How do you stay accountable in leadership?

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When you’re the leader of an organisation, you are expected to define the future strategic direction for your team and oversee the successful achievement of the objectives set. You may well have the freedom in this position that you may never have had in your career before. Finding a balance between revelling in this situation and actually remaining grounded can be difficult. The first thing to remember is that the numbers don’t lie: you are responsible for the commercial performance of your organisation and the planning/forecasting for the future. However, there are a number of other ways that you can find out what is really going on, potentially uncover some blind spots and remain accountable when leading an organisation.

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Where’s your crystal ball?

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With all the forecasting software and new data prediction techniques available, you would imagine that seeing into the future has got easier. But I am willing to bet every business decision maker in the UK would say that just isn’t true.

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What could culture mean for your business?

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“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” was a term coined by Mark Fields, President of Ford who attributed it to organisational management guru Peter Drucker. This mentality has been the adopted mindset of many successful business leaders, with a positive, collaborative culture being highlighted as the most important factor in business growth. Below we’ll discuss how to start establishing a strong culture within your business and why it is so important to do so.

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Being a great leader means accepting that plans change

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As is often the case in any scenario, plans sometimes need to change quickly and frequently. It’s great to have a clear objective and plan in your mind at all times, but risks can quickly present themselves which require you to change your course. This is in no way the sign of a bad leader – some of the worst have continued down a road to disaster after events have moved on around them. In fact, the way that you deal with change will demonstrate whether or not you fall into the realms of great or not.

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Here’s how the queen’s speech could affect your company

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With the announcement of the Queen’s speech, marking the start of the next government, you may be wondering what it means for your company and your job. With details of a deal with the DUP being released today, the speech gave an indication into government priorities for the next two years. Usually, the speech only indicates the government’s plans for the next 12 months, but with Brexit negotiations already taking place, the 2019 deadline ruled the agenda. So, what was in the Queen’s speech and how could it affect you?

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How will your team cope without you?

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“That which governs best, governs least.” John Stuart Mill

It might seem counterintuitive, but the better you are at leading a team, the less they’ll miss you when you’re gone. If you know that your retirement is going to cause a power vacuum; if you know that many employees will feel they have been cast adrift without you there, that is not a testament to your powers of leadership, but to the culture of dependence you have fostered within the company.

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The importance of engagement at work

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One of the largest contributing factors to happiness is engagement in your work. Studies show that if an employee finds little or no satisfaction in their current role, this will have a negative knock-on effect on the rest of their lives. Conversely, if workers can’t wait to bounce out of bed and join their team, this brings a sense of worth and purpose that is highly important. A happy worker is a more productive worker. So, what can senior leaders do to ensure maximum enjoyment and productivity from their staff?

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Taking accountability for deliverability

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As a leader, you are in a position few others find themselves in. You are accountable for the development and growth of your business – but you are also responsible for holding others to account, too.

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Cut the small stuff and you cut the productivity

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A little goes a long way.

That old cliché can be applied to multiple industries and rings true in a wide range of contexts: from hospitality to teaching, and sport to business management.

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A CEO is the ultimate team player and team leader

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It is often said that the best results in any business enterprise come as a result of teamwork. Any team, however, needs leadership, and in order to be clear on what the targets are, that leadership needs to come from one individual. But all too often, team leaders, be they line managers, senior managers, directors or even CEOs, lose sight of the fact that they are members of the team too. In fact, a good CEO is not only the ultimate team leader, but is the ultimate team player too.

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