As a leader do you ever feel as though you are moving at astronomical speeds and getting absolutely nowhere?

Well, STOP!

This type of hectic behavior is what I call “tornado leadership.”  It is where leaders tend to spin out of control leaving disaster behind.

Fortunately, this type of behavior is short-lived and so are the leaders who perform in this manner.

But unfortunately, just like a tornado, this leadership style appears all over the place and comes out of nowhere. It is brought about primarily when people do not communicate effectively and when they are not in control of their business. It wreaks havoc wherever it appears and it causes nothing but pain, damage, and a pile of debris.

On Leadership and Listening

I speak to the topics of communication and its effectiveness very often since proper communication is not all too common, everyone wants to have their say and no one wants to listen.

I have had the rebuttal “I listen” brought up to me from leaders that I have worked with so my response is “in your own words what did I communicate” and there is a rare case of understanding.

As a leader you must sit back, observe, and listen in order to have control.

Communication effectiveness is the key to eliminating what causes the tornado effect to spin a team out of control.

Be Wise, Organize!

Tornadoes destroy a path through debris around. Debris with leadership tornadoes is disorganization that leads to high turnover, poor performance, and arguments that destroy business dynamics. Many leaders today can and are ineffective today because they have a limited understanding of followership.

Everyone in a leadership team wants to take charge and no one wants to go along for the ride, which is important to do when you have multiple leaders working together. No leadership team intends to clash with one another, but it easily occurs without warning.

Awareness of everyone in a leadership team and a strong united front can create clear skies for a long time.

Listening Your Way to Prosperity

Within the leadership team everyone should have the chance to take lead in unique situations, but never can a leadership team have every individual lead at the same time as it increased the debris due to mixed signals to those your team is leading.

This path of destruction can be very costly to an organization, but can be easily avoided by communicating with one another. I cannot emphasize this enough “communication is 95% listening and understanding and 5% speaking.”

Watch out for the stop and go patterns of leadership tornadoes; they may seem to disappear, but may resurface any time the leadership team dynamics shift. This is something I have observed quite frequently in my career; unlike weather pattern tornadoes, leadership tornadoes can be prevented and stopped.

Leaders must be aware of the how their team can spin out of control and take preventive measures.

Even though every team is unique in their own way and the dynamics of the team will be different in every case there is one way to effectively prevent leadership team tornadoes; the way to do this is effective communication: communication is 95%listening and understanding and 5% speaking.

Avoid becoming that leadership team that is stuck in “tornado alley.”  Listen to each other, truly understand one another (don’t just hear, understand): Communicate effectively!

Have you as a leader every experienced the “tornado leadership effect”, what was done to control it? Under-performing leaders can be a major cause to “tornado leadership”, do you think strong leaders can avoid disaster when a poor performer is doomed to never improve? Why or why not? What is the main cause for lack of followership by leaders in your opinion?

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Michael R Stanford is Doctoral Learner at UOP
He does occasional motivational speaking for community colleges
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Image Source: blog.hreonline.com

Filed under: Authentic Leadership, Coaching Corner, Emotionally Intelligent Leadership, Leadership Lessons Learned, Leading & Developing Other Leaders, Leading Change, Professional Development, Team Building Leadership | Tagged: communication, followership, leadership, leadership teams, leading others, team dynamics | 5 Comments »