Leading with Heart: Understanding

Why do leaders need to understand people’s needs?

~ Leaders who lack understanding, lose clarity

• Why is it important for leaders is to understand?
• Why should leaders understand what the employees are going through with the projects and tasks their managers are asking them to do?
• Leaders need to understand the types of problems regarding decisions being made and the ramification of those decisions that are being made by Management?
• Have you, as a Leader, taken the time to speak with the people performing the work? Do you, the Leader know their needs and wants?

Transparency must be achieved by leaders and to do that understanding is required. The Leader understanding their employee’s needs will achieve improvement with their team’s ability to accomplish tasks, trust will grow, and overall gratification will increase because people will have more confidence that they are part of the plan and the tasks. They will feel important, they matter!

Most believe that understanding employee’s needs and wants, and obtaining transparency are obvious, however, they are not, just as loyalty is not. This is where an Executive Coach can assist a Leader. Executive Coaching can help you to learn how to uncover what might be missing in your group or organization.

What can unfold, once your understanding increases is amazing, such as:

• Momentum keeps moving forward toward shared and desired goals. The people you employ will have a sense of ownership –they know what the goal is and together they will work on it.
• Reaching these goals can create a sense of success among group members.
• This sense of success (that each member will and should feel) will strengthen individuals’ connections with the group and this will likely ensure success in future efforts.
• The group morale will stay high.
• Reinforcement of the group members’ belief in the leader will strengthen, thus trust will build, as will loyalty. A leader who has shown he understands and tries to meet the needs of the members of his group is more than likely to have a group that will try to meet his needs as well. This is a win, win situation.

HOW CAN A LEADER BEST UNDERSTAND PEOPLE’S NEEDS?

 

This is where your executive coach comes in. It’s a process for the coach to understand you, and for you to want to learn. There are several methods a coach can use for a leader to understand the needs of individuals, the organization, and the larger community. The general idea behind them all is to find the right tool, which the Coach will decide, and for the leader to plan the best ways of collecting feedback, and then to make this a habit and normal part of their life, inside and outside of the organization.

Through data gathering, with the help of the coach and the leader, and those that support them, a lot of information is processed, and this will aid in the leader learning what employees want and need. Again, it is a process. You must have trust from your employees to get “real” information. Your staff needs to feel there is a real possibility that some good change will happen if they tell the leader what they need. People cannot be scared, to be honest, or they will not share their wants and needs.

The entire process does not happen overnight, it is a thorough and continual effort by the leader. Trust once again is central to the process; the leader needs to establish and commit to a trusting organizational climate. Unless the leader is trusted, no method will work. But in an environment built on trust, employees will be more willing, to be honest, and open. They often do so spontaneously and at many noninstitutionalized times and places –whether you have asked for their feedback or not!

Your leadership skills are vital to your success and the organization’s growth.

 

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein