7 indispensable habits to increase your leadership performance

Create a high-performance organisation with seven good habits you may have overlooked.

According to the seminal book Why Businesses Fail by Tuck Business School professor Sydney Finkelstein, ineffective management can be traced to a few bad habits.
 
In order to create a high-performance organisation, adopt these seven positive habits to help breathe new life into your companies. These include:

Holding a vision that not only guides a company in direction, but also provides a purpose for employees to follow the outlined path.
Leaders should paint a picture of the future they want for an organisation, and consistently reinforce this compelling image to their workers.

Communicating goals clearly and explicitly.
24% of employees in low-performance organisations cannot easily reference their company’s goals, as opposed to 54% of employees in high-performance counterparts. You should ensure that company objectives are clearly expressed and cascaded down to every level of worker.

Investing in people development.
Continuously strive to bring out the best in your workforce, and settle for nothing less.

Creating a culture of recognition.
Many workers become burned out or disengaged when their work goes unnoticed, so it’s beneficial to express your gratitude for achievements.

Caring about workers, and meaning it.
Employees know when their managers have their best interests at heart, and will respond accordingly with respect and high performance.

Listening to customer needs and being receptive to their concerns.
Never assume to know what the preferences are of your consumer base. Good leaders will be open to suggestions and feedback.

Striving for continuous improvement.
While it’s easy to fall into routines, systems and processes quickly become outdated and costly to maintain. High-performing leaders are always on the lookout for cheaper and easier ways of conducting business.
 
It’s worthwhile to note that these seven habits need to be adopted comprehensively, and executed on a regular, daily basis.
 
“Your ultimate aim is to embed them so deeply into your company’s culture and DNA that they become its way of life,” said Nicholas S Barnett, CEO of Insync surveys. “The research shows that all the habits are indispensable to the achievement of high performance.”

This article originally appeared on HC Online.