How to be a Transformational Leader
Posted on 08/18/2015 in Sales Management
How can you as a leader transform your organization to achieve top performance? The most successful leaders excel at two primary tasks that engage and inspire everyone to make great things happen.
Articulate your vision in a compelling way. How can you get everyone to work toward a common goal? How do you energize your team to do great things?
- Tell a relevant story. Don’t rely solely on facts and data. Emotional approaches win the day. People want to be inspired, challenged, and moved. A relevant story will inspire people to buy in to the vision.
- Be concise. You need to strike a balance between allowing enough time to communicate the vision clearly and completely yet avoid talking for too long.
- Tailor your presentation to your audience. Make sure that the vision is presented in a way that pertains to the level and job of the audience.
- Address any deviations that you observe in your organization. What if an employee doesn’t buy into the vision? What message does it send to others if you don’t take action?
- Repeat the vision often and throughout the organization. Messages are more effective when repeated. Repetition demonstrates your commitment and increases retention, understanding, and buy-in from the employees.
Communicate high-performance expectations. What behaviors demonstrate your expectations for excellence and high performance by others? How do you get and sustain higher performance from everyone?
- High performance expectations leads to better results. Also known as the Pygmalion Effect or self-fulfilling prophecy. Low performance expectations lead to lower performance and lower results. Managers who expect more of average employees consistently generate results comparable to teams of top performers.
- Set performance expectations high in the first year. Setting high-performance expectations of an employee in the first year is very critical. Modify how you communicate expectations to each individual. Be clear about your expectations and express it appropriately for that individual. What you say and do with top performers is often different than what you say and do with other employees.
- Modify how you communicate expectations to each individual. Be clear about your expectations and express it appropriately for that individual. What you say and do with top performers is often different than what you say and do with other employees.
- Model the expectations yourself. Hold yourself to the same standards and expectations. Indiscretions by you can have major consequences.
- Provide individualized support to help your people achieve these high-performance expectations.