Why defining what leadership actually looks like can help Sales Leaders turn good intentions into consistent behaviours
Your Sales Managers agreed they needed to coach more. They agreed they needed to hold people accountable. They agreed they needed to communicate better, stop micromanaging, develop their people and give their teams more ownership. Everyone agreed, then they went back to work.
A few weeks later, nothing much had changed. Managers were still avoiding difficult performance conversations. Salespeople were still escalating problems they could have solved themselves. Coaching was happening inconsistently. Some leaders were holding people accountable, while others were letting the same issues slide. And the business was paying for it.
Missed targets. Poor follow-up. Slow decision-making. Managers spending time solving problems their teams should be handling. Salespeople waiting for answers instead of taking ownership. This is a common leadership problem. The issue isn’t always that leaders don’t know what good leadership looks like. Often, they have heard all the right theories and agreed with all the right ideas. The problem is turning those ideas into consistent behaviour. That is where a Leadership Charter can make a real difference.
What Is a Leadership Charter?
A Leadership Charter is a practical agreement about how leaders will behave. It defines the behaviours, expectations and principles that leaders agree to demonstrate, not just talk about.
It can answer questions such as:
• How will we communicate with our teams?
• How will we hold people accountable?
• How will we give feedback?
• How will we handle difficult conversations?
• How will we make decisions?
• How will we respond when things go wrong?
• How will we coach rather than simply tell?
• What behaviours do we expect from each other?
• What does good leadership look like when pressure is high?
The important part is the move from concepts to behaviours.
“Be a better leader” isn’t particularly useful.
“Address performance issues early and agree on clear next steps” is.
One is an aspiration, the other gives a leader something they can actually do.
Leadership Values Are Important. But What Do They Actually Look Like?
Most organisations already have values. Accountability, Integrity, Collaboration, Respect, Ownership, Customer focus.
The problem is that these words can mean very different things to different people.
Take accountability. A leadership team might agree that accountability is important. But what happens when a salesperson misses their target? Does the manager take over? Do they blame the salesperson? Do they avoid the conversation because they don’t want the conflict? Or do they sit down with the salesperson, understand what happened, ask questions, identify the gap and agree on what needs to happen next?
A Leadership Charter can make the expected behaviour clear. For example:
Accountability means we address performance issues early, have honest conversations and agree on clear actions rather than allowing problems to continue. Now accountability is something leaders can observe, coach and challenge.
The same approach can be used for coaching, communication, delegation, feedback and decision-making.
The question changes from:
“Do we value this?”
to:
“What does this look like when we actually do it?”
From “We Should” to “We Will”
Leadership meetings can produce a lot of good intentions.
“We should communicate better.”
“Managers need to coach more.”
“We need to hold people accountable.”
“Leaders should be more proactive.”
The problem is that these statements don’t tell anyone what they need to do differently tomorrow morning. A Leadership Charter changes the language.
Instead of:
“We should coach our people more.”
It becomes:
“We will make regular coaching conversations part of how we lead.”
Instead of:
“We need better communication.”
It becomes:
“We will communicate expectations clearly, listen before responding and address misunderstandings early.”
Instead of:
“Managers need to stop micromanaging.”
It becomes:
“We will give our people ownership of agreed outcomes and coach them through challenges rather than automatically solving the problem for them.”
That difference matters. One describes what you would like to happen. The other describes what you have agreed to do.
Inconsistent Leadership Has a Commercial Cost
For Sales Leaders, consistency matters because leadership behaviour directly affects how sales teams operate. If one Sales Manager coaches regularly and another only gets involved when something goes wrong, salespeople receive very different levels of support. If one manager encourages their team to solve problems independently while another wants to approve every decision, people quickly learn to escalate everything. If one leader addresses poor performance early while another lets it continue, the message about accountability becomes inconsistent.
Over time, this can affect:
• Sales performance
• Accountability
• Productivity
• Employee development
• Decision-making speed
• Customer experience
• Manager workload
• Team confidence and ownership
A Leadership Charter doesn’t mean every leader has to use the same personality or leadership style. It means everyone understands the behaviours that are expected, particularly when it comes to the things that have the biggest impact on team performance.
That creates a shared leadership standard.
Build the Charter With Leaders, Not For Them
A Leadership Charter is much more useful when leaders help create it. Rather than senior management handing Sales Managers a list of behaviours and telling them to follow it, get the leadership team involved.
Ask questions such as:
• What do our salespeople need from us as leaders?
• What behaviours help our teams perform at their best?
• What leadership behaviours are getting in the way?
• What do we want our teams to experience from us?
• Where are we currently inconsistent?
• What do we need to hold each other accountable for?
• What should we do differently when performance or pressure increases?
These conversations can expose the gap between what leaders say they want and what actually happens. That gap is where the real work begins.
The Workshop Isn’t the Finish Line
This is where many leadership initiatives fall over. The team spends a day talking about leadership. Everyone leaves motivated. The Charter gets emailed around, then it disappears into a folder. Nothing changes.
The real value comes from what happens after the workshop. Use the Charter in leadership meetings. Bring it into coaching conversations. Use it when discussing performance. Refer to it when leaders are dealing with difficult situations.
Ask:
• Which Charter behaviours have we demonstrated this week?
• Where have we fallen short?
• What conversation have we been avoiding?
• Where did we solve a problem that our team should have owned?
• Where could we have coached instead of told?
• What will we do differently next week?
This is how a Charter becomes more than a document. It becomes a standard. And standards only have value when they are reinforced.
Leadership Is What Happens Between the Meetings
A leadership workshop can create a great conversation. But leadership isn’t demonstrated when everyone is sitting around a table agreeing about what should happen.
• It’s demonstrated afterwards.
• It’s the conversation with the salesperson who isn’t performing.
• It’s the feedback given after a difficult customer interaction.
• It’s asking a quality question instead of immediately giving the answer.
• It’s giving someone ownership instead of taking control.
• It’s addressing a missed sales target instead of waiting for the next one.
• It’s coaching a manager who is struggling instead of simply telling them what to do.
• And it’s how leaders behave when the pressure is on.
That is where leadership culture is created. Not by what leaders say they value. By what they consistently do.
Turn Leadership Conversations Into Leadership Behaviours
Sales Leaders don’t need another leadership discussion that sounds good in the room but changes nothing on the sales floor. They need clarity about what good leadership looks like, agreement on the behaviours that matter and a practical way to hold each other accountable.
To read more about the importance of implementing a Leadership Charter within your organisation, click here.
A Leadership Charter can provide that framework. At KONA Training, our Leadership Training is tailored to the real challenges facing your Sales Leaders. We focus on practical leadership behaviours that can be applied, coached and reinforced in the workplace.
If your Sales Managers know what good leadership looks like but aren’t consistently putting it into practice, it’s time to turn the conversation into action.
Contact KONA Training to discuss tailored Leadership Training for your Sales Leaders. Call 1300 611 288 or email info@kona.com.au.
Author – Garret Norris – https://www.linkedin.com/in/garretnorris/
