Lead from the balcony to manage employees

Much has changed in recent years. The best ways to run a sustainable business have also changed. Successfully managing change will be your competitive advantage. Every bookcase or library shelf has a large number of leading from theoretical to practical and everything in between. Find a book on leadership by slightly shifting gears on how to lead from a different perspective. This will help you tremendously, especially if you are thinking about making your organization more efficient and effective, but don’t know where or how to start.

While not everyone is cut out to be a leader, not everyone can or wants to be a follower all the time. It is often the combination of the smartest, most effective, and most efficient way to build and maintain your business, team, and productivity. Orchestrating your leadership and how your employees complete their daily work, you may need a few

Leaders must identify whether a change they are introducing primarily requires technical expertise or represents a deeper adaptive challenge. The key to success is correctly identifying the type of challenge leaders face and then proceeding to orchestrate change based on whether the type of change they face is a technical or adaptive challenge.

Ron Heifetz, a Harvard University professor and author of Leadership Without Easy Answers (1998), notes that leaders periodically need to get off the dance floor and onto the balcony. By doing so, you can see the patterns and flow of your employees working better than when they are in front of you.

Heifetz believes that leaders should “get up on the balcony” regularly and have a different perspective on everything that is happening. You can also see who is dancing well and who is struggling.

In their book, “Leadership on the Line,” authors Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky offer a practical solution to “get off the dance floor (daily operations) and onto the balcony.”

When growing or leading your business, it is important to take the time to consider where you want to be and what is changing around you, rather than always being bogged down (with) the details. Applying the metaphor of “getting off the dance floor”, spend less time dancing and more time looking at the dancers from the balcony to assess if there is a better way to do things. On the dance floor, you can find yourself in action, consumed with the day-to-day running of your business. On the “Balcony”, you can step back into the details and have a clearer and more strategic view of what is happening in your business. Spending time on the Balcony is important so you can see what you need to do to grow or lead your business.

Go back to the dance if you want to affect what is happening. Staying on the balcony for short periods of time to give it a different perspective is great.

Position your people so that you can provide comments, opinions, and suggestions without fear of being intimidated or ignored. Provide regular opportunities to hear what they think, feel, and how they respond to current trends and issues affecting their work.

Many leaders modify their behaviors based on the responses of their employees. A masterful leader understands that his leadership is a work in progress and that his ability to manage and lead depends on many factors and situations. Continuous monitoring and confirmation with observations and feelings from others is a good barometer for leaders.

Leaders who develop and practice emotional intelligence seek feedback when it comes to behaviors and attitudes, they may find that they actually get it by responding to improvements.

The notion that leadership means “I know where we are going, just follow me”; o “I’ll bring in the best experts then follow along” is clearly inappropriate for adaptive contexts and puts enormous pressure on people in authority to falsify and provide quick technical fixes that tend to avoid the bigger questions.

Having a balcony perspective is difficult, especially when you’ve been leading from below. When you walk away, take a step back and you will see the big picture. Sometimes it is complicated by various factors.