One thing that hin­ders our abil­ity to increase our lead­er­ship capac­ity is a lack of clar­ity. This lack of clar­ity can show itself in so many ways. We can lack clar­ity on our company’s pur­pose, our pri­mary prod­ucts, our key dif­fer­en­tia­tors, who on our teams are best equipped to do what, where our strate­gic wins can be found, what plans we may have com­mit­ted to in times past and who is doing what and when in order for us to exe­cute with excel­lence. Some­times lead­ers even have a lack of clar­ity around why in the heck they started lead­ing this thing at some point in the past. Just typ­ing this causes me angst! Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity. Click here for the pre­vi­ous step.

Now I don’t think that all lead­ers are strug­gling with con­fu­sion around every­thing I just listed, but I do know that I, along with many busi­ness lead­ers I have coached over the years, have found them­selves not lead­ing with excel­lence because we have lacked clar­ity on at least one of them at some point.

So what can you do if you find your­self stuck with very lit­tle time, energy and clar­ity as to how to build your and your team’s lead­er­ship capac­ity? Here are four spe­cific musts do’s that can absolutely increase your level of pas­sion and your direc­tion which will enable you to con­tinue to grow your capac­ity.

1. Take a good look at your Busi­ness Vision. As you read it, are you find­ing your­self excited and com­pelled to con­tinue push­ing for­ward and giv­ing your all to the cause? If your vision does not com­pel you, then how can you expect it to com­pel those you lead to stretch and grow?
2. If it com­pels you, the next ques­tion you must ask is this: “can I plan from it?” If you vision is not clear, it will be very dif­fi­cult to build plans and strat­egy from it. Your vision should help you to see who your cus­tomer is, what value you will bring to them, what prob­lem your team, ser­vice or prod­uct will help solve. It should help you to see what your team will become and what you will build at some point in the future.
3. Now look at your Busi­ness Plans for the year and the quar­ter. Your desired out­comes, dis­ci­plines and improve­ments must be very clear. These three things should fit on one page and should truly direct your actions and impact your calendar.
4. And then finally, if you have done the pre­vi­ous three things and are still not see­ing things clearly, you are wise to under­stand that self lead­er­ship always pre­cedes team lead­er­ship. Your chal­lenge might be deeper and big­ger than what is hap­pen­ing voca­tion­ally. You could really ben­e­fit by spend­ing a day review­ing or build­ing your Life Plan. An effec­tive plan is com­pelling and clear in how it directs your think­ing, your actions and ulti­mately your results.

To your con­tin­ued growth,

Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity.
Step 1: Own Your Role
Step 2: Be Healthy
Step 3: 6 Steps to Improve Your Think­ing
Step 4: Be Hun­gry and Humble

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Related posts:

1. 6 Steps to Improve Your Think­ing (Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity Series — Step 3 of 8)
2. Be Hun­gry and Hum­ble (Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity Series — Step 4 of 8)
3. 8 Steps to Increase Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity (Series)
4. Lead­er­ship Moment: Reg­u­lar Review
5. Lead­er­ship Moment: You Need Vision to Plan


Tags: Business Plan, Leadership, Life Planning, Vision

This entry was posted on Friday, January 20th, 2012 at 8:53 am and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.