Describe your personal leadership model
Do you have a personal leadership model – or do you manage every which way?
You are familiar with the term ”project management model”. The effect of the model is better quality, a common language and a fundament groundwork when in doubt. In the book Touch Points, Conant & Nørgaard describes how to develop your own personal leadership model, enabling you to react swiftly and consistently to daily interruptions.
When your approach, your instructions and your decisions are consistent your project participants know how you will react. In time they won’t need to ask you but will be able to act according to your management model. It makes them more independent and offers you more time.
This requires that you know your project participants and what motivates them. It necessitates that you have a leadership code:
- What makes people give their very best?
- Why do you want to lead?
- What is your code?
It may seem a bit abstract but my management code for example goes like this:
My motivation assumptions: The project has to make sense each individual. Everybody needs appreciation socially as well as professionally. Apt challenges and development possibilities professionally and personally. Responsibility for their own work.
Why do I want to lead? I want to help other people develop and become free human beings who choose their own future.
My management code: It is essential that the customer experiences high quality in the professional process and deliverables. Customer approach is appreciative with respect and presence but also with professional edge and integrity.
Essential challenges in this project: If the project is pressed for time you can choose time-saving solutions in all touch points. If quality is the most important factor the focus will be on whether solutions have been tested, the relevant stakeholders have been asked etc. If the project is of an innovative kind, always require multiple solution proposals from the participants etc.
“Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better” Bill Bradley
