According to a recent leadership study conducted by Korn Ferry, only 17% of executives believe they possess the necessary leadership capabilities to overcome the challenges ahead. Many executives obviously face self-doubts and question their team members’ leadership skills.
In my experience, one of the major reasons for this is that leadership advice comes full of buzzwords and in piecemeal fashion. Leadership lacks a system that founders, entrepreneurs, managers, and executives can follow systematically to make the leap to highly effective leader.
With my new book “The Leadership House”, I close this gap and provide a leadership development framework that employees and executives of organizations of all sizes can follow systematically to successfully walk the challenging path to becoming an effective leader.
In this article, I give an overview of all elements of The Leadership House framework, which addresses the following three overarching topics:
- How to build a strong team
- How to set up a strong team for success
- How to ensure a strong team executes successfully
Trust: Trust forms the foundation of The Leadership House. It creates a sense of safety within teams, fostering an environment where team members focus on achieving results instead of engaging in politics. Trust allows individuals to speak up, challenge each other, and offer assistance, leading to thriving relationships and increased productivity.
Strong Team: Building a strong team goes beyond placing the right people in the right positions. Teamwork is the missing piece that transforms a set of individuals into a cohesive and thriving team. All other elements of The Leadership House framework help create teams who embrace teamwork.
Shared Values: The concept of having the right people in a team involves two dimensions: functional fit and cultural fit. While functional fit ensures that team members are qualified for their roles, cultural fit is at least as important. It ensures that team members agree on the how in terms of how all team members want to turn purpose and vision into reality. Shared values, including teamwork, contribute to effective collaboration and alignment toward shared goals, which are the next element of The Leadership House.
Shared Goals: Trust and shared values lay the groundwork for translating purpose and vision into reality. It is crucial, however, that leaders and their teams also agree on the goals they need to achieve in this regard. Instead of imposing goals on teams, The Leadership House framework suggests leaders involve team members in the goal-setting process, allowing them to contribute their experiences and insights. This approach empowers team members, makes them the owners of the goals, and boosts their motivation to achieve them.
Joint Plans: Joint plans provide a detailed roadmap for teams and team leaders to achieve shared goals. These plans specify the responsibilities and – this is important – deliverables required from each team member. By clarifying expectations and deliverables, joint plans promote and demand efficient collaboration and progress toward desired outcomes.
Accountability: Holding team members accountable for their results is an essential aspect of effective leadership. When accountability is a shared value within a team, individuals take ownership of their responsibilities and deliverables.
Empowerment: Empowering team members is vital for fostering a culture determined by trust, teamwork, and accountability. Leaders empower team members especially by granting them the authority to make important decisions themselves. While many leaders fear that empowerment makes them loose control, empowerment is not about losing control. It is about giving control to those who are best equipped to handle them, the strong teams they have built using The Leadership House framework.
Execution: The final element of The Leadership House framework – and the roof on top of The Leadership House – is execution. Effective leaders understand that completing tasks is not enough; achieving results is what truly matters. By implementing The Leadership House framework, leaders can guide their teams in executing joint plans and turning purpose and vision into reality.
For a deeper understanding of all elements of The Leadership House framework, check out “The Leadership House – A Leadership Tale about the Challenging Path to Becoming an Effective Leader“.
Patrick Flesner is an experienced investor, board member and leadership coach. He is the author of the bestselling high growth handbook “FastScaling” and has just published his new leadership book “The Leadership House”. You can learn more at patrickflesner.com.