Follow the leader

Winning growth initiatives depends
heavily on employee buy-in. Leaders often start strong out of the blocks by communicating the results they
desire or even the process they want used.
But when an initiative is handed off to the
team, things get a bit more complicated.

So how do the best leaders gain buy-in
from their followers?

“It’s really about creating a belief that
everyone has an opportunity to fit in and
contribute,” says Sheb True, Ph.D., director
of Graduate Business Programs, Coles
College of Business. “In the short term, you
can have unhappy followers, but in the
long term, you need happy followers, and
successful leaders understand where that
happiness comes from.”

Smart Business spoke with True about
how the best leaders resist the urge to
overcontrol behavior, work hard to surface
employee concerns, and promote a framework of dialogue and collaboration.

What symptoms within an organization hint
at poor leadership?

A sure sign of leadership deficiencies is
when there’s no sense or understanding of
the values of your organization. Everyone
needs to understand the common values in
terms of what you’re trying to accomplish,
why you’re trying to accomplish something
or even how it will be tackled. I think
another symptom is when leaders focus
too much on the controlling of behaviors,
or micromanagement, rather than forging a
synergistic orientation where employees at
all levels perceive they can and they do
contribute to growth — whether it’s from
new ideas, new initiatives or continuous
improvement. Low morale is a symptom
tied to these leadership deficiencies.

What builds good morale?

If there’s low morale, you can point to a
lot of bad behaviors within the organization, but the buck stops at the leadership
level. It’s not to say that everyone should be
happy all of the time or you have to cater to
every need. High morale occurs when your
stakeholders understand where they fit in
and believe what they’re doing is important. It’s different for each function, level
and department, but each follower still
needs to understand where he or she fits
in. You’ve got to know what they need so
they want to contribute in the long run.

How can leaders transition to new growth
models and get others to buy in?

You can grow in terms of sales, you can
grow in terms of quality, and you have to
give your people the opportunity to grow,
as well. Growth naturally allows more
opportunities to contribute, and that’s
where buy-in comes into play. You should
communicate the value of growth and how
it represents opportunities for everyone —
from compensation, growth of responsibility and the intrinsic value of knowing that
everyone has the potential to contribute. If
you can do that, employees will be asking,
‘How can I bring more to this organization
and contribute to our goals and values?’

Are the best leaders rigid or sensitive to how
their actions impact others?

The quote, ‘With great power comes great
responsibility,’ tells the tale. You are responsible to those who follow you.
Leadership is about making decisions,
about making choices and putting those
choices into action. You have to be sensitive to how your actions are going to
impact others, including the environment,
society, customers or your employees.
Initially, you do need to be rigid to the organizational values, but that implies you were
very careful in how you determined and
established the values of the organization.
At the same time, you must be flexible in
terms of how the organization can accomplish something because others may have
different approaches to achieve the same
goals. And that’s where you have to be
open to new ideas.

How can leaders surface and mitigate concerns?

Leadership is about communicating and
fostering communication throughout the
organization. You need discourse and dialogue — and not just with upper management. It allows you to surface concerns
and creates an environment of collaboration to solve them, as long as the shared
goal is to solve them and not just talk without taking action. You have to trust the
organization’s ability and desire to solve
the issues.

What are tips to improve leadership skills?

The big ones are around fairness and
communication because improvement in
these areas will build trust. Fair doesn’t
necessarily mean equal, but you should
work to improve a sense of fairness in the
organization. Communication skills can
always be improved. Look at your communication model — you should see clear
channels of communication from the leaders to the followers, followers to leaders
and productive dialogue between your followers. Promoting fairness and communication will create that trust, improve your
credibility, and lead to follower buy-in and
more successful growth initiatives. <<

SHEB TRUE, Ph.D., is director of Graduate Business Programs, Coles College of Business, Kennesaw State University. Reach him at
(770) 423-6076 or [email protected].