The Leadership Reset You Need for the New Year

When the calendar turns, it’s tempting to set new goals and resolutions. But what if the new year calls for something deeper? Is it time for a leadership reset?

With a leadership reset, you can step back, cut through the noise, and refocus on what matters most: the most high-leverage actions that move the needle most. It’s about shifting from busyness to impact. From reacting to leading with intention.

Here we show you how to reset your leadership for the year ahead so you can lead with greater clarity, energy, and effectiveness. Your leadership reset should include focusing on the following 12 high-leverage activities.

 

1. The Excellence Imperative

Make sure your organization has high standards for performance—and that it meets them consistently. Are you achieving exceptional results for all relevant stakeholders? Do people know what’s expected of them? And is there accountability when people fall short? (Resource: “Leadership and the Excellence Imperative.”)

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”
-Vince Lombardi, legendary football coach

 

2. The Ethical Imperative

Make sure your organization is committed to getting results the right way—with integrity. Are you doing the right thing—even when it’s costly or hard? Is it crystal clear to everyone that character, honesty, integrity, and trust are non-negotiable? Are there consequences when people violate the shared values? (Resource: “Leadership and the Ethics Imperative.”)

“Integrity is the most important characteristic of a leader,
and one that he or she must be prepared to demonstrate again and again.”
-Warren Bennis, leadership scholar

 

3. The Sustainability Imperative

Make sure your organization is committed to getting results sustainably. That means getting results not just ethically but also over time. It also means ensuring appropriate and sustainable levels of resource consumption, while minimizing harm to others. And it means sustaining people (not burning them out or otherwise abusing them)—including yourself—and maintaining the financial health of the organization. Are you building not just great products and services but also a great organization that will stand the test of time? (Resource: “Leadership for the Long Haul—The Endurance Imperative.”)

“All the incentives in any organization always run to the short term….
It’s really important for somebody to keep their eye on the prize.”
-Billy and Debbie Shore, co-founders, Share Our Strength

 

4. Hiring Great People

Make sure you have a robust process for screening and hiring people—and that everyone knows how important it is to hire great people. Ensure people are recruiting for not just “head” elements like knowledge and technical skills but also “heart” elements like courage, resilience, passion for the purpose, character, and emotional intelligence. (Resource: “How Great Leaders Recruit People with Heart.”)

“If you can get only one thing right, it’s recruiting. You need to find excellent people who are a good fit and outstanding in their fields. Everything else is secondary.” -Andreas Ehn, former CTO, Spotify

 

5. Training and Developing People

Make training and developing your people a core leadership function and discipline, not an afterthought. Invest in building their skills, judgment, and confidence. Give them real opportunities to apply what they’ve learned, including stretch assignments with support and coaching.

When you develop people well, you multiply your impact as a leader while building a stronger and more capable organization. Many workers are hungry for opportunities to learn and develop, and they reward such investments with greater effort and loyalty. (Resource: “Great Leaders Develop People Intentionally.”)

“If businesses managed their money as carelessly as they manage their people, most would be bankrupt…. (Most companies) don’t have any comparable processes for developing leaders or even pinpointing which ones to develop.” -Ram Charan and Bill Conaty, The Talent Masters

 

6. Recognizing and Rewarding People

Be intentional and proactive about recognizing and rewarding people for the contributions they make. Notice what’s working and reinforce it consistently—both publicly and privately. When you recognize people genuinely and thoughtfully, you build motivation, influence behavior, and build trust and loyalty. Many workers are hungry for more recognition and feedback—and frustrated by being taken for granted. Show them that you value them. (Resource: “How Great Leaders Reward, Recognize, and Celebrate People.”)

“The deepest hunger of the human soul is to be recognized, valued, appreciated, and understood.”
-Stephen R. Covey, Primary Greatness: The 12 Levers of Success

 

7. Evangelizing the Shared Purpose, Values, and Vision

Focus on building, clarifying, or renewing the organization’s shared purpose, values, and vision. These are the organization’s main building blocks. Elicit them from the team and inculcate them into the organization. Talk about them until you’re blue in the face. The key is not having purpose, values, and vision statements. The key is infusing them into the organization. More and more people today want to work for an organization with a purpose, values, and vision that inspires. (Resource: “How to Create a Shared Purpose, Values, and Vision.”)

