Is Laissez-faire leadership style fair?

#bepresent

#ONETeam #SNAPS #SageandNotableAdvisesfromPatrickSalazar

A high performing Team and Leader need continuous guidance from senior leadership. You must never leave them on their own thinking that since they are great in the past, they’ll automatically be great forever.

I have a Team who’s #1 across all global vendors for 3 years straight. This was not left to chance.

We have strategic planning sessions at the start of each fiscal year. Our business imperatives are anchored on our core values & mission, strategic imperatives of the head office, and, the strategic imperatives of our client. We created work streams led by high performing Team Leaders focused on customer, quality, efficiency, innovation and associates.

My governance model is designed for me to personally check on the weekly performance of the Team and weekly WIG (wildly important goals) sessions of my 5 work streams. I review the performance and new insights that my leaders will discuss during Monthly & Quarterly Business Reviews with my client aside from conducting regular skip level sessions with my frontline leaders and associates before and during Covid-19 lockdowns, plus I have bi-weekly executive connects with my client executive sponsor.

On the second year, my direct report leads all of these activities while I continue to attend and mentor him during our weekly touch points. On the third year, my direct report has mentored two of his leaders following this same model down the line.

I do this in all my accounts.

The opposite model is Laissez-faire leadership style which is good ONLY IF the leaders and the Team are skilled, process experts, matured and has all the training and support coming from YOU as the executive leader.

This means you need to have a high touch, high feel, high trust governance structure.

This means YOU NEED TO BE PRESENT and it’s NEVER an excuse to irresponsibly delegate everything to your leader.

Never think that your #1 leader can manage her/his Team and client alone. Never think s/he wants autonomy and see you less.

On the contrary, you must constantly engage with your #1 leader with “next level” challenges… For example: Site level project responsibilities, help other accounts that are struggling, involve in new business development, and have a solid & sustainable succession plan.

*About the photos

One of the activities during a team building session was for the leader to guide her/his Team who are tied to each other through the maze. Only the leader is standing above the maze and can see everything. The added challenge is there are 3 teams inside the maze and you need to be the first Team out of the maze to win.