Leadership principles to drive results – Interview with Gordon Tredgold
Gordon Tredgold, known as the Leaders’ Leader, is passionate about helping and leading people, helping them to achieve their full potential. He created a collection of principles called FAST that can help people achieve results in their leadership practice.
F stands for focus – focusing on goals and giving clear direction. Give people the right focus; when you put them in a position to be successful, then we’ll all be successful. Otherwise we have to spend all day every day trying to push them over the finishing line. People like to be led – they don’t like to be managed.
Accountability is the second principle. It is about letting your people know what their role and responsibility is, giving them positive feedback as they do well, or giving them support if they do not. Show others that you’re going to be accountable, that you will accept your position. When you do that your people will also follow suit and be accountable.
Simplicity is a key component. You need to communicate simply, even though we have a natural tendency to over-complicate things. Simplicity is magical. Simple plans that people can understand are paramount – they bring belief and confidence to our teams, and belief is the difference between success and failure.
Last but not least, transparency. This is about visibility toward progress. When you’ve got great visibility and people can see you’re doing well, that motivates them to keep going. Leadership is all about the team and how we, as leaders, prepare them, give them the tools, put them in a position to be successful and inspire them. “No trust, no inspiration; it’s as simple as that. As leaders we need to inspire and engage our teams to get the best out of them, and that has to be on a solid bedrock of trust.”
Being a leader is not just a Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 job – says Tredgold. Leaders have to be leaders 24/7. “Do as I do, not do as I say” is important in leadership as well. If we only hold people accountable and don’t hold ourselves accountable, that generates a culture more of blame than accountability.
To find out more about FAST leadership and Gordon Tredgold’s thoughts on leadership, hear about his experiences as a leader, coach and consultant, watch the interview above.
Gordon Tredgold is an internationally recognized Leadership Expert, Coach, Consultant and Trainer. He inspires leaders to develop engaged teams with clear plans so they can revolutionize their results. Focusing on turnarounds, operational excellence, transformational change and strategic implementation, Gordon is passionate about identifying simple methodologies that are able to be quickly implemented, and that generate immediate benefits for people and companies.
With a particular expertise in Driving Change, Service Delivery, and a variety of core business competencies, Gordon is the authority on getting F.A.S.T. results. His nearly thirty years of expertise, work experience on three continents, and leading global teams and careers with billion dollar companies such as Henkel, Deutsche Post DHL and Cable and Wireless, have won him worldwide accolades and the distinguished honor of being recognized as the Number One Leadership Expert to follow on Twitter.
Heralded in Inc. Magazine as one of the top 100 Leadership and Management Experts and Speakers, Gordon is also ranked #2 on the Top 15 Must Read Leadership Blogs and #4 on the Top 50 Most Socially Shared Leadership Blogs. He is also a Visiting Professor at Staffordshire University, a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management and a member of the National Speaker’s Association. His book FAST is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. Find out more at: http://www.gordontredgold.com/
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