“The purpose grounds.
The values guide.
The vision inspires.”
-Bob and Gregg Vanourek, co-authors, Triple Crown Leadership

 

8. Leadership Versatility

We all have our preferences when it comes to how we lead. Do you tend to be collaborative and unassuming, working quietly behind the scenes while gently encouraging people? Or do you tend to be hard-driving and results-oriented, holding people accountable and bending reality to your will?

The key: you need to learn to get beyond your natural leadership style, flexing between the hard and soft edges of leadership—what we call “steel and velvet.” Steel-only leadership fails. And velvet-only leadership fails. Great leaders flex between the hard and soft edges of leadership, depending on the situation and the people. (Resource: “Steel and Velvet Leadership.”)

“Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is hard as a rock and soft as a drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.”
-Carl Sandburg on Abraham Lincoln

 

9. Building Culture

Never forget that leadership isn’t a solo act. It’s a group performance. Done properly, leadership ebbs and flows among leaders and followers in a dynamic exchange. Leadership is not the province of fancy titles and corner offices. It can come from anyone and everyone. In the best organizations, leadership is pervasive—not just in the executive suites and boardroom.

Make sure you’re intentionally creating a culture of shared leadership and initiative, with a focus on collective outcomes and shared responsibility. It’s what we call a culture of stewardship. Unleash people to act and lead, encouraging them to step outside their functional roles, take initiative, and steward the culture. Give people an automatic license to lead as long as they uphold the organization’s shared values. Encourage everyone to work on the organization, not just in the organization. (Resource: “Why Leaders Should Create a Culture of Stewardship.”)

“…culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”
-Lou Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?

 

10. Alignment

Are there many conflicting priorities in your organization? Decisions that aren’t in line with strategy? Can everyone name the organization’s top three priorities? Do workers clearly understand the connections between the organization’s priorities? In most organizations, the answer to most or all of these questions is a resounding no. That’s because they’re unaligned.

“There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little.”
-Andy Grove, former CEO, Intel

As a leader, you must work collaboratively with all departments and levels to align the organization up, down, and around so it can achieve peak performance. You must ensure coherence between the organization’s short-term activities and long-term aims. That everyone has clear plans for who will do what by when. And that you’re tracking and reporting metrics on a regular schedule—and using communication loops that result in needed changes. (Resource: “How to Align Your Organization for Peak Performance.”)

“Building a visionary company requires 1 percent vision and 99 percent alignment…
Creating alignment may be your most important work.”
-Jim Collins and Jerry Porras

 

11. Judgment and Decision-Making

Effective leadership requires good judgment. You build it through experience, regular reflection, a strong moral compass, and the counsel of trusted colleagues. Work on developing your judgment. When you consistently make better decisions, the ripple effects are profound. Few skills offer more leverage than sound judgment. (Resource: “The Importance of Judgment in Leadership.”)

“The single most important thing that leaders do is make good judgment calls.…
The cumulative effect of leaders’ judgment calls determines the success or failure of their organization.”
-Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis, Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls

 

12. Personal Growth

Make learning a nonnegotiable part of your leadership and a regular part of your days and weeks. Commit to continuous growth so you can adapt and improve. Model that commitment for your team. “The ability to learn,” writes technology executive Sheryl Sandberg, “is the most important quality a leader can have.”

According to Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner in The Leadership Challenge, “researchers have found a strong relationship between learning and leadership effectiveness. Being able to reflect on your experiences, and subsequently to adjust and engage in new behaviors, is the single best predictor of future success in new and different managerial jobs…. Learning is the master skill.” (Resource: “Great Leaders Prioritize Learning—Why and How.”)

 

“Leadership development is self-development.”
-James Kouzes and Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge

 

Conclusion

There you have it: a dozen things you can do to reset your leadership for the new year. Note the areas where you’re already strong. And the ones that need the most work. Focus on one and get traction there before moving on to the next one. Use the Leadership Reset Checklist below to guide your actions and help you commit.

Meanwhile, don’t forget your fun factor. Life is too short to take yourself so seriously. And too short to work so hard and not enjoy the ride. You and your colleagues should be working hard and doing great things but also enjoying the process. Wishing you well with it.
–Gregg

Your Leadership Reset Checklist

 

Tools for You

• Leadership Derailers Assessment to help you identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness
• Personal Values Exercise to help you determine and clarify what’s most important to you
• Alignment Scorecard to help you assess your organization’s level of alignment

 

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards written with his father, Bob Vanourek) and LIFE Entrepreneurs (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion). Check out his Leadership Derailers Assessment or join his rapidly growing community. If you found value in this, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!