In a rapidly growing organization it is usually pretty hard to pay attention to the development needs of your team. Yet if you want to continue to grow quickly, that is exactly what you have to do. I am not talking about training on PowerPoint or your time tracking system. I am talking about developing a community of leaders – easily said, not so easy to do.
A community of leaders speaks their mind, provides expertise, has confidence in their decisions and listens to each other. A community of leaders is as comfortable with situational leadership as they are with formal reporting structures. A community of leaders enjoys the creative energy that arises from differing perspectives and is constantly looking for ways to improve the environment and learn from an experience. It is energized by challenges and directed by success.
In order to develop a community of leaders, you need a few foundational components that should be considered essential to your organization’s growth and success.

• RESPECT: You must create an environment of mutual respect. This doesn’t mean you can’t disagree or generate conflict. It just means you have to do it respectfully. At the end of a discussion, you can agree to disagree but you don’t want ill will building up and tainting future discussions and skewing creative thought processes.

• TRUST: We’ll talk more about this in another posting but you can imagine how trust impacts innovative environments where teams make decisions about risk. In a “no-trust” environment, there is no incentive to take risks and innovation is significantly hampered and leadership opportunities are thwarted. In a “high-trust” environment, team members are aware of the safety net of support that the organization is providing and are encouraged to find creative solutions to complicated problems.

• COLLABORATION: In a collaborative environment, potential leaders are exposed to different perspectives, different challenges and different thought processes. If they aren’t encouraged to speak up and participate or they don’t think their input is valued, all of the benefits disappear. Collaborative activities can take many forms and can be straightforward or complex. From developing a meeting agenda to developing a product development strategy, the more you do it, the better you become at it. And, generally speaking, the more successful your organization will be.

When leaders and potential leaders have the privilege to work in a respectful environment where team members are treated as experts in their field (and given responsibility AND accountability), where teams are provided with opportunities to collaborate at various levels, working through challenges and celebrating success…that’s when great things happen. A community of leaders may be rare, but it is clearly attainable and totally worth the effort.