How Good Leaders Increase Employee Productivity and Passion in the Workplace
“When business owners focus solely on profitability, work becomes a noun instead of a verb.” – John Boggs
According to a study done by Gallup, the average employee in the United States produces less than 90 minutes of actual productivity in an eight-hour day.
In another study by Gallup, over 1,000 leaders and top executives were asked to rate their own leadership skills.
The results showed that 87% of those surveyed rated themselves as at least average or above average in their leadership.
Gallup also surveyed over 1,000 employees working for those leaders and asked them to rate the effectiveness of the leadership where they worked.
Shockingly, only 17% of those people felt like their companies had effective leadership.
So this begs the question: Why is there such a gap between the way that leaders think they’re leading and the way employees see their leadership?
We have an opportunity to make a difference in the work we do in the world – and it starts with self leadership.
Self leadership starts with you
In many companies, it’s simply not enough to rely on the people in leadership positions to instill a sense of passion and excitement within you.
The bottom line: You must lead yourself.
But how can you tell if you’re leading yourself effectively?
Although I encourage you to answer this question for yourself, here are a couple ideas that came from two certified Brave Thinking Institute coaches:
“I know that I’m effectively leading myself when I wake up in the morning excited about what I’m going do that day.” “I know that I’m practicing great leadership when, at the end of the day, I see that the things that I had planned for that day actually got done. And while I was working that day, time flew by.”
So, whether you’re the leader of a big team or a solopreneur, what’s one way you believe you can effectively lead yourself in the direction of what you want to create?
When passionate businesses turn into money-making machines
Every business starts out as an idea – something that someone dreams of creating and building.
From Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company, to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, co-founders of Apple, great businesses begin in the mind.
Over time, it’s common for many top business owners and executives to stop focusing on what inspires them and instead, focus mostly on making money.
The leadership that’s hired at this point is encouraged to focus on the profitability and the process, instead of the deeper reason behind what they do.
When this happens, work becomes a noun instead of a verb.
For example, employees say,
“I go to work,”
instead of,
“I’m working on this project because I love it.”
The result of this lack of passion and inspiration is extremely low engagement in business today. So here’s a question for you:
Are you inspired and motivated to grow in your current career? How often would you say you’re fully engaged in what you’re doing throughout your work day?
Or are you feeling called for a change because you don’t love what you do anymore?
Many of us have the tendency to shut down when we can’t see beyond what we know how to do, or when we can’t see a way to attain what we want.
But the limiting, “I don’t know how to do that,” mindset is what keeps us stuck in the same patterns, creating the same results for ourselves, over and over.
Uncovering what you’d love to do with your life
One way to move closer toward feeling more fulfilled in the work you do in the world is to begin sourcing ideas for how to turn your vision of what you would love into reality.
True self leadership starts with envisioning what you’d love and writing down every idea that comes to you for how to get from where you are right now, to where you want to be – doing work every day that brings you joy.
Let the ideas flow and write them all down, rather than trying to edit your thoughts, and then once you’re done, review all of your ideas to see which ones you can start actually putting into action!
By writing down what you’d love, you engage in the increasingly rare, and therefore valuable, practice of candid self reflection.
Would you love to develop self leadership while building a highly successful coaching business?
Life coaching is an amazing way to discover how to lead – both yourself and others – to success.
The problem is that average life coaches earn just $33,454 per year.
And the reason they earn so little is because they make a very common mistake that not only stunts the growth of their businesses, it also holds them back from helping all of the people they were put here on this earth to help!
To find out what this mistake is, and how you can avoid it, I invite you to watch this short video from Brave Thinking Institute Founder, Mary Morrissey.
In the video, you’ll also discover Mary’s #1 most powerful “coaching catapult secret” that (if you apply it) will empower you to build a highly-successful, difference-making life coaching business without all of the hard work and struggle – no matter your age or background!
