The role of leadership is to align, support and enable teams to do the work they were hired to do.
Leadership’s role is not to follow up or “hold people accountable.” When the right people are hired and the right plans are in place, people can execute and leadership can support them.
Leadership ensures that people are working on projects and tasks that are aligned with the rest of the goals of the company.
They ensure that team members have the commitment or emotional support to do their part in the process. Leadership can assess if skill development is necessary on any of the individual sub-steps, in any of the projects, well in advance because they know what everyone is working on.
In addition, leadership can ensure that the proper bandwidth and resources—money, people, time, supplies and more–are available to complete the outlined projects. They can focus on alignment and ensuring that all the projects being worked on are the right ones to drive the overall company goals.
Dr. Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, authors of One Minute Manager, developed a model in the 1960s that’s still used today in the best-run companies on the planet, and it’s called “Situational Leadership.” When companies have tightly reverse-engineered their plans, they can spend time effectively leading their people. Situational leadership involves the leader giving the correct balance of either skill development or emotional support to help their subordinates perform at optimal levels. Being able to slow down and give the proper amount of skill development to their team on an ongoing basis is critical.
For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.