When implementing goals and strategies for your organization, the first step is, and should always be, communicating and aligning your team who will essentially be responsible for actioning them. Without this alignment, even the best strategies are doomed to fail.

Strategic planning for the coming year is always considered an important task in an organization, but what we often see is a lack of urgency, with the task continually getting pushed back until its compromised. You don’t want to go into 2022 blind!

Completing an Ironman race can be a life-changing event, with many life lessons realized along the way. However, during my training and the race this year, I also found myself thinking about something else. I began drawing parallels between completing an Ironman event and becoming a leader in an organization. Believe me, there are many complimentary lessons, but here are a few:

When it comes to giving feedback, the biggest thing to think about is the intention and desired outcome. Giving constructive feedback should focus on facilitating better performance, while reinforcing the personal development of your team.

When running a business there are things that can, and of course, do go wrong. Whether it be a product issue, a sale falling through, an internal conflict, or even a client complaint, it can be easy to blame one thing or another, but often one of the main culprits is a lack of clarity in the organization.

Too often feedback is something that is given only once a year, usually during annual reviews. But the value of feedback in the workplace cannot be understated. Having a feedback-rich culture, where feedback is encouraged and comfortably received, both by and from your employees, can make all the difference in how a company runs.

Having relevant, clear, and productive goals in place can make all the difference when it comes to getting you or your business to where you want it to be. By creating SMART goals you ensure that you are setting yourself relevant and achievable benchmarks that can drive you and your team’s development and success.

Company culture is a combination of the vision, mission, values, goals, and the day-to-day activities of a workplace. Culture is essentially the soul of your company and should be a prime consideration in your business strategy. Why? Because it has a major influence over your corporate reputation, team engagement, performance, and productivity.

The importance of delegation in the workplace cannot be underestimated. It is a great way to boost organizational performance and productivity, but it also creates a sense of empowerment among employees by granting them greater independence.

Accountability in the workplace is all about ownership and initiative. But what happens if there is no accountability? When missed deadlines are tolerated and unfinished work is considered ‘no big deal’ because the rest of the team will pick up the slack. Your team, and ultimately your workplace culture will suffer.