My Leaders Are Fubsy and Out of Shape

Hanna Clunk • February 18, 2021

Turn your unhealthy work habits around! Invest in team & leader development.


A few years ago I worked with a client who had several managers consistently demonstrating “unhealthy” work habits. While they weren’t completely abrasive, they were definitely self-focused, overly critical of team members and unskilled at setting expectations and holding team members accountable. The company had high turnover, a toxic culture and quality issues that all led to poor financial performance. 

 

Instead of addressing the issue, the company made significant investments in sales and marketing to attract new customers. However, the company didn’t have experienced employees who were able to convert new leads into new business. When new customers were secured, their reputation for delivering poor service resulted in a need to sell services at a low margin. In addition, recurring quality issues resulted in issuing credits and refunds to customers.

 

Although the business owner was aware of the problem with leaders, he didn’t focus on improving their performance. Instead, the executive chose to invest in new sales strategies, programs to improve operational efficiency and a new ERP system.  He thought these “strategic” investments would solve the problem and he would be able to ignore the issues that existed with leaders and team performance. 

 

The business owner could have addressed the leader performance issues by taking three straight-forward approaches:

 

  1. Identify the healthy behaviors that needed to be demonstrated more consistently. Through a basic consultation from a professional, the business owner could have determined the 3-5 most important behaviors that would have led to an improvement to culture and team performance.
  2. Conduct an objective assessment of the leaders.  By selecting the right personality assessment, 360 assessment tool and Emotional Intelligent assessment, the business owner could have accurately identified the most critical behaviors that needed addressed.
  3. Provide coaching and feedback based on the assessment. A leader may not understand how to demonstrate the healthy behaviors needed to generate business results. A leadership coach could have provided examples of how to model behaviors to improve the performance of the leaders and team members. 

 

Nobody is perfect and every business has a leader who is at least a little “Out of Shape”. These unhealthy leaders cause the organization to experience unexpected pains, chronic issues and long-term consequences that impact the organization’s culture. Investing in new systems, processes and strategies will not yield the desired benefit if the leaders are not able to run the business and successfully implement new initiatives.

 

Are you noticing unhealthy team and leader issues within your business?


Don’t ignore those unhealthy habits. Get your leaders to the gym and help them adopt healthier habits that will lead to stronger performance for the organization.

Are you noticing unhealthy team & leader issues within your business?  Learn more here and get in touch for your team's assessments! 

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