In the last article I made mention of going way beyond the paycheck when it comes to knowing what people need to take home from work.

This knowledge serves a dual purpose when it comes to leadership.

The first, and more obvious one, is that if you are able to line up the goals of your organization with the goals of individuals in the organization will be able to “speak the language” of those individuals a lot more easily.

I can’t tell you how many times in my travels I see people “butting heads” as it realates to the effort spent on task performance, when the leaders and the followers want the same thing.
Most often, when the heartfelt goals of the follower are communicated to the leader the “headbutting” vanishes, the effort increases and the goals are achieved more quickly and easily.

This observation begs the question, who’s responsibility is it to communicate these goals, the follower or the leader?

To those of you in leadership this should almost be a rhetorical question.

100% of the time, it is the leader’s responsibility to find out the professional and personal goals of your followers. This knowledge is at the core of the relationship that you have with your follower. The relationship that you have with your follower is at the core of your ability to lead that follower. Your ability to lead in a user friendly fasion will dictate the speed, quality and ease with which any given task is performed. This is called productivity.

The second purpose of knowing and understanding the personal and professional goals of your follower gets to the heart of your organizational culture. In past articles, I mentioned one of the best definitions I’ve ever heard of a culture of an organization is this one. “The aggregate of all of the behaviors of the members of that organization”, we give credit to Lou Tice of the Pacific Institute for that one.

So how does knowing someone’s goals help us create the culture of our organization?

Quite simply put, people will always behave in a manner that will help them achieve their goals. This is a great spot to start tomorrow.

Let’s continue this conversation tomorrow.

As always, let us know what you think.

Curt