leaders all the time. Where I lack in knowledge, I make up with note-taking. I have watched good leaders, and I have watched plenty of bad leaders. The trick — and this may be obvious to some — is to copy the success of the good ones and avoid the cringe of the bad ones.
I have seen good organizations, manned by bad leaders, become paralyzed and dysfunctional when their leaders ignore, disregard, or put minimal effort into any one of three tasks: (1) caring for their folks; (2) driving positive change; and (3) manifesting a top-notch organizational culture. These three tasks are a leader’s urgent priorities.
Simon Sinek, another person who likes to observe leaders, proclaimed that “fundamentally, a leader is like a parent.” To him, a leader has to support their peoples’ needs, wants, and goals in the same way that a parent takes care of their child. What a high burden! It seems impossible to mimic the unbreakable bond between a mother and a son, but a leader must do just that.
Therefore, accomplishing the urgent priority of taking care of your folks starts in the mind, but it continues with a few practicable techniques. You have to shift your mindset, even if it takes a daily conscious reminder, from a self-centered perspective to an outward-focused perspective. You are no longer the most important person — your followers are.
After getting in the right mindset for taking care of folks, you need to maximize availability. You cannot meet the needs of your people when you have no clue what those needs are. This means creating multiple channels for your folks to talk to you. Listen to them with an open office door; by meeting them where they are; via surveys and other digital means; with town hall sessions; by giving plenty of time for post-meeting Q&A; or any other method which creates a line of communication between you and rank-and-file folks.
After creating maximum availability, you need to actually listen to what your folks have to say. Many have written on the topic of active listening. There’s a reason why; active listening is crucial to making your people feel heard, which — not incidentally — is one of their primary needs that you must meet. Lastly, after both creating maximum availability and actively listening, it’s time to go to bat. Step up to the plate and put your full effort behind getting the resources, approval, etc. required to satisfy the need of your people. All your effort to learn will be for naught if you fail to do the work to actually meet the need. These techniques form the path to taking care of your folks.
Figuring out how you can help your followers should stay in the background of each interaction you have with them.
When it comes to driving positive change, I am always surprised by how much difference an individual can make. Hell, a leader can start an upward trend in an organization merely by announcing the changes they plan to make. I have always found that if I present people with evidence of a problem’s existence and then report that we need to shift our energy to solve that problem, people will naturally begin to solve it. No one likes to work for a broken organization. A leader has to identify problems and target them if they want to keep moving the unit forward. To allow problems to go unaddressed is to allow the organization to fall behind and decay.
You need to ask yourself the terrifying question — am I leading a broken organization?
A leader has got to create the right organizational culture. Culture, though it shirks a common definition, can be understood as a combination of the valued behaviors in a unit and the perception of ‘reality’ among the members of the unit. If people perceive a unit to have an unwelcoming culture, then it is so. When people dread going to their place of work, dislike the people they work with, and fear interactions with leadership it does not matter how efficient you make processes. No one will have the motivation to carry out those processes.
With that in mind, what does a good organizational culture look like? I have learned that if people feel that their organization cares for and values them, then they will go to the ends of the earth for that organization. It looks like folks taking care of each other, the elimination of divisions, and a welcoming of all members to the “in-group.” The whole organization must form one in-group. A leader must focus on changing the behavior of the members of their organization to fit that. How is this done? Through emphasizing what is important and why — and then calling folks out when they do not show the right behavior.
Notice that I left the execution of day-to-day operations out of the urgent priorities. A leader at the top of the pyramid should avoid letting these operational concerns consume them. Operational issues are why number two spots exist. Train up a Director of Operations or Vice President to carry out the spreadsheet work, customer relations, and tactical level work. The top-person needs to focus on the big picture.
Operations are straightforward! Culture is hard.
Each day, leaders need to dedicate their time to the urgent priorities. You cannot let a day pass without working towards the goals of caring for their folks; driving positive change; and manifesting a top-notch organizational culture. If you succeed in this, you may become the inspirational leader they once followed. Your people expect nothing less.
*Photo credit to Connor Neal, 2021*
