Looking Ahead: Bringing Frontline Leaders on the Journey

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about Organisational Leadership Alignment – having all leaders at all levels in the organisation focused on what’s important right now and similarly focused on creating the work environment that energises all employees.

Our clients that genuinely engage their front-line leaders perform well. Those front-line leaders feel valued and that flows through to the teams they lead. Understanding how what you do contributes to the bigger picture, and knowing that your efforts are appreciated, is empowering for any employee, no matter where they sit in the organisation.

But there is more to it than the “here and now”. Senior Leaders that excel in Organisational Leadership Alignment not only create a common understanding of and commitment to what’s important now, they create an aspiration for the organisation that all employees can buy into. There are some important things that people look for from their work over and above the obvious hygiene factors. These include values alignment; an organisation purpose that resonates, appreciation, important work, an opportunity to develop; and a future to be part of.

Organisational Leadership Alignment (OLA) captures all of these things and creates common ownership of them across all leadership cohorts. OLA grants ownership of the future to the people who are driving it. The role of senior leaders becomes to guide, mentor and support.

For anyone with the question in their mind “but what about results?”, don’t worry, this is not a touchy-feely performance free zone. True OLA occurs when everyone, from the front-line to the CEO understands what needs to be delivered and is passionately committed to doing so. However, an organisation that has healthy, aligned leadership will always outperform the machine type organisation built on policy and process.

We have been privileged to work with a few clients who are on the OLA journey. The joy that we see from people at work proves that it pays off. We would love to talk to you about becoming part of the OLA movement.