Three ideas to help jump-start your week and strengthen your leadership effectiveness.  I’ll take a French Press of the the dark roast for a little extra kick.

The focus this week is on strengthening team performance by improving your own leadership practices. 

You as leader directly control the quality of your team’s working environment.  The health of this environment is a critical indicator of your leadership effectiveness.  Start and sustain a program to improve in the following areas:

1.  Face up to dealing with poor performers.  All of your efforts to instill a sense of accountability and high performance come crashing down on the rocks of your inconsistent treatment of individuals.  Everyone knows if there are two or more sets of rules. 

Accountability is accountability and commitment is commitment.  If you want the entire team to take you seriously as a leader and to take pride in performing at a high-level, you MUST deal with the poor performers in a fair, firm and timely manner.  Don’t put this off any more.

2. Ensure that your team members know how to communicate with you.

What’s your personal communications plan?  Have you established a protocol for communications with your associates?  If not, consider doing setting up some ground rules for the benefit of your associates and they will thank you. 

Clarify what type of information and updates you are looking for.  Don’t make people guess about what you want/need to hear.

If you talk about having an “open door policy” you had best clarify what that means and then live up to it.  Set yourself up for success by encouraging the right types of interactions…and don’t forget to identify that from time to time, the door must close for you to do your job.  

Also, remember that your most valuable opportunities to communicate are not when people walk into your office, but when you engage informally with them in the workplace.

Establish a 911 protocol to help people understand when/how to approach you with an emergency issue.  If you don’t do this, you risk either being exposed to an endless stream of “emergencies” or missing out on the real problems. 

 3.  Leverage the power of high expectations.

I have been consistently amazed and occasionally awestruck by the results of teams and individuals where I have observed leaders that have expressed genuine confidence and asserted high standards and expectations.

These enlightened leaders understand the power of the effective working environment and they focus all of their energy on strengthening it and the people on their team. 

Setting high expectations only works when people WANT to strive to meet or exceed those expectations.  These individuals develop a remarkable sense of pride and the thought of falling short doesn’t occur to them.  The notion of disappointing the leader that has worked hard to coach, to create opportunities and to knock down barriers is unthinkable. 

Contrast the leader who serves, coaches, supports, provides feedback, and challenges with the leader that attempts to drive complicity through a command and control approach.  One wins and the other makes people miserable. Which one are you?

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Unlike the formula for Coca Cola, the formula for becoming a great, effective and inspirational leader is not locked away in a vault somewhere.  High team and individual performance flow from personal pride and drive.  The effective leader taps these powerful forces by creating the right conditions for people to flourish. 

Is your team flourishing?