Achieving Your Objectives Through Others

Inc.com's target audience is entrepreneurs and business owners, for whom it tries to provide advice, insights, resources and inspiration for running and growing their businesses. 

A recent article by Glen Blickenstaff, himself a successful businessman, looked to provide insight into one of the most important topics for organisations of any size - Factors That Define Great Leaders

As small business owners, all of us are leaders. When we dissect the definition of leadership, it becomes clear that it applies equally whether we manage a company with 500 employees or one where we are the only employee. It can be argued that leadership is an amalgamation of several characteristics or traits...but the bottom line is that leadership can and should stand on its own - the process of influencing an individual or group of individuals to accomplish an objective.

That's pretty straight forward and very significant (and) when we measure our own leadership ability or methods, we should always come back to the simplest definition and ask ourselves; 'Did I influence people to accomplish my objective?". If not, why not. 

The desire of leaders to achieve their objectives through others is something most people in business recognise, but the reality of influencing others to adopt new and different behaviours is also something that many leaders we work with find very challenging. 

We also recently addressed the issue with a group of leaders from a number of European countries, drawing on FranklinCovey's work in the area of Organisational Execution. As with the article in Inc.com, we started with the role of a leader to create clarity and engagement around key priorities, but rather than just talking about the 'what' of this, focused on 'how' this can be effectively achieved, while also building trust and engagement. 

We then addressed the reality of daily work pressures and urgencies, and how they can deflect even the most well-meaning employee / team member from the bigger picture of contributing to their leader's objective(s). Here again, we were able to provide insights on how to change people's patterns of behaviour and influence the choices they make on a daily & weekly basis. Through these approaches and disciplines, the group learned how a leader can successfully achieve alignment of activity around their most important priorities from the top to the bottom of their organisation.