Posture 2 - The Persistent Leader

The Persistent Leader

Persistent leaders represent the second level of our 5 leadership postures and come into their own in the identity growth stage of a business. They begin to develop the skills to lead others, and they persevere until they find market fit. They begin to develop the ability to find solutions to the problems they have identified in stage one.

This is the most important thing to do in this stage – find market fit. Do not give up until you do. To do this you must find effective solutions to the problem you have found. This will enable you to establish the guiding vision, purpose, principles, perceptions to build, positioning to hold, value proposition to deliver, and personality for your future organization.

The reward is finding clarity of purpose for you and your team. This will enable you to establish your identity in the marketplace and deliver immediate value creation.

The risk is found in fear of failure. Failure is a way forward to find fit. If you do not take action, you can not create momentum. Believing you know it all and not listening can destroy your leadership at this stage.

You will learn to problem solve, create your first team and disciplines, gather immense customer insights, and develop your foundational goal-management skills.

Waymaker’s ‘5 Leadership Postures’ offers a unique perspective on understanding leadership dynamics at different stages of organizational growth.

What made Winston Churchill, Steve Jobs, or Jack Welch, stand-out leaders of industry and society?

All of them battled their own strengths and weaknesses to become better. They were not perfect by any stretch – but better at applying the right skills to the right moment in time.

They each had a special understanding of the posture they needed to hold at certain stages of the lifecycle of their organisation or country they were leading.

As organisations grow, they can only grow as far as their leaders have the capacity to lead them.

The primary ceiling of growth in your organisation is your ability to lead.

That’s why the old saying is true, “everybody wins when a leader gets better”.

As the organisation matures up the leadership curve it needs to break through stages of growth. They can only do this by leaders breaking through their own stages of leadership development.

In this article, we introduce you to the growth stages of a scaling business, the 5 Leadership Postures you need to adopt to achieve breakthrough at each stage, and the factors to consider at each.

The 5 Leadership Postures are a way of understanding the leadership development journey.

You’ll see attributes of the 5 Postures in yourself and others.

What kinds of leadership attributes are required now for your organisation?

What kind of leader are you?

What kind of leader do you need to be to help your organisation grow?

There are different leadership postures required at different stages of the leadership growth curve. It is important to use these leadership styles as a way of sharpening your focus on how to improve yourself.

Only then can you improve others.

Waymaker’s 5 Leadership Postures are:

These postures are cumulative. There are no shortcuts to successful leadership.

Master each stage to lead yourself into the next.