Leadership is a practice, one that evolves as we increase our awareness, reflect, try something new, and apply our learning therefrom. Today, I wanted to share a bit about my own evolution with the practice of leadership. I am hoping you might garner a golden nugget or two that applies to your leadership.
Leadership has evolved for me as I imagine it has for many of you who are reading this post. Out of university, I started my career with IBM. For five years, I learned from the leadership and progressive culture of that organization. In retrospect, it was one of the best places to have started; it was often referred to in my Commerce textbooks as exemplifying best practices. Subsequently, I had the opportunity to transition to a small commercial real estate development and management company where I could contribute my skills as a leader rather than as a specialist. I learned a lot more about what it meant to lead as the company grew and as I stretched myself and tried new leadership skills. A key learning from both organizations was how important the engagement of people was to success.
In Commerce, I had learned about alignment and that the more one was aligned with what the company was looking for, the more they could progress with their career. I applied this in my own career and, also, saw how helpful it was when others did the same thing with theirs which led to the understanding of the importance of hiring for fit when recruiting people. Now, through coaching training and experience and in taking the MA in Leadership at Royal Roads University, this idea is coming full circle through values-based leadership where this values alignment is being recognized as a mutual requirement to create engagement. More specifically, values-based leadership and organizational culture encompass organizational values as a measure of culture and consider the values desired by those employed by and interacting with the organization (Barrett, 2017) to create engagement. The intersection of organizational and team member values is where engagement occurs. Engagement increases productivity, loyalty, and bottom-line results as well as client advocacy.
From my experience and learning, I bring values-based insights, resources and tools to clients and their organizations. In April, the new Spark Success was launched, and I invite you to visit it at www.sparksuccess.com. There is a complimentary download as well as a leadership quiz related to the concepts of creating people and customer-centric organizational cultures to create organizational success. I hope you find these resources to be of value.
When we continue to stretch and grow and bring ourselves and our learning to our leadership, we can model the way for others to do the same (Kouzes & Posner, 2012) as well as engage them.
How are you modeling the way? What values are you espousing and practicing? What do you wish to amplify in your workplace and with your clients? What impact is your leadership having in creating what you desire for you, your team, and your organization?
If you are interested in exploring these and other leadership questions, I offer a complimentary, virtual introduction session. To schedule, please contact me: https://sparksuccess.com/contact/. I would love to have a conversation with you!
Jamie
References
Barrett, R. (2017). The values-driven organization: unleashing human potential for performance and profit (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2012). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations (5th edition). San Francisco, CA: Wiley.