Increase Leadership, Improve your Organisation

A lot of people believe that a leader is supposed to have followers.  

But as Roy T. Bennett said: I believe that True Leaders create more Leaders, not followers. Followers need to be told what to do, Leaders are independent. Creating more Followers creates more work for the Leader. Followers create situations the Leader has to manage, which increases the workload significantly. This reduces the organization’s ability to make a change. It becomes a critical problem as the flexibility of an organization is essential in and the lack of it can be the end of an organization. Good leaders are critical in difficult times, and a good leader avoids creating followers.

So it’s important to create more opportunities for leadership. There are a lot of things you can do to achieve this. Teaching people what it means to exercise leadership when you don’t have formal authority, mentoring people, building a coalition and becoming a connector bringing ideas, talent and resources together.

Giving people those new leadership skills will allow you to have a more productive organization, even without having formal, positional authority. Companies should work towards this one small step at a time. As a CEO, you want to be taking more small, faster than anyone else. This will have an enormous effect on your organization and the people in it. People will feel more responsible for their work and will feel more like team members.

Making these adjustments in your organization requires you have a good look at your principles. The change starts with you, so your principles are incredibly important. You need to start with the fundamental principles about empowerment, transparency, meritocracy and natural leadership. You will set an example for others to follow. If you’re going to implement these adjustments, to create leaders everywhere, you need to start with the principles. The principles that are important for building a company of natural leadership are centered around meritocracy, information, and accountability. The next step is to look at your company’s processes. Ask yourself, “How can I implement these principles in every single process?”.

Instead of moving the leadership to people who have the most expertise, you need to move the expertise to the people on the working floor. It’s not as simple as just giving everyone more power, as that would create chaos. It only works when you equip people with good information, hold them accountable and shorten the feedback cycles.

So instead of being a big oil tanker with a single captain, your organization becomes a fleet of speedboats. Creating more leaders is the future of good leadership.