MightyRecruiter8 Crucial Milestones to Transformational Leadership
Without innovative thinking, a company can easily fall prey to a bureaucratic system that only works to keep itself alive. This potential is found in any organization, whether for-profit or non-profit, and usually ends in a drawn-out and eventually death. Typically, employers and employees alike are unhappy in this stale system, but changing it with transformational leadership can be difficult. If you’re ready to change the culture of your company from top to bottom, take a look at these eight milestones to transformational leadership that you and your company should pass through.
1. Identify Major Trends
Innovation starts with being ahead of the game. It is a crucial step your company must take to bring about real change. You don’t want to constantly be behind new market trends, always barely catching up and losing business in the process. Be scanning the markets for likely changes, and create projects or procedures for when these occur. Forward thinking is a great foundation to start on as you focus your policies, procedures and other practices on your future value.
2. Take a Fresh Look at Your Mission
Your company started with a mission that would drive all future business activities, but as time passes, it’s much more difficult to keep to an original message. If you haven’t made a mission statement or it’s been a while since you’ve taken a look at it, ask yourself these questions:
1.Who are our clients and customers
2.What do they value most
3.What is the mission that will deliver this value
By answering these three questions and creating a fresh mission statement you can stand by, you’ve continued through two of the milestones to transformational leadership by revisiting your purpose. You now have something to unify your leadership message.
3. Unbox the Hierarchical System
In today’s working culture, the traditional hierarchical system stifles creative leadership more than it breeds it. Take a look at your system, and determine ways in which you can create circular management, wherein positions and functions are broken up and shared so that employees are able to grow, learn and lead together instead of separately.
4. Shake Everything to Its Foundation
These milestones to transformational leadership won’t go anywhere without asking questions. In order to create real change, you need to question everything you do, shaking every aspect of your company to the ground: the mission statement. Toss out old procedures, policies, methods and more that either are no longer or will soon not be useful for innovative thinking or don’t help give your customers and clients the value they want. Nothing should go untouched as you clean out your company’s system of anything that can potentially hold you back.
5. Prioritize Communication
Communicating your message over and over again with clear, concise and consistent language is key to getting everyone on board. Constantly reminding your employees of your messages can eventually seep into their own communication to their team and your customers, unifying everyone.
6. Infuse With Leadership
Empower many people in your company to lead, not just a few. When there is unhindered opportunity to spark a new project idea or change a current pattern or policy, you’ll usually get much more out of your employees than you ever thought possible. Each person has something to make your company better. By infusing your company with a mindset of leadership, you’re improving the company culture and hitting major milestones to transformational leadership.
7. Model Behaviors
ïDo as I say and not as I doï is not a good company mantra to have if you want to make real and lasting changes. Modeling your behavior means that you are leading head on instead of pushing others from the back. Decide on and articulate your plans regarding organizational issues and the principles, mission and values of your company. If you make promises, keep them, and always lead first with action and second with voice.
8. Assess Yourself
You’ve reached the last of the eight crucial milestones to transformational leadership: self-assessment. How have you done over the last eight steps What changes can be made to solidify your company’s mission and leadership goals Make future plans that can withstand the coming trends while keeping to the company’s value-based mission.
Once you’ve finished reaching these milestones, you’re work is never really done. Always revisit each milestone to make sure you don’t fall off the path. If you do, always know you can get back on with a strong purpose. If you want to find out how to improve your company culture, hire the best candidates or more, check out Mighty Recruiter’s articles and tools.