As you can tell by my notes this week, I value a great deal the coaching tips Folkman and Zenger provide to folks who are perceived by their team to be ineffective leaders.

The key element to understand is that being the most effective leader you can be starts with the leader believing that there is a path to improvement and intending to behave in a way that is different than before.

1. Communicate more.
2. Be more open.
3. Seek ideas from others and strive to use them.
4. Be a better role model.
5. Pay attention to the environment and act to make it more engaging for the team.

This fits into our goal of becoming leaner as a company. Lean doesn’t happen unless all the teammates are interested in getting better. If all the teammates are invested in getting better, ideas need to be offered, to be heard and to be implemented.

That won’t work without leaders behaving like Folkman and Zenger describe.