Leader Priorities

As leaders, what do we focus on? Typically, results! The challenge for us as leaders is to recognize how our organizations really get those results.

As Steve Bruce points out in his article for hrdailyadvisor.blr.com, it's our employees that drive our results, and happy, engaged employees get us better results. This is just like our ability to keep our businesses going by ensuring that our customers are happy.

Our customers don't have to spend their hard earned money with us; there are many other places they can go. And our employees don't have to work for us; there are many other employers out there.

Leaders need to recognize that they are leading a volunteer workforce. Yes, they may be making a wage for the job they are doing, but there is almost always somewhere else they could go and make a similar wage.

By viewing our workforce as volunteers or as our customers, we focus in on the one area that often suffers in the efforts to drive results, that is a happy, engaging work environment.

Does that mean that we ignore results? Of course not. I think the chance of any experienced leader ignoring results is just about zero. But with the pressures to produce results, the chance that we ignore the work environment is much higher.

So, think of your employees as volunteers or as your customers, and you can have a big impact on the results that they achieve for your business.