This thing about leadership... What good is it for me?

Much is said about leadership...

What is the purpose of leadership? 
Why be a leader?

"I do not want to be a leader. 
I do not want to lead anyone."

Leadership as I define it is not just a matter of being successful in business or management, of being an effective or bright executive... It can be... But not always.

Leadership is about BEING.

It is about growing as a person, knowing yourself, who you are, how you are. 
It is about working on and for your ambitions, challenges and dreams. It is about managing your anxieties and fears to dare to be who you want to be and get what you want to achieve...
It is about taking actions.

To do so, you need to know what you want and do not want, understand what you seek, what you struggle at, define a direction, a vision of where you are aiming, of who you want to be.

Articulate Your Vision.
From there, you can lead your life, orient it, orchestrate it.
Your personal and professional life, Your career and your entrepreneurship.

What do you think?
Does the concept of leadership sound more useful to you?

What is the Business Culture in your Company?

Every Company has a dominant Business Culture. A specific and original culture focused on some areas, aspects and functions of the business.

This culture comes first from the personality and background of the Founder, the Owner, the CEO or the Managing Director. Then it is the product of the organization’s history, of the top management team and shareholders, of their policies, views, opinions, interactions, styles, decisions.

Each Business Culture creates its specific vocabulary, jargon, its perception, logic and understanding of the environment and key drivers of the business.

Some examples ...

Some cultures and organizations are very oriented towards Sales. Everything is about selling. The sales people are the kings, they hold the truth. Everything is organized to respond to their demands and requirements. Sales are perceived to be the essence of the Company’s success.

Other cultures focus on Marketing. On-line, offline, exhibitions, events, advertising, communication, product marketing...

Other Companies are Technology based...Research, training, licences, patents, conferences, expertise, latest releases....

Others on Manufacturing, how to optimize the assets, the plants, the machines, the overall effectiveness and uptime, the maintenance,...

Others on Quality, are obsessed by high standards of product an/or service quality

Others on Operations, Innovation, Logistics...

The variations are infinite...

Most commonly though, Business Cultures are driven by Financials. They talk the shareholders’ and banks’ language and have become compulsory. The Finance Guys are in charge... Margins, ROI, Costs, Cash, EBITDA, Capital Employed, Bottom line... They are the ones who give the pace...

All these areas, competences and functions are totally useful to the company’s performance.

Each of the cultures and expertise bring something crucial and vital to the business...

But they also have possible excesses and drawbacks...

The role of the Top Management is to create a balance

between all these departments, cultures and areas. It is to arbitrate between them to efficiently and flexibly drive the business to growth and success.

A Company’s Business Culture is of great importance: it has created its past and present performance and achievements. It has built what the company has become today.

But the questions might be: 
Is our Business Culture still relevant and effective today? Is it adapted to tomorrow’s challenges?

Is the Top Management's arbitrage performing? 

What Business Culture is dominating your business at the moment?

Is it really 100% useful to the company's health and growth?

Or

Are there any drawbacks you would like to point out?

What changes would create value or generate new opportunities for the future?

How do you handle the pressure with your teams?

How do you avoid dumping all the pressure onto your teams?

One of the great challenges of the executives is managing the pressure that comes from above, from the shareholders, from line managers, from competition, from conjuncture... It is to avoid simply forwarding all the pressure to the teams ...

The role of the manager / leader is to create a context in which the teams are challenged and mobilized but always feel motivated and confident.

With increasing pressure and no confidence, collaborators do not work in an optimal way. They become defensive, get tense, paralysed. They do not dare to try new things, to change, to evolve, to give the extra effort.

When the context is difficult, on the contrary, they can close themselves up and avoid being noticed. As if the only fear was to be the next on the list...

In the current economic climate, corporate executives become stressed and paralysed by the pressure of delivering results in the short term ...

...Whereas they should be fighting for flexibility, for agility, for teams to reinvent themselves... to achieve excellence, to innovate, to create new strategies, tactics, fortified products and services...

What do you think?
How do you manage the pressure with your team?

ASK FOR HELP.... Don't be afraid....

What do you see? Understand? How do you decide to interpret it?

Each of us have our view of the world.

Our reality.
Our interpretation of the world.Different, unique, original.

We interpret our surroundings according to our history, our experiences, our actions, our commitments.
Our interpretations justify our actions past and present, what we do, what we don't do, what we dare do and what we dare not imagine or undertake.

If we are not careful, we can fool ourselves with our own interpretations, the ones that give sense to the events of our lives. We can build oriented, distorted, exaggerated realities...

Growing as a person is to begin to understand our interpretations of the world in which we exaggerate and fool ourselves. It's identifying these perceptions that do not serve us, that generate thoughts or beliefs that are not helping us, that limit us, that take away our initiative and freedom.

To begin this process, you have to become aware of these phenomena without judging or blaming yourself.
And you need to want to go beyond appearances and evidences... to learn and grow.

What do you decide to see? To understand? 
How do you decide to interpret it?