My leadership basket

Early in life, I decided to push my personal limits and conscientiously grow my leadership abilities. My passion was to drive, deliver and grow highly beneficial services. Services that would improve lives and livelihoods.

My choice of customers were those that other organisations and entrepreneurs were not paying attention to. The vehicles I chose must therefore produce outcome-based services and sell them to individuals, groups, businesses and countries.

My platform became Mutual Benefits immediately after we rolled out as a “unique” insurance organisation 30 years ago. My entrepreneurial skill sets were agricultural economics, insurance, risk management and of course, the basic principles of leadership. My interpretation of leadership was by and large, drawn from the attributes of “being responsible in truthfully delivering promises and dutifully solving “well-being” problems.” A leader must be answerable for his actions and also accountable for the consequences. By “well-being”, I mean desirable state of health, happiness and prosperity.

I have always loved being on the field to sell but I must now carry out this activity with teamwork and collaboration skills to build a competitive advantage. My selling style must be cutting-edge and my persuasion-communication revolutionary if I must succeed in driving customer loyalty through “truthful” commitment to satisfying their needs. My skill-sets would appreciably solve customers’ problems but we must always input lots of innovation, addictive learning and storytelling as the communication vehicle.

Leadership must be a healthy mix of skills, abilities and attitudes. Leaders must work together with others and build strong bonds that will regularly enable joining efforts to achieve common goals and objectives. Effective group work delivers increased productivity and performance.

Flexibility is critical if you want to be a smart leader. Different perspectives must be considered for the business to respond to change faster. Effective application of teamwork and collaboration skills, enhances problem solving by combining different ideas, solutions, abilities and talents into a big “polished’ value-delivering unit. The leader must always create an environment for new ideas to flourish so that goals can be more realistically achieved. Faster and effective decisions are the hallmarks of teamwork and collaboration. Variety of skills and abilities obviously impacts performance and productivity.

The “prior-share” success of the ability of working together is over and above individual talents and abilities. The leader or the teamwork captain can most effectively drive innovation with collaboration. This skill effectively enables engagement and management of the workplace. Ideas flow openly and employees feel valued.

One factor that has worked for me as a leader is “organisational citizenship”. People wonder why I always dance excitedly in the midst of employees and their family members, at our organisations annual thanksgiving.

Organisational citizenship is another name for team or workplace cohesion. It exemplifies unified purpose, interpersonal connectivity, sense of commitment, trust and respect. The dynamics of team cohesion include; strong sense of purpose, increased morale, improved self-esteem, positive work environment, greater engagement and better employee outcomes. Also, greater overall effort to achieve goals, mutually beneficial give-and-take relationship, greater buy-in of organizational goals, mission and workplace norms as well as enhanced adaptability for innovation and creativity.

The onus or the big responsibility is always on the leader to build this very important healthy relationships. Each employee must clearly understand his responsibilities and commitments to each other and how these relationships relate and boost overall team success.

There are other creative ways that team dynamics can be enhanced. The leader must from time to time, assign employees to challenging tasks and projects because skill levels must be continually elevated. The leader must always foster an audacious mindset in the workplace. The workplace slogan must be: “It can always be achieved.” We must engender sense of belonging (leaders and associates are stakeholders of the organisation), recognition, respect and self-confidence. Collective value-adding organisational behaviour would emerge spontaneously.

The success of an organisation is the result of the workplace daily habits. These habits shape the mindset, energy and drive as well as the workplace commitment to collaboration. Lack of organizational citizenship produces selfish recognition and the reign of the ego instead of the team and organization. Interpersonal conflicts also yield negative outcomes instead of “polished” progress. The leader must ensure that the workplace regularly takes focused steps, stay consistent, commit to action plans and be always ready to stand up for the plans.

It is incumbent on leaders to possess acumen: quickness of perception, discernment and deep penetration of the mind. The leader must foster (even radically) the culture of trust and not just strategies. Team interaction must be right. It is the culture of respect and mutual accountability that “securely” drives performance.

There is this unfortunate example or case study of an internationally renowned organisation that lost trillions of Naira to negative internal competition. Employees became so preoccupied with positioning themselves for promotion (the staircase model) that they neglected competition in the marketplace. Associates and leaders kept themselves busy playing to the gallery instead of fostering competitive advantage for the organisation.

Let me conclude with John Maxwell’s “Window and Mirror Leadership Model.” It says the leader must always look at the window to apportion credit to factors outside himself and look at the mirror to apportion the responsibility of accountability to himself. When the organisation achieves a win, the leader must not fail to commend colleagues.

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