By: Maurice Gilbert, Managing Partner of Conselium Executive Search
The most successful leaders I have encountered send clear and consistent messaging to their staff as to how they will lead. Case in point: my boss at GE led his team by focusing on these four things: integrity, building confidence, correcting mistakes and creativity. He was consistent in his messaging to us that he would focus his leadership in these four areas.
Integrity: By being a person of great moral character and transparency, he made it clear that he expected our team to comply with the standard he set.
Building confidence: He was always looking to catch us doing something right and providing us with praise and public accolades. In this way he was reinforcing good behaviors and good performance.
Correcting mistakes: He used our mistakes as teaching tools. It was always done in a constructive way with questions like, what would have been a more desirable outcome? What could you have done differently to achieve the desired outcome?
Creativity: He used questions to stretch our creative muscles such as:
- Where are we positioned against our competition?
- What can we do to provide value-added services to our customer?
- What are the business risks facing us now? Three years from now?
- How can we make our processes more efficient?
No matter what criteria you choose in leading your staff, use clear and consistent messaging to maximize your team’s performance.
Maurice Gilbert is Managing Partner of Conselium Executive Search, which specializes in placing Compliance Officers and Legal Counsel for clients in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. Maurice is also CEO of Corporate Compliance Insights, a worldwide publication devoted to governance, risk and compliance issues. Maurice can be reached at maurice@conselium.com or maurice@corporatecomplianceinsights.com.
