Blog Single :: ShakeUp

Grow your business, grow your people!

By Julie Ann Bradford Executive Coaching

Grow your business, grow your people!

Change, transformation, improved performance, investment, top line, bottom line growth, are only achieved through your people. Leading and developing talent is your number one competitive advantage.

Whether it is growing profits, innovation, advancement, ideas, expansion, awareness or ourselves, the only way to do it, the only way we can ever deliver growth, of any kind, is via people.

To fully leverage people, you need brilliant leadership but what does that really mean? ‘Transformational leaders are continually thinking about what their organizations should become, anticipating how employees and customers will react and change’ whilst also harnessing the organization’s collective intelligence, energy, and experience’ 1. They know their people.

Our fellow humans have all the answers we need to grow and evolve.

As a leader your role must be to understand the mission and vision of the business, but the brilliance is about engaging hearts and minds of your people, your biggest investment and your biggest asset.

When you want to grow or change your business, optimise performance, or grow anything in life, think not only of your purpose (the mission and vision) but how you fully embrace your people advantage?!

As a leader spending quality time thinking about who you have within your business, understanding your talents and how to engage with it is fundamental. ‘without support from supervisors, even the most committed, motivated employees might not be able to fully use their potential’ 2.

A few tips to think about when you are looking to lead at your best:

1. Be clear: What are you leading for? A specific change, growth? Get clear and communicate expectations. Is the mission critical a specific product, customer, market? What do you need specifically to move the idea forward? Skills, experiences, resources? How will you measure progress? How will you know you have been successful? Be clear with people on the desire and how you will measure success. Communications around what you are leading for need to be clear, consistent, and continually reflected in all that you do. Be clear to ensure you take people on the journey, with you.

2. Understand who you have: Having a clear understanding of the talent within your business is fundamental. Knowing every single human, who they are, what their experience is, what fire is in their belly, is essential. Knowing this is powerful, matching your misison with the in-house talent is a winning formula. When your people assets align with your vision and intention, anything is possible, at pace. If you don’t have what you need now, be clear on the gap and communicate it, do your people know others that fit the bill? The right people at the right time is key!

3. Expose the talent everyday: Of you are ultimately responsible for understanding your people, aspirations, skills, you are also responsible for showcasing talent in the broader business. Cultivating an inclusive environment where people can learn and grow from others and vice versa opens the opportunity for people to share their experience proactively, to spotlight great work, encourage people to share skills, ideas every day. This openness regarding strengths in a business enables all leaders to match talent to objectives and ambition, providing more brain fuel for others to also grow! Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan wrote a great article in 2004 that is still relevant today describing how top companies understand that sustaining peak performance requires a firm-wide commitment to developing leaders that is tightly aligned to organizational objectives, and that organizations must find ways to cascade leadership from senior management to people at all levels, companies that excel at developing leaders tend to achieve higher long-term profitability 3.

4. Unify your power: Are your people and business ambition working in harmony? Every single employee should be clear on what the mission is, the vision, the target but also how they can contribute. Everyone should be clear on how their brilliance connects to the ambition and where they can focus their energy, their unique talent and passion to move the business forward. Do performance contracts align to the growth? Is the action and skills required clear? Have you empowered your people to proactively engage themselves in the mission? You are responsible for creating the conditions to unlock the power of people, it’s a fundamental leadership task, your role in cultivating an environment where people thrive, perform at their best is key. Research by Mckinsey shares the importance of culture and performance with top quartile cultures posting a return to shareholders 60 percent higher than median companies 4. Your culture is a competitive advantage. Use it!

5. Cultivate conditions for growth: If you are clear on the mission (purpose), understand the brilliance you have internally to apply to the plan, you have the right people in the right place, focused on the right things and have aligned values you are well on your way for a winning environment. These conditions encourage open, supportive learning, cultivate growth mindsets, nourish thinking and proactive leadership. ‘If your employees view themselves as part of the culture, they will make decisions for the greater good of the organisation. It will also ensure your people will remain loyal during periods of organisational change and won’t consider jumping ship’ 5. As a leader you reap what you sew, behaviour breeds behaviour be intentional to retain brilliant people.

Leadership has been described as ‘a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal’ 6 Kevin Kruse has a great perspective. Leadership is about maximizing the effort, growing your business through growing your people. A culture that celebrates talent, encourages learning and sharing wins and from my experience will naturally deliver the vision because people thrive in these conditions when they believe in the purpose, are aligned to the values and understand how they can contribute its your leadership that can co-create a winning formula for growth.