Leadership or Training? Let’s Reach Higher
Better leadership or training? We need to ask this question. Here the US military sounded off. You can imagine that an organization that has to ask men to risk their lives has to know something about motivation. The article is about suicide prevention, but is highly relevant to motivating workers.
This article says caring leaders save lives while training and programs do virtually nothing.
“I’ve talked to a lot of airmen who have thought about it(suicide), and I can count on my pinky the number who said the reason they didn’t [act on suicide] was because of some program, some process, some training,” he said.
“Every single one of them said it was because of this person, this supervisor, this commander, this teammate, this person that I connected with that showed some interest in me and my well-being … we have to do this together.”
The individual concern of a leader is the very best motivation and confidence builder for any team member. Western companies in China need to take that seriously to reach higher.
Leadership or Training? Choose Leadership
It is a competitive advantage that is hard to beat when you spend to get the right leader who can care for and motivate workers to higher performance. Then you are not only catching more customers, but you gain the esteem of workers who only wanted someone who would see them and give them the support to be great.
By the way, leaders who get leadership training for their people and do not attend is classic in China. The leader who is causing so so much discontent is above learning leadership.
What use is spending money on leadership training in this case? Turnover will just increase on account of the training!
A new day can arise and turnover and lack of engagement can go away when we commit to get the right leader and kick the wrong leaders out. You need leaders who give and not take energy from workers. See also Engaging Chinese Employees.