We must define your current reality. All leadership must begin with an understanding of truth. What are you truly dealing with? Before we dive into where you would like to go, we must first identify where you really are. This module begins with an in-depth look at your Birkman Assessment with the premise that, before you can lead others you must first learn how to lead yourself.

At completion, you will have a better understanding of your interests, motivations, stress behaviours, and needs. You will have identified your values and highlighted some pre-conceived ideas of what leadership means to you. You will also have considered what causes others to follow you and how this understanding is key to your leadership effectiveness.

Recent studies have determined roughly 80% of employees feel disengaged at work. They are unmotivated, they feel purposeless, and have no meaningful relational connection with their leader or co-workers. In essence, most employees don’t really want to be at work today.  They show up because they have to. Disengagement has many faces: higher absentee rates, higher employee turnover, poor customer service, friction among co-workers, and flagging productivity. The consequences of disengaged employees are reduced earning and higher costs, but the hidden problems are much worse.

Top talent is in high demand in today’s North American economy, and they are looking for great cultures, an engaged team, and opportunities for success and advancement. As a leader, your most important task is to create an environment of engagement.

 We have always been in relationships together involving families, tribes, communities, and hierarchies. As civilizations evolved, these structures of power have been established by different characteristics, traits, skills, and situations. What is powerful in one community may not be so in another. What was once a leadership trait may now not be. Clearly, there is more to understanding leadership than what first meets the eye.

Ultimately, leadership, regardless of how it is defined or established, is about making decisions. Leaders are expected to make the call: do we attack or retreat, buy or sell, hire or fire, etc. Leaders have earned or been assigned the right and responsibility to make decisions. How we make those decisions is as important as the decisions we make.

What are the differences? What are the similarities? Every organization is composed of people and tasks. Leaders are the bridge to both sides operating effectively and efficiently. Ultimately, every business is a people business, every problem is a people problem, and every solution is a people solution! Focusing your development on leading people well is never a bad idea.

So, which people do we develop? What do we do with them? In this module we will look at the ABC’s of leadership as it relates to choosing your people wisely and the 123’s in terms of how you engage these emerging leaders appropriately for development. Finally, we will discuss the concept of the inverse service organization, a problem every business faces at some point in its evolution and typically within multiple business units. Inverse service not only affects clients by failing to solve their most significant problems, it also affects leadership development and employee engagement, pushing emerging leaders towards the exits.

By definition, leaders have followers, and those followers must have reasons to follow.  This leadership development program has walked through the most important aspects of organizational leadership with the goal of assisting as you emerge as a leader in your role. The capstone to this process is to recognize the leader within you and to understand what makes you worthy of followers.

The ability to lead oneself is the first step in leadership. If you do not believe you are worth following, why should anyone else believe it?