Inspiring your people to change their thinking about the work they do, and how they feel about themselves is not easy. But you must help them to draw on their own life experiences, so they can use them to help them change their behaviour. By changing their behaviour, others will see this and if they are positive changes then they will follow them as an example. Increasing your influence, so others can increase their influence is so important.
A limitless mindset is what is required if you and your people want to see your future and the organisation’s future in a more positive light. It is up to you to help your people develop a limitless mindset. It is the mindset of a person that enables them to see the world the way they do.
So, if one of your people sees the world in a negative way, then they have a limited mindset. Leadership development and personal growth is all about developing the right mindset…a limitless mindset. It is not about developing the skills and tools.
1. Culture
It is important to re-read my subtitle of this article above. If you want to build a highly effective leadership culture and help your team to perform at their best, then you must help them in changing their behaviour.
Not only their behaviour is important here, what they value and who they value must change for the better too. As I say, this is not easy and will not happen overnight.
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This will take a long time to do, and will require a lot of dedication from you, your team and eventually others within your organisation if you want to spread your cultural transformation.
When you can transform the culture of your team and organisation into a highly effective leadership culture, you will start to see the results of your team change for the better. How people behave towards each other, collaborate, and help each other will change for the better.
How you and your people feel when at work and around each other will change for the better too. As these positive changes are happening, your organisation will be growing into one of the best in your industry.
Eventually it will grow into the best due to the word-of-mouth advertising the people will be spreading throughout the industry.
When this happens, your organisation will be attracting the best talent in your industry. So, when this happens, it is important that you and the other leaders work on retaining the best talent.
2. Leadership Development
If you want to show your people that you are committed to their leadership development and personal growth, then the best way to do that is to offer them leadership development and personal growth training.
You can either deliver this training yourself, if you have the background and the skills to do it. Or, you can hire in a leadership development training company.
Either way shows your team that you are willing to invest in their development, and this goes a long way in transforming into a highly effective leadership culture. Introducing your team to new ideas and new people is both inspirational and motivational.
It will also be inspirational and motivational for you if you take part in the training, and it will show your team a lot of humility in showing them that you are willing to learn with them. This shows your team that you are bought-in to the development of the whole team and will help them to feel valued.
As part of my website https://highlyeffectiveleader.com I created “The Leader’s Vault” which is an assortment of leadership development and personal growth online courses. I also have a YouTube channel “Leadership & Growth” where I post videos on leadership development and personal growth.
The online courses and the YouTube videos are targeted at current and future leaders in all industries to help them to develop themselves and share what they learn with their people. By doing this they are creating leaders, who can then go on and create more leaders. Again, the snowball effect happens.
Recently I was contacted on LinkedIn to give an online workshop to a team of engineers, to teach them how engineers can become leaders. I have been an engineer since I was 16 years old, so this was a perfect opportunity to share my message.
I called the workshop “Leadership for Engineers”. The engineers I would be working with online were not in supervisory or management type roles, they were all mechanical engineers.
3. Growth of The Team
When I was creating the content for the workshop, I found it interesting that none of it consisted of anything to do with engineering work. It was all about people. So, you see leadership development and personal growth must happen in every industry in the world.
Then when I delivered the workshop to the engineers, they were expecting me to talk about engineering. Instead, I mentored them on how to be a leader within your engineering team, and that you don’t need a title or position to be a leader.
The engineers were surprised at first, but as the workshop went on, they became more engaged and were buying-in to what I was sharing.
In the engineering industry, neither the engineers or the engineering leaders ever focus on themselves or their character development. They only ever really focus on the engineering tasks, solving engineering problems and getting things fixed.
So, during the workshop my focus was heavily on character development and again after a while the engineers could see where I was coming from. I think being an engineer myself helped because I could share stories from my engineering career.
It doesn’t matter what type of leadership development workshop or training you take part in, making the decision to take action on what you learn and then taking that action are very different. Today you may decide to do something, but have you done it yet?
4. Decisions
You need to act on that decision and the burning to desire to do something or make a change. This was the message I also put across to the engineers because I knew they were getting inspired by what they were learning.
But I also knew that when our workshop was over, it was likely that nothing was going to change because they wouldn’t take action. So, it was up to me as their workshop mentor to encourage them to take action.
The workshop I gave the engineers was for free because I haven’t been doing them long and it wouldn’t be right to charge a fee. However, I knew that if I gave the workshop for free it would show the engineers and their leaders that I was willing to invest in their development.
It showed them that I cared about them becoming leaders within their team and their industry. It showed them that I believed in my own message and investing my time for free is a very powerful way to get that across.
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When the workshop ended, I knew that it had been successful due to the very kind comments and praise that the engineers gave me, and with the questions they asked.
I also knew that their engineering leaders would be happy, and I encouraged them to keep motivating their engineers to take action on what they learned from the workshop. Helping each other, character development and treating people the right way were the main topics that the engineers took away.
After speaking with the engineers and their leaders after the workshop I was gaining the insights on how they were taking action, and the positive changes they were seeing. This was great for me because it gave me word-of-mouth advertising, as I have mentioned earlier.
Investing in your people who have a burning desire to grow is so important. So, keep investing in your people with leadership development and personal growth training.
What would you rather have, a person you have developed and then they leave for better things, or a person you haven’t developed at all, and they remain on your team?
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,
Hello Tom
Very interesting article , because indeed, if you can not motivate a team, you can’t expect them to do all they can for your or for your company. I will surely get your free e-book and looking forward to reading it, thank you!
Kind regards,
Lizzy
Hi Lizzy,
I am pleased that you found this an interesting article and I appreciate your comment.
I hope you enjoy reading the E-Book, take action on what you learn and share what you learn with others.
All the best,
Tom
Hey Tom!
I have a question about motivating team members who are very talented but really resist change. Meaning, they are just stuck in their ways and often bicker and fight when you try to coach them into doing something differently. I like to get the best out of people, but people don’t like to be forced to do something.
Hi,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this article.
Keep trying to get the best for people, not just out of them. Leadership and motivation is about serving your people, not the other way around.
All the best,
Tom
Back in the days when I worked in the corporate world, managers were computer programmers (I worked in software departments) who were simply promoted to managerial positions because an existing manager had retired, died or sought pastures anew. They never received any formal managerial training and were just expected to get on with the job and learn on the job.
It’s no wonder so many managers I had were incompetent in their positions. A classic example of elevating people to one level above their competency. Looking back, I don’t blame the managers but I do blame the companies for not providing the appropriate training. Bad managers lead to bad teams. Some were natural leaders and their managerial abilities shone through. They were able to motivate their team members in positive ways and re-align the thinking of more negative team members without being combative or condescending. The bad managers would just get into confrontations with team members which did nothing for morale.
I hope these days that companies recognize the value of a top-notch manager and that they provide the required training by default and help managers that might be underperforming.
Hi Gary,
I am so appreciative of your detailed comment on my post and you sharing your experiences.
I hope people can read your comment, relate to it and learn from you too, just as much as they can learn from me.
I agree that when teams within companies are not motivated to carry out the required work or go the extra mile even, it is because the managers/supervisors aren’t motivated either. The leaders of the companies are not doing the right things to motivate their people.
This happens so much in so many companies throughout the world and needs to change.
Thank you again my friend and all the best,
Tom