Are leaders born or created? Can anyone be trained to be a better leader? We'd like to think so. After many years experience with hundreds of leaders at all levels in organisations I firmly believe that there are only two essential ingredients to become a successful leader: Self awareness and a desire to develop and improve. Of course there are heaps of skills, experience and even natural traits and styles which may help, but without these two things many leaders with high potential fail to make the grade. I am continually impressed by leaders who on the surface don't appear to be 'natural leaders', yet step up and develop. Perhaps implicit in these two essential traits is humility. Only when we can keep our ego in check can we listen and accept feedback openly and then use it to develop.

At a recent LeadChange session, the Executive team hosting the day overwhelmingly agreed that if they could get teams to work together more effectively, they could save up to 30% in costs as well as improve production and increase revenue.

What are these hidden costs and lost opportunities?

duplicated resourcesefforts working against each other and pulling in opposite directionstime spent on office politics, rumours and avoiding accountabilitymisunderstanding what other teams do

How can hosting a team alignment day reduce costs?

your teams will be more efficientduplication can be removed or lessenedshare ideas and pool resourceslook to help rather than blame when things go wrongensure everyone is working to common broader goals.

Who will benefit?

Departments, functions, project teams, divisions or even teams within teams.

This is Indie. Indie, like most dogs, hates change. Sometimes people in organisations can be like Indie - resistant to change and happiest with existing ways of doing things.

But even 2,500 years ago clear thinking people (Heraclitus actually) knew that 'the only thing that is constant is change'. Sorry Indie and all those who hate change - it's coming. And organisational change is a given too. How do you help your people move with the changes in your business or surrounding environment?

LeadChange can help you. Techniques include clearly communicating change, helping everyone to understand the roles of different players and clarifying accountabilities and roles. We also can provide suggestions for a plethora of subtle and not-so-subtle methods to encourage behaviour change.

Helping you lead an organisation through change is what we do. Training Indie not to bark at the delivery guy, well...we are still working on that.