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Berkshire | david.davies@sandler.com

Let’s talk about Ineffective Leadership.

Ineffective leadership can occur for a multitude of reasons.

As their business grows, Leaders must change their role, adjusting the time they spend on new, different, responsibilities.

Ineffective Leaders typically.

• Are unwilling to relinquish control
• Stay within their comfort-zone, based on what they know
• Continue to be a ‘Doer’ working in the business and not on the business
• Believe their own professional Leadership skills are good enough to grow the company
• Continue to hire people like them
• Hold on to ineffective employees too long
• Do not believe in sharing company information with employees
• Do not set realistic goals
• Do not hold people accountable for specific behaviours that support goals
• Do not set a good example to their employees
• See themselves as above everyone else

As a Leader you know that as you progress through the stages of your business in the beginning you are spending 90% as a Worker; and just 10% managing the business.

In the inter-mediate stage, as you add more people, you are probably spending 50% as a Worker; and 50% managing the business.

Later as you really start to grow your business you should be spending 10% as a worker and 90% as a Leader.

The problem Ineffective Leaders suffer is that they are trained to be a worker. They have Technical skills such as Sales, Software Development or Accounting. But they have little (or No) training in being Leader or even a Manager of people.

This renders them being Ineffective, due to a lack of professional management skills.

Ineffective Leaders are those that are unwilling to let go. They want all roads to lead to them. They create an environment of learned helplessness.

No-one can make a decision without you.

Ineffective Leaders tend to stay in their area of expertise.

They only do the job that they know well.

Whereas, a Leader, Owner, Entrepreneur, there are so many other plates that you must spin.

But, your comfort forces you to go back to what you have you known your whole life. What you did well as a doer.

Let’s talk about doers.

You are working in the business too much. You are in ‘doing’ mode all the time. You aren’t working on the business. You really do think that your prior effectiveness is going to help you in the future to become a great leader.

That’s not true!

As a Leader your role has changed. Rather than wearing the single hat of a ‘Doer’, you will now be expected to wear the ‘Four Hats of Leadership’.

The Four Leaderships hats are.

Supervisor
Supervisors ensure that rules are followed, assign tasks and quotas, interpret data, evaluate performance and use their authority to hire and fire.

Trainer
Trainers impart knowledge of the required skills, expand awareness of what needs to be done, and develops skills to ensure the successful completion of tasks.

Coach
Coaches assist in the correct application of the skills, motivates employees to have the desire to apply the skills correctly, and provides evidence of corporate support in the individual.

Mentor
Mentors act as a role-model for the appropriate actions, providing examples of the accepted norms of the organisation, and develops certain individuals to become the organisations impassioned Leaders of the future.

As a Leader you need to ear Multiple “hats” and determine which “hat” you wear for what scenario.

Great Leaders are willing to let control go to those they have entrusted. What that means is you hired great people, you’ve given them very clear guidelines of what you want them to do and the authority to operate within those guidelines.

You are making above, and beyond, a good profit margin which is equal to others in your industry.

You are making yourself redundant. That were you, for any reason, to leave the business it would continue to thrive without you.

As an Ineffective Leader you know you can’t leave the business, because the business will crumble without you.

Sadly, that is done by design.

Leaders can leave. They can go home at night and have a productive personal life versus 24-7 hyper-ventilating about what is going on in the business and what you must do tomorrow.

When you become an Effective Leader that permeates throughout your whole organisation.

If you would like to assess your Leadership you might like to take the Leadership for Organisational Excellence Personal “Blind Spots” Survey.

This assessment assesses you against the 14 common “Blind Spots” we, in Sandler, spot in the Leaders we work with.

To get a copy of the assessment tool please drop us a note at david.davies@sandler.com and we will send you the “Blind Spots” assessment.

Leadership for Organisational Excellence. Better business, by design!

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