4 Leadership Challenges and Their Solutions

Who is a manager and who is a leader? Is there any difference?  What differentiates an effective leader from an ineffective leader?  How do leaders motivate their team members to take initiatives and make things happen?  How do we get the best out of the people that we lead and manage?   Finally, how do we create a well-functioning team?  These and other questions can be addressed in the form of the 4 leadership challenges as follows: 

1. Unable to Make Things Happen

Many managers are very good in getting things done and complying with stakeholders' requirements. However, they are mostly process-driven and not outcome-driven. Because they cannot deliver the outcome, they are not able to make things happen.

Solution: To make things happen to reach an outcome, a leader must first get people to enroll in his vision. A vision is an outcome that is difficult to be seen today. If you can see the outcome now, it is not a vision but just a forecast. When people are enrolled into the leader's vision, they leader can use this vision to inspire and motivate them.

For example, we often get our clients to see the vision of having their entire workforce trained in 3 key skills: people, money and time management. We use track records of successful clients that have their entire workforce trained to enroll and inspire them. That's how we can make things happen with our training programs.

Notice that when people are enrolled into the leader's vision, they will work towards achieving that vision, for they see the leader's vision the same as theirs.  Taking initiatives will be natural.  For example, if the leader enrolled people into his vision of "wild wild west dinner and dance", people will take their own initiative to dress up to the theme.

2. Ineffective Leadership

Often leaders can make things happen, but at a high cost. Like they overspend the budget or cause tremendous trouble to other people. I nail them down to ineffective leadership, which is due to 3 main causes: failure to communicate objectives clearly, poor planning and control, and lack of accountability and responsibility.

When you don't communicate your objectives clearly, people will be busy with their own objectives. Politics will be common. If there is no proper planning and control, things do not get done in time and the leader has to devote plenty of time and resources to rectify things. When there is a lack of accountability, people will not be responsible. How often we hear people saying "that's the responsibility of our leader, my role is to just do this".

3. Unable to Get the Best Out of People

Often leaders are happy with the current levels of performance from their team. This is because they are afraid that they themselves will be reflected as bad leaders if they are not happy with their team's performance. In front of their bosses, such leaders will justify their team's performance instead of asking for me.  If this prolongs, such leaders will seldom expect the best from them. 

For example, many sales managers are happy with their sales team hitting the sales quota and ignore larger issues like building of future pipeline and establishing relationships with new market. 

When leaders are happy with their team's performance, they will not stretch their people and instead put them in a comfort zone. We called this 'misplaced compassion' or soft leadership. A good leader must be tough and get the most out of people.

How to get the most out of your people?  The leader must first be hungry to get more. He cannot be complacent and rely on past successes. 

4. Failure to Lead Beyond the Current Teams

Even if a team can lead his team well, he needs to lead other teams well too. If not, he is just a department head and not a real leader. Real leaders are leaders that can lead anyone, anywhere and any time. 

Often managers dare not over-step their areas of responsibility, for they are afraid of being seen as aggressive. As a result, they are passive and only care for their own department things. Even if they see something wrong with the company's business or other department's issues, they dare not bring this up for fear of being bad-mouthed by their colleagues. This is a classic example of failure to lead beyond the current team: the leader is happy with his own team's results and not concerned with the bigger picture.  

When the leader is unable to lead beyond his team, he is just a complacent leader. 

By Andy Ng, Chief Trainer of Asia Trainers, details of articles at www.asiatrainers.com