Your personal character, as displayed through your words and more importantly your actions, determines the trust relationship within the team. Trust is the essential element to building a great, high performing team. Leaders should be exhibiting the same high level of behavior that they expect from their team members.
Leadership requires great commitment to get it right. Your team watches what you do and will follow your lead especially on marginal behavior. How can you expect your team to perform with excellence or act appropriately, if you don’t? Leaders must be committed to the highest personal conduct and exceptional performance from Day 1.
“Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.” -Norman Schwarzkopf, Retired U.S. Army General
Do you create a positive environment for your team? Mistrust and micromanagement will inevitably lead to a toxic setting. A toxic environment is sometimes hard to determine from the outside because the productivity results may still be within acceptable limits. A positive environment can ride through a crisis with more ease, while a toxic environment is often one crisis after another with very little respect for others.
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Your Personal Character Impacts the Performance of the Team
The base building block of the team is trust
- How can you expect others to adhere to proper behavior and accomplish their tasks properly, if you as the leader are not also living up to the same high standard?
- Your team will follow your example: good or bad.
Leadership is a great responsibility
- Leading a team means you have people in your charge that you must care for.
- You have people (most important), company equipment, funds and other resources that require your due diligence.
- Leaders have the responsibility to achieve company goals and see that their part of the vision is fulfilled. This requires thoughtful planning and execution with the resources provided.
Five essential character traits
- Here are five essential character traits that each leader must possess. There are others, but when I am looking for strong personal character, this is where I begin to filter those who are not ready to lead teams.
a) Integrity – act and speak with the highest standards of honor
b) Loyalty – be committed to the needs of your team. Invite your team members to take some risk in their development and then provide support as they negotiate the challenges
c) Humility – know that you are one member of a big team with many talents
d) Fairness – treat all with the same standard of accountability and enforce the standard across the team. No favoritism
e) Courage – have the strength to do what is proper even when it’s not popular. This includes ideas that are not popular
2. Leadership is not about us. Its about the team we serve. Can we guide, influence and affect a team member to become better? Can we improve our team environment through our approach to leadership? It begins with what we are made of. What are your key leadership traits?
Are you a positive or negative force?
- Your attitude sets the attitude of the team. Do you enjoy the workplace? Are you setting the right environment?
- A positively focused leader can bring out the best in the team. You can still be positive while coaching the team to improved behavior and greater performance.
Your personal character has a great impact on the performance and output of your team. Leading with great character will increase the possibility of better performance by the team. A leader without strong character often creates mistrust and despair. Mistreating and disrespecting your team will lead to a decrease in morale and then productivity.
How has your personal character affected the workplace every day? What would you improve?
Please comment or email me at comment@stephenmclain.com.
Copyright 2019 – Stephen McLain
