Czaro Strategic Communications

“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
– Warren Buffett

Old habits are hard to break. That must be why year after year developing leadership skills tops the list of employee growth challenges, according to The Blanchard Companies, an international training and coaching group.

Leaders – managers and supervisors – are the key to an organization’s success or failure. Good managers produce positive results and foster an environment of cooperation where employees thrive. Bad managers produce high employee turnover resulting in lower morale and decreased client loyalty.

Finding and nurturing future talent should be a primary concern for every organization. The challenge has been identified, but businesses either don’t want to – or more likely don’t know how to – identify top human capital, train them and retain them. Companies need to take this matter seriously before the lack of succession planning has an adverse effect on their bottom line and future growth.

The solution to the leadership crisis is simple. To be an effective leader you have to be able to communicate effectively. Period.

Four key leadership abilities that organizations can focus on to better prepare the next generation of managers include: feedback, listening, setting goals and consistency.

Feedback. Gen X’ers are just starting to fill leadership positions, and they crave feedback. Managers should provide timely, specific feedback. Telling someone that they’re “doing a great job,” isn’t as meaningful as “The TPS report you turned in this morning was clear, concise and right on the mark. I especially liked…” Corrective feedback should also be specific and timely. For instance, “Darla, I noticed you’ve been late three times this week. Is everything OK?” This example gets the point across and shows compassion at the same time. The worst kind of feedback is no feedback at all because workers don’t know where they stand.

Listening. Effective leaders should spend more time listening to their direct reports and less time talking. This lets workers know that their opinions matter and gives them a sense of contribution.

Goals and objectives. This is an area where leaders frequently miss the boat. All it takes is including your direct reports in the process of setting clearly defined goals and objectives. Gen X’ers want to know how their actions contribute to the overall direction of the company. That helps X’ers see that the role they play is meaningful and essential. Once company and department goals are established, setting individual goals should be easy for everyone, because everything they do should support the department and company goals. If they don’t then the tactic or task should be closely examined.

Consistency. Many leaders use inappropriate leadership styles for tasks, situations or dealing with people. These leaders don’t know how to style-flex, which is a skill that helps managers maintain consistency. If a supervisor corrects one employee for being late, they must correct everyone who’s late. It causes undue stress when a manager blows up at one person for their tardiness and then says nothing to the next person.

Companies need to invest in their future leaders if they want them to be successful. Businesses have to educate their leaders by providing them with the appropriate training and coaching so they can reach their potential.

Now is the perfect time for companies to invest in their people and build a strong succession plan. When the economy turns around, organizations that have fully developed leaders communicating effectively will be poised to fly past their competitors.