I was asked just recently to come up with a by-line to use for a presentation that I am giving to business owners. The presentation is focused on leadership and mentoring and I wanted to make sure that I captured the essence of the message that I wanted to convey. The title of this article jumped out at me as a great by-line.

I have been party of a number of conversations the past couple of weeks and the topic has been about employees in organizations. What is definitely standing out for me is that we have a large majority of organizations that view their employees as commodities. They use them and abuse them and then cast them aside when they are presumably of no value to them anymore. Perhaps through some bad leadership the organization is not where everyone thought it would be so the axe must fall and people have to go. Unfortunately the letting go part was done in a not so respectful manner – once again demonstrating that these employees were not a valued asset but more so commodity. So what was in their leadership tool box that caused this unhappy ending or perhaps what was not in the tool box! Leaders of organizations need to realize what their most valued asset is and they need to demonstrate that to their people. If you think of any major merger or acquisition or downsizing event the one thing that will help you better survive those challenges are your people. You need to look in the tool box to make sure that you have the right skill sets to lead your people.

I heard of an organization that has the sole purpose of its management team to catch employees doing things wrong and then to discipline them. There is nothing in place that talks about creating a learning and development environment where errors in judgement are used as learning situations for the betterment of the employee. How great would it be to know that if you make a mistake that you are going to be encouraged to learn from it and put things in place to make sure that it does not happen again? I would suggest that we need to look in the entire management team’s tool box to see what is missing as far as leadership skills.

Lack of leadership skills will eventually lead to disengaged employees in the workplace. Going all out and giving the 100% or 110% as we sometimes state just won’t happen. I recall situations where employees were chastised for taking the initiative to make changes. You can sometimes deal with that if it is done respectfully but when it is done via email and with 10,000 people being copied on the message then it does have an effect. Typically the effect is disengagement. It is better to wait to be told what to do rather than incur the wrath of your supervisor. What tools are missing from this tool box?

You can develop leaderships skills that are more people focused.  The level to which you grow as a leadership is dependent on a number of things. Great leaders are born in my humble opinion. Good leaders can be developed over time. This is where you need to implement mentoring techniques in your leadership development program. The article we posted just recently demonstrates the correlation between transformational leadership, servant leadership and mentoring. You will of course use a number of leadership styles dependent on the situation but leadership for the future will definitely be focused on transformational and servant leadership. This is most definitely the style that appeals to young professionals that will become our future leaders for tomorrow. They have clearly stated that they want to be mentored not managed. Transformational and servant leadership fit that model quite nicely.

When you go to work tomorrow, check your tool box to see what leadership skills you have. Ask yourself do you see your people as a valued asset or as a commodity. Do you want to change your leadership style to one that will create a legacy that you can be proud of or do you wish to be the leader that they have a farewell party for after you leave!

Your leadership development program needs to have the mentoring component as a part of its success story. You really do need to embrace the “power of mentoring”. Can you afford not to?

References:

1. http://talentc.ca/index.php/2013/mentoring-servant-leadership-and-transformational-leadership/

2. Blanchard, Ken. 2007. Leading at a Higher Level. New Jersey: Prentice Hall