You may have the most talented people in the world on your team, but if their values are wrong then there is no way you can help to develop them into a highly effective team.

To develop a highly effective leadership culture within your team and your organisation, it takes more than you. It will need the effort of everyone within the team and the organisation. However, to start a change of any culture, you must start with you first.

From writing this article, I cannot force you or anybody to change themselves, and in this case, I mean change your values. However, I can influence you and others to change their values.

1. Highly Effective Leadership Culture

When we want to develop a highly effective leadership culture, each person must make the decision to change their values as an individual. This is not a team exercise. We must decide to change ourselves individually and keep working on ourselves.

I say this is not a team exercise because a team and an organisation is simply a group of individuals. With a highly effective team, you have a group of highly effective individuals. With a good team, you have a group of good individuals.

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With an average team, you have a group of average individuals, With a poor performing team, you have a group of poor performing individuals. Leadership is mainly focussed on influencing an individual, rather than focussing on influencing an entire team at once.

Developing a highly effective leadership culture is about developing the individuals on your team and in your organisation into highly effective individual leaders. If you don’t have highly effective individual leaders, then you won’t have a highly effective team.

We’re not teaching your people to be able to do a certain job or task. We’re developing your people to help them improve as individuals first.

2. Book Study

A great way to do this is to start setting up book studies within your team at first, and then move into the organisation. Book studies are great ways to start seeing and developing the potential that your individual team members have.

To develop a highly effective leadership culture with your individuals, you as their leader must know their potential and what they are capable of. With book studies you can do this at every level with every individual within your team and moving into the organisation.

You can visit my website first and take a look at my other books that you can initially use to start up your book study at https://highlyeffectiveleader.com. Examples of topics to discuss at your book study are:

• Teamwork – How to inspire collaboration and harmony within your team
• Building Trust – How each team member can build trust with each other aswell as you the leader.
• Character development – Why character development is so important in leadership and developing a highly effective leadership culture.
• Relationship building – This coincides with building trust but is not discussed as specifically as it should.
• Leadership development – How to develop yourself and your team into highly effective leaders.
• Team leading – How to lead a team without actually having the formal position or title.

There are so many other topics you can discuss that will help in developing your highly effective leadership culture. There are so many books you can choose from too. Leadership and culture change are two of the most written about topics in the non-fiction area.

When you have chosen your book, it is then time to plan your book study. Then more importantly, how are you going to take action on that plan. How long will the book study take to go from beginning to end? Who will be a part of the book study?

3. What Book Will You Use?

When will the book study take place and how often will it be carried out? Where will you hold the book study? These are questions you must answer when planning and then taking action.

Before planning your book studies, become familiar with the types of books you are going to share. Read them and understand the common thread between them…leadership. Leadership development is not something that can happen overnight, or over a week, or even a month.

Leadership development is not a course or a programme that your team does, completes and then moves on. Leadership development is ongoing and takes place every day. But it needs to start from somewhere and someone…YOU.

The first book I wrote is called “Manager To Leader, how to become a highly effective leader” is focussed on developing a manager into a leader. But, it doesn’t just stop at managers. You can use it for supervisors, team leaders, even members of your team.

A manager is an individual. A supervisor is an individual. A team leader is an individual. A team member is an individual. The principles I share in my books will help you to develop the character of each member of your team, whether they are managers, supervisors, team leaders or team members.

If you can influence your team to follow the principles in your chosen book, then you are on the right path to developing a highly effective leadership culture.

Remember, to read my book “Manager To Leader” fully and understand it before sharing it with your team in your book study. You are the leader of developing the highly effective leadership culture.

So, it is important that you are practicing the principles I share in the book if you are asking and expecting your team to do the same. Your team will know if you are investing in the principles you are sharing, and if you’re not then they will lose trust in you.

I published “Manager To Leader” in January 2021, and I wrote it from my experiences in the engineering and rail industry within the UK since 1999. I started as an apprentice engineer in Liverpool and then moved into a technician role.

It was in 2009 that I started my first leadership role while still in Liverpool. In 2011 I then moved to Scotland as a production manager and in 2015 I moved to London as a performance manager and deputy head of engineering.

So, there is over 20 years’ experience of working within a team and leading a team.

4. Understanding Leadership

The reason I wrote “Manager To Leader” was because I wanted to help current managers/leaders and aspiring leaders to truly understand leadership and what it means to become a highly effective leader.

If I would have read this book in 2009 then my leadership journey would have been very different. My career would have developed differently.

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You have the opportunity to use my book to help you grow yourself and to help you grow your team. Help them to become their best selves and develop themselves into a highly effective leader.

When you do this, your relationships with your team members will become stronger, trust will build, you will respect them and they will respect you. The word of mouth will be so positive for you, the team and the organisation.

I do my best to share the principles from my books with the people I work alongside and serve every day. The meetings that I lead, I love to use them as opportunities to help a person or people to develop themselves.

The feeling of fulfilment I get when I help another person is unmatched. The other person feels the same way will remember that feeling. They may not remember what you did or said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

Culture can be changed if our individuals are willing to change first. Changing their values so they are congruent with each other’s is the beginning of developing a highly effective leadership culture.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

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All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)