Leadership Issues, Part 1: What Your Peers Are Saying
By Mickey Parsons Psy.D, MCC, BCC
(MMC guest master coach and blogger)
Over the past 6 months, The Workplace Coach collected data from 109 business leaders about their leadership issues and concerns. To keep you on track for a successful 2018, we’ve put the survey results together with our targeted coaching advice in each area. In the first of four posts, we look at the areas leaders feel they most need to improve.
FOSTERING A SENSE OF SHARED RESPONSIBILITY
What leadership competencies do business leaders most want to improve? The largest share of our survey respondents (26.7%) said that promoting a sense of responsibility and ownership across the organization was the skill they most needed to improve.
As leaders, we love it when an employee goes above and beyond the call of duty. That kind of initiative and sense of responsibility show that someone truly owns his or her work. Ultimately, it comes down to accountability, and research tells us that when the work environment is designed for accountability, it flourishes.
How can you build an environment where employees share a sense of responsibility and ownership? Begin by empowering your employees. Make it clear to them that they have both the obligation and the authority to improve work processes. Then back it up by making sure they have the resources, knowledge and help they need to be confident in their skills and their decisions.
An organization-wide commitment to improvement also is key, as are ongoing evaluations at both the team and the individual level.
Where else do leaders see room for improvement in their own leadership capabilities? In our survey, three areas emerged as the second-most pressing concerns of leaders — mentoring others, effective delegation and accurately interpreting the competitive environment. It is hardly coincidental that two of these – mentoring others and effective delegation – are both directly linked to the ability to promote shared responsibility.
Mickey Parsons @2018 all rights reserved
Mickey Parsons is founder of The Workplace Coach, where he and his colleagues provide executive coaching services for senior business leaders, professionals and entrepreneurs. As an executive leadership coach, Mickey draws on the principles of organizational development and coaching psychology to serve as a catalyst for clients who are ready to excel in their business and/or professional lives. He has coached thousands of leaders, from executives at Fortune 500 companies to local business owners.
Mickey holds a Doctorate of Psychology, with a concentration in industrial and organizational psychology, as well as numerous professional credentials. He serves as Assistant Professor of Coaching Psychology at Life University in Marietta, GA, where he created and teaches in the MS Coaching Psychology track.
Read Mickeys full bio
www.theworkplacecoach.com/leadership-blog
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Read about Mickey Parsons coaching demonstration and participant feedback.
