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Finding Your Leadership Lens: Leading From the Front with Intention
Embracing a Performance Operations Culture to drive your business forward
Graham Peelle
September 25, 2023
Finding Your Leadership Lens: Leading From the Front with Intention
Embracing a Performance Operations Culture to drive your business forward
Clarity in your leadership philosophy
For many leaders, having a leadership philosophy seems pointless, until you need to articulate your own personal leadership philosophy. When I was a newer leader I probably would have agreed, likely saying, I shoot from the hip and that it works, or maybe just not actively thinking about it at all. Also, likely full of over-confidence and naive enough to think I knew everything there was to know about how to lead.
If you already know how you lead, why is it important to document it? It’s a helpful exercise because most of us, as leaders, regardless of level or tenure, don’t have a working framework for our leadership approach. It’s all in our head, or there isn’t one thought out in any way at all. It’s important to document it, because the documentation process forces you to vet out your principles. Documentation of your leadership philosophy supports identifying and scaling culture, confirming or finding core values, and realizing key business principles. Yes, it will change, and that’s okay, and that’s actually a good thing because that’s part of business and it means your business is evolving into a better business.
But even before you get to the transmission of the mindset and practice, it’s first important to gain clarity for yourself. Once you have clarity of your own leadership style and principles you can better understand your non-negotiables as core values and KPIs, your basic principles or business fundamentals, and it provides for the beginnings of a playbook for your organization’s leaders. Your playbook may be more of a reference sheet which is completely fine - again, choose simple over complex, stuffy, overly formal, or unorganized.
Here are some fundamentals I have jotted down as I rethink and build my leadership framework. I’ll take these and others to assemble more of a final applicable working framework.
Keys to leading with a Performance Operations Culture mindset
Care with genuine empathy and understanding
Empowerment - belief in your team and confidence they can accomplish greatness
Intentional allocation of resources
Trust, unless there is a reason to validate, or not trust
Development- coaching and caring truth
Air cover - have their back
Delegation for a purpose and for team development
Tell stories about your work and life experience, and company stories
Authenticity in all we do and say - say what you mean, mean what you say, do what you say, say what you do
Strategy & planning with a purpose
Position your team, and yourself, with working genius principles in mind
Meet profitability expectations or targets by aligning them with the fundamentals of the service - Build profitability in, don’t expect it without structuring your business to maintain it and grow it. Businesses don’t grow profitability without the people, process, and offer to deliver it.
Below are a few red flags or concerns to look for that serve as a notice that you must look a little deeper, a different direction, or in a different way.
Points to look for to adjust your style communications or methods
Team won’t openly share the realities or truth with you
Results are mediocre with mistakes, low productivity, quality issues
Poor allocation of resources, or low profitability
Customer is unhappy
Team is unhappy
Missing internal expectations
You’re doing too much as a leader
Your employees are doing too much individually
Limited or no opportunity for your people
Team members want to get promoted, but they aren’t doing what it takes
These may serve as checkpoints to pause and observe, research, analyze, or reflect a bit about where your business is headed.
What happens when you don’t have a leadership philosophy or attend to leadership priorities?
Justin Wright sums this up well with “10 silent culture killers”, so I’ll include it directly here -
Why have a leadership philosophy?
Was it important enough to build a sales game plan or marketing strategy, or to develop an operations plan, of course. Consider your leadership philosophy as a the fundamental building block to creating the culture you are interested in driving, a culture that promotes your core values and business principles, and ultimately drives your business growth through not only activity and fundamentals, but through the conscious care and behavior of your people. Operating with an intentional approach to your team leadership will help develop a conscious winning attitude and a clear focus on tangible results. You are here for yourself, your team, each other, and for your customer. Never forget, your culture is as good as your last commitment. Build a leadership philosophy or framework that allows you and your managers to develop that winning edge.
Hopefully, this added a little value to your business or your own personal growth and development. Thank you for reading.
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OpCo: The People Ops Blueprint — Operations | People | Culture | Opportunity
If Performance Operations Culture means something to you, or you would like to be notified for future posts on operations leadership, culture, and people related topics from the world of work, make sure you click the 🔔 on my LinkedIn profile page. For additional daily content, check out grahampeelle.com. You can also find additional weekly articles on Medium.
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