A conversation introducing the Red Thread Leadership model by Sonya Shelton, which aligns company purpose with strategy, processes, roles, and employee passion to build high-performing teams. The model begins with 'why' (purpose), then defines vision/strategy/goals, examines processes for efficiency and continuous improvement, clarifies positions/structure/promotions, and emphasizes passion/devotion.
Chapters
What do you mean by red thread leadership? What is that? Let's dive into this for the audience. Yes. So we look at, you know, I think a lot of leaders, business owners, they look at how am I going to grow your business? How are you going to achieve your vision? Hopefully they have a vision, but they're not looking at that combination about their business strategy and how they want to grow with their people and how do they create a high performing team that's going to get them there. And so we start, our red thread leadership model starts with why. So we agree with Simon Sinek that you need to start with why. And we really help them create that company purpose and it's looking at why do they do what they do, how do they deliver it and then what can others expect from them both internally and externally. So they would take that purpose to somebody like you and say, okay, how do we communicate this externally? And then we help them with the internal part. Right? So which is, you know, how do you then take that purpose and create a plan? What's your vision, what's your strategy, what are your goals? And then from there, let's take a look at your processes. So that's the third P in our process and it's looking at now that we know our purpose and where we want to go, let's look at our process and say, do we have the right processes in place to get us there? Are there ways that we could do this more efficiently?
Can we empower the team to continuously improve as they're making the journey towards the vision? And then we look at the positions. Right? So exactly what you're talking about, who do we hire, how are we structured, how are decisions made and how do we promote people? When do we decide how we promote people? And then finally is passion, which is equivalent to what you talked about for devotion.
Right?
They passionate about the company's purpose and are they passionate about their role in it? And it's all underlined with the foundation of trust. So do they trust the company and do they trust each other? And that's where that passion comes from. So I think looking at, you know, really creating clarity around your purpose, your vision, where you want to go, your business plan, along with that connection to passion and purpose, is really how we can help companies not just grow, but sustain for the long haul.
