What is the price of not investing in leadership development? There is compelling evidence to demonstrate the link between leadership behaviour and people and operational performance*
Most executives know instinctively that leadership behaviour has an impact on the productivity, engagement and wellbeing of their employees most business conversations are nowhere near as powerful or directed as they need to be. As a result, a great many conversations end up being sub-optimal, and even dysfunctional and divisive on some level. Even worse, many issues simply do not get dealt with.
Here are just a few of the costliest workplace issues we see across the business landscape. Each of these issues can be linked directly to the quality of business conversations taking place:
- Teams that are only partially engaged
- Disaffected people who comply but don’t contribute beyond expected minimums
- Conflict not being dealt with openly in a healthy way, and public agreement being undermined by private dissent
- Management point scoring and other divisive behaviours
- Executive Teams and Boards of Directors that fail to recognise and respond to strategic risks, or fail to fully capitalise on strategic opportunities
The good news is, we can achieve radical improvements in organisational performance, addressing these issues positively and quickly, by systematically improving the quality of our conversations.
To do that, we need to understand and respond appropriately to the interplay of structures within your organisations communication system. Problems in face to face communication are often due to the unseen influences of deeper invisible structure. So long as it remains unseen the structure can undermine and violate communicative intentions. Without understanding why, people will end up repeating old patterns of behaviour. Once the structure is made visible however individuals can learn to observe and change it.
If we understand and use these ways of interacting effectively, we can consistently have conversations that are powerful and profitable, building trust and enhancing wellbeing for everyone. On the other hand, if we don’t understand the patterns and traps we fall into and we don’t have an awareness of why this is happening – nothing changes.
There is a huge amount of untapped people potential within organisations. The cost of not unleashing this talent, creativity and energy is extremely high, both in financial and human terms.
At the Houston Exchange it is our wish to do everything we can to help reverse this trend.
Powerful Profitable Conversations is underpinned by David Kantor’s theory of structural dynamics a complete language for understanding leadership Behaviour. This model has a proven track record, when used with trained and skilled facilitators, to transform every conversation that takes place within your business. We work with you to dramatically improve individual and team communication and help you see what’s really driving the conversations within your business, so that you can consciously leverage the best contributions from all of your people.
As a result, you’ll be able to get to the heart of the issues in your organisation – including the ones nobody is able to talk about – and resolve them with far less drama, enabling you to freely explore new solutions and exploit untapped opportunities.
This will free up significant time, energy and money enabling you to say what needs to be said, productively and honestly, whilst keeping everyone engaged and on side.
The bottom line is, our work delivers significant results on a variety of levels, creating healthier, more profitable and sustainable organisations.
What about your organisation – how many of your current conversations don’t address the things that really matter, with the high levels of mutual trust you’d like?
And how much more would that be worth to you, financially and in human terms?
To find out how you could reap serious rewards from dramatically improving, start by having an initial chat with us about how we might be able to help. We look forward to hearing from you and starting a conversation.
*K Blanchard: The Leadership Profit Chain [/showhide]