Leadership People Skills: Seek Consistency Not Uniformity #peopleskills
by Kate Nasser | 8 Comments »
Leadership People Skills: Consistent High Quality Outshines Uniformity
I teach that the challenge of excellence is consistency. It is very interesting to me that leaders sometimes interpret this as uniformity. There is a big difference!
Leadership People Skills: Seek Consistency Not Uniformity
Consistency for excellence requires adapting to people and situations. The goal is an excellent outcome each time. The path is far from uniform. Uniformity is sameness. It assumes that the same path will produce an excellent result regardless of the people and situations.
Great leadership seeks excellent results through outstanding interactions!
Great leadership people skills use diversity to achieve this.
Uniformity feels secure. It is quite risky!
- It alienates personality types different from yours. This reduces collaboration, employee engagement, and the results you could achieve by diverse approaches.
- It stops you from delivering superior customer experience. Customers expect ease and flexibility not your uniform rules and regulations they must follow.
- When you must lead change in your organization, a culture of uniformity slows change. You might think if would speed change as everyone falls into line. People who work in and through diversity every day are practicing their change ability. This helps you lead change!
Leadership People Skills – 3 Temptations for Uniformity
In this 3 min leadership people skills video, I offer 3 reasons why leaders and managers are tempted to seek uniformity. This awareness provides you a better path. Add your thoughts in the comments section below!
Don’t let your leadership people skills be trapped by the comfort of uniformity. Seek consistently excellent results through diverse paths, people, and talents. Results through employee engagement and with customers will soar!
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
Related Post:
Leadership People Skills: Achieve Vision Through Values Not Ultimatums
Leadership, 5 Simple Moves to Engage Employees
©2013 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results. Kate also invites you to connect with her on Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter. She welcomes your interaction!
Kate – great post and video. You touched on a major difference between Management and Leadership. Management can seek uniformity in operations but leadership is about people. They realize that getting to excellence consistently is important yet there are many ways to get there.
Interesting point you make here Tom — management vs leadership. It seems when the lines blur, leaders/managers start treating people as operations that can be standardized. Needless to say it fails as the it flies in the face of reality.
Many thanks for your perspective here!
Kate
You consistently measure up when presenting such tiny little differences 🙂
Nice to see you again in a clip 🙂
Khalid
Thank you Khalid. Little differences make a big impact on results.
Kate
Hi Kate. Thanks for highlighting one of the big misconceptions of Leadership. Consistency is NOT uniformity. Customer requirements are different. What works for one doesn’t work for another. Uniformity in Customer service excellence is the goal, giving every customer a uniform service is a different thing entirely. I was classified near sighted when young and have worn glasses since I was 7 years old to correct that. My optical prescription, even though classified as near sighted is, like everyone else’s, specific. I cant just put on a pair of glasses for near sightedness. Unfortunately, many leaders and companies think a uniform response will work every time, but that only goes to show THEIR near-sightedness. Consistency is delivering customer satisfaction every time. You are SO on the money with this post and it’s great to get these videos too to see the wisdom and passion as you deliver. Great job. Dave
Wonderful imagery Dave. The very concept of a prescription being different for people all classified with the same problem (e.g. nearsightedness).
Thank you so very much for a practical example of a very common yet unaddressed leadership skew.
Kate
A fantastic topic Kate and you bring out some crucial and relevant points. Uniformity constrains growth and promotes mediocrity. Leadership is about empowering people, inspiring and motivating people. And not about control and command.
Well written Kate.
Many thanks Lalita. Love your summary and clear statement “uniformity constrains growth ..”.
Grateful for your contribution to this important yet often unaddressed topic.
Kate