What really matters in leadership right now

Here's a tricky question in leadership, but one that is extremely important: How much of your time do you really spend on effective leadership and how much time on other topics?

In any case, I almost universally hear from my coaching clients that they don't have enough time for their leadership responsibilities. The day-to-day business takes priority most of the time. I call this condition "leadership treadmill" and unfortunately, I see it far too often.

And it's not just my perception. The burden increases not only because of spatial separation, but also because the environment is changing ever faster and we have to react ever more quickly.

Now, for the crucial question: how do you notice that you are stuck on the treadmill?

Here are some points, any one of which is already a strong indicator that you should change something:

1. You constantly have too many balls in the air. There is hardly any time to prioritize wisely. Almost everything is urgent and many things are important.
2. Many of your employees take too little personal responsibility. You often cannot fully rely on their results.
3. There is too little initiative coming from your team. You feel you have to keep pushing the cart.
4. You invest too little energy in the sustainable development of your team.
5. You have too many and too long meetings with too few resounding results.
6. At the end of the day, you often wonder what you actually accomplished.
7. You come home exhausted and sometimes work evenings and weekends.
8. You take too little time for your own personal development.
9. Too often, you don't really enjoy the whole thing anymore. You constantly feel under pressure.

If even a single one of these points applies, then you are letting enormous potential in leadership slip through the cracks.

And even worse: your team will not perform as well as it could. Over time, you will burn yourself out. Or you will be treading water.

You can either continue to operate the treadmill - or break out of it. That is your sole responsibility. 

What is particularly important in this process? Here are some key points:

• Foundations. It all starts with your beliefs, whether you like it or not. You yourself shape your world and your perception of it. If you want to make lasting changes to your leadership or the way your team works, you have to work on your beliefs. The good news is that this is possible, but it almost always requires reflection from the outside.
• Self-leadership. You need to excel at leading yourself as the president of your own life. This is where there is almost always tremendous potential. This includes things like clarity of situations and goals, productivity, decisiveness, habit change, and more. Improving self-leadership needs a clear roadmap.
• Team Leadership. On the foundations of points 1 and 2, you can systematically bring your team to a new level, with significantly increased responsibility, more performance, more fun and strong self-leadership of each individual.

It is important to work systematically on all three points. This is what is often missing.

As one who has helped dozens of leaders of all kinds of industries and company sizes get to a whole new level in leadership, I know what really matters if you want to improve sustainably.

You can achieve a state I call winning team leadership. Your days are highly productive, you feel in full control of your priorities, you have enough time to develop your people and otherwise take care of mainly strategic issues as well as your own growth. Your employees take more responsibility, drive important issues fully independently and create more and more successes. You yourself are more relaxed and can fully switch off during evenings and weekends.

If you want to continue to operate the treadmill, keep doing what you're doing.

If you want to break out, click ➔ here to see what I can do for you.

Here's to your success!