Leadership Tip of the Week: Initiating Structure

Some of the greatest and most powerful leaders at The Ohio State University gathered together Sunday, February 10^th to discuss and learn more about leadership. The Ohio State Athletic Department’s Eugene D. Smith Leadership Institute kicked off a new program called “Lead Like a Buckeye.” The focus is on helping team captains becoming better leaders.  The event was extremely successful.

Carey Fagan, Urban Meyer, Maddy McIntyre, Cailly O’Toole and Madison Sheahan did an excellent job providing the leaders from the 36 Buckeye athletic teams an excellent leadership development program. The student athletes learned incredible lessons about leadership and the Lead Like a Buckeye program will only get better.

I know it will get better because of the leaders running the program. Immediately after the students departed, the leadership team gathered, conducted a quick review and started planning the next sessions. The team prioritized tasks, established deadlines and built a structure for their program. It was a perfect example of initiating structure.

Leaders apply this to define and organize the roles of their team members. It helps:

• Assign responsibilities
• Prioritize tasks
• Set goals
• Plan and prepare projects
• Clarify expectations
• Compensate for a leader’s strengths and weaknesses

Leaders will achieve more through people. Leaders do this by building teams and properly structuring the roles of those individuals in order to achieve the team’s goals. Leaders can use the aforementioned list to help them organize and structure their team. Watching the “Lead Like a Buckeye” team was a great example of how powerful initiating structure can be.