What is a Business Leadership Plan?

 John Ruh  Business Leadership


We’ve all heard it a thousand times: planning is key to success. The same holds true for leaders in your organization, and given that leaders’ influence scales to affect large numbers of subordinates, it only makes sense that the lack of a leadership plan could be harming the efficiency and effectiveness of your organization, wasting time and valuable resources to take you further from your goals. But what exactly is a business leadership plan, and why do businesses in Chicago need them so desperately?

Business Leadership Program Chicago

A business leadership plan is essentially the sum of all your endeavors to sharpen the leaders of your organization to improve their performance. Some of the most crucial components of a viable plan include helping leaders understand their own behavioral strengths and weaknesses, improving communication between leaders and subordinates, and fostering a support system that improves efficiency by increasing self-management instead of reliance on micromanagement. Let’s take a closer look at different leadership development tools and programs and how they can benefit the leaders of your organization.

The DISC Tool

People are like snowflakes in the sense that no two are exactly the same. While there are many common personality traits among individuals, leaders can’t hope to effectively manage teams and resources without understanding what makes them tick. There is no single way of attacking every challenge, and understanding people’s social, emotional and personality differences will help create more effective leadership. However, understand that the DISC assessment is not a measure of a person’s intelligence, education, or values. It is simply an objective way to determine styles of behavior. Once an individual understands their strengths and weaknesses, they can improve their leadership.

The Ruh Advanced Leadership Model

All too often, people fail to learn from their mistakes because they don’t have an accurate understanding of their core competencies and flaws. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results with each repetition. Fortunately, the Ruh Advanced Leadership Model will help leaders understand their skills, traits, and other aspects of their core being with clarity, to avoid making the same mistakes again and again. Once an individual understands their limitations and areas where they excel, only then can a personalized plan be crafted to take advantage of personal strengths and minimize issues caused by personal weaknesses.

The Wheel Planning and Continuous Improvement Program

Once key leaders understand how they can improve, it becomes possible to create a business plan that aligns the company’s goals with smaller, bite-sized departmental goals. No leader or employee will ever be 100% perfect, making constant improvement a necessity. Leaders will never be able to effectively manage employees unless they have a communication channel to gather feedback to understand how their employees are performing. Your leaders and employees need to be in a state of continuous improvement to keep up with the competition, and to make sure that you are moving closer towards your business goals instead of straying down the path of failure.

Seeking Assistance

If you need assistance developing a business leadership plan, contact John M. Ruh and Associates. We have helped countless clients in the past improve the effectiveness of their leadership, and we can help you, too.