It Takes a Village

I’m often asked why I decided to become a professional coach and leadership consultant; especially since I never held an HR role during my corporate career. (Most people assume coaches have extensive HR backgrounds.)

The fact is I loved what I was doing. I had opportunities to fix, change and create processes and systems for almost all company functions. In my early days, it was “easy” to educate people on the new changes, roll out the approaches, and be the subject matter expert for follow-up questions, etc. After that, I would move on to the next challenge.

It was during my first team leadership role that I decided to change my approach. I decided to lead the change vs manage the change.  I focused on designing a culture of community – engaging others in the creation of the change (aka “believers”) and even more people in building momentum once the change was designed and executed (aka “followers”). The shift was phenomenal.

As I continued to approach assignments this way, it became obvious that engaging the hearts and minds of people is so much more important than the changes in processes and systems. Ironically, without the community involvement and support, process and system changes are doomed; inevitably, they change again and again, trying to find acceptance and traction. The latter definitely not the kind of culture anyone wants to create.

I absolutely loved developing my team members to think strategically, to connect the dots between vision and tactics, and – most importantly – to really think about the people implications and involve them. When people understand and embrace this concept, the entire organization benefits. Sustainable change (of any magnitude) only happens when you involve and inspire people.

Having experienced first-hand success, and also see it go sideways for others, I wanted to support leaders in their desire to go from great to brilliant. LAITHOS believes brilliant leadership connects and collaborates, inspires effective and sustainable change, and, shares a vision that generates a community.

Borrowing a popular saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”  Quite simply, it doesn’t get better than that!

This Week:  Take stock in your business and your life on where you are part of a community. What role(s) do you play? Are you a “believer” and/or a “follower”? What is the shared vision of each community? What is needed to expand each community and make it/them stronger and more sustainable?

In Next Week’s Post, we’ll share some thoughts on taking action when you believe strongly in something.