Sales & Presales management
Hopefully you have never experienced what most people have. You made an incredibly good job; you are proud of your achievements and you have gone further than usually related to your role. Your expectation? Someone coming over and thanks for what you did., maybe even combined with a reward. and reality? Most likely you hear nothing, no one will take notice or feel it's relevant to link the achievement with your engagement, in many companies it is even worse, you will then have to justify the hours you worked, why you haven't answered all the mails in parallel and so on. If appointed leaders sometimes find themselves in such situation, we understand that people in our responsibility probably sometimes feel the same.
This brings us to the fundament pjs of real leadership. Quite often the leader is just the person standing for the combined achievements of a team, mostly the number they made. But this is not leadership. The leader is in front of the people, he sees and recognizes efforts and he say thank you. A leader also understand that he cannot directly change the way he is treated in a company, but he can set code how people operate in his team or department and how he operates.
To grow a team, to grow a company substantially and over a longer period it is needs more than a few good decisions, it needs investment in the people, time, effort and money a leader spends to understand, develop and to put the right people to the right position. In sports this is a no brainer, this is what we naturally expect from the trainer, so why not in business? The logic is almost the same. You got defined resources, you can make changes in a given way and you are responsible for how you use the people to achieve the goals.
And here is the point where a natural separation appears between leaders who has been appointed and leaders who are leaders... and are appointed., natural leaders.
Natural leaders know that the generate the setup for success and this includes give directions in a clear way and train the people even if not appreciated. Again, like sports, if the coach cannot articulate what the team should do, and what every single individual should do the team will not play according to the plan. If a sportsman stops training, because it is so hard, it's not a real competition is whatever reason, his capabilities will start decreasing immediately, not really measurable in the beginning, but without any questions over the time.
Combined with a set of well-developed material and processes it is possible to understand, develop and leverage the capabilities and increase the business benefits of a given organization.