Zig Ziglar once said “You don’t build a business. You build people and then people build the business.”
It’s true that the quality of your organisation depends on the quality of your people, and the greatest impact on the quality of your people is not only the people who are in positions of leadership, but the leadership qualities of the people in their positions.
Leadership has the potential to make or break an organisation.
Here are 5 key areas that are impacted by poor leadership and what to do about it.
1 Culture and Attitudes
Leaders set the tone for the company culture so the thinking, actions and behaviours of your leaders can have far reaching consequences from the boardroom to the staffroom.
Without leaders that recognise the importance of instilling the right attitudes and behaviours within the organisation, company culture can suffer, leading to toxic work attitudes, loss of high performing employees and an unattractive work culture that fails to attract and retain star performers for your team.
It’s important for leaders to identify, define and instil the right attitudes and behaviours across the organisation. This leads to a more coherent culture and makes the organisation an attractive place to work.
2 Poor Staff Retention and High Turnover
How many times have you heard someone talk about how they (or someone they know) has left a job after only a short period of time, because of a lack of leadership?
I’ve witnessed this first hand with former colleagues and friends and it happened to me when I was working in a previous role.
Leadership was practically non-existent and there had already been a history of high staff turnover. Effective communication, clear direction, vision and accountability (all attributes of effective leadership) were acutely lacking which led to a high rotation of staff in the team.
Whatever the cause, the effect of high turnover is increased costs in recruitment and training as well as confusion amongst customers due to project and company representatives constantly changing.
Quality leadership attracts quality people into your organisation. Leaders instil in their people a hope for success and a belief in themselves.
Employees are less likely to leave if they believe in themselves and are motivated to work for the leaders of their organisation.
“The single biggest constraint on the success of an organisation is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people”. – Jim Collins
3 Loss Of Direction and Lack of Purpose
When leaders fail to set a clear direction of the organisation or the team, it’s common that individuals will start to lose direction themselves and lack purpose in their role.
Without a guiding vision that connects individuals with the team and the organisation as a whole, people can become unmotivated and unproductive, which has flow on effects to organisational success and profitability.
When leaders get clear on the vision of their organisation and they communicate that vision effectively, they help connect people’s personal vision with that of the organisation. When people are connected with the purpose of the organisation that they work for, people thrive, and when people thrive performance follows.
“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” Theodore M. Hesburgh
4 Poor sales performance and poor customer retention
When people become unmotivated and lack direction due to poor leadership, productivity inevitably decreases, which can result in poor performance.
If poor leadership and subsequent poor performance happens in the sales industry, low productivity leads to missed sales targets.
This has a direct impact on individual performance but also on the company’s overall financial performance.
Poor leadership can also lead to poor customer retention and a lack of new customer acquisition, because employees are not energetic and enthusiastic about their role, the company or their products and services.
Great leaders have the ability to evaluate their employees strengths and weaknesses so that they can put the right people in the right positions for performance and productivity.
When employees are assigned roles and responsibilities that bring out their strengths, the flow on effect on sales and company performance is tangible.
5 Lack of trust and ability for long term success
Poor leadership can result in a lack of trust across an organisation.
Trust is a foundational component of any successful relationship and when leaders fail to instil trust in their teams, the results can be devastating for company culture and sustained business growth.
Great leaders genuinely care for their people and form relationships based on mutual trust and respect for each other as individuals.
When leadership takes care of the people within the organisation, this sets up an environment where people can thrive.
Business performance is built on the performance of individuals and long term success requires leaders to build a culture of trust and honest communication.
If your organisation’s leaders operate with authenticity, openness and honesty and lead with a compassionate and accountable style, you are more likely to inspire trust in your people and subsequently your team will be more engaged, more productive and contribute to the long term success of the business.
It’s critically important in this new era to build leadership capabilities within your team so that your business or organisation can thrive both individually and collectively.
“The single biggest way to impact an organisation is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organisation that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them.” – John Maxwell.