Contact: Vessa Playfair
Deloitte
Director of Communications
0419 267 676

Contact: Kate Hill
Deloitte
Partner
(02) 9322 7360

The ultimate challenge for growing businesses is to select and build strong leadership teams said General Peter Cosgrove when launching Deloitte’s 10th and final Reality of Growth™ Guide to 150 business people last week.

General Cosgrove highlighted that many business owners wrongly can assume that leaders are born and not bred. In fact every leader requires ongoing training to ensure peak performance. Cosgrove stressed that in these uncertain times the key to an organisation’s survival is for good leaders to be agile and able to seize opportunities while avoiding disasters.

The 10th guide titled, "Leadership – from little league to big league," details how leadership development must be a priority for growing companies to ensure they reach peak performance.

This guide also examines how leadership and management play very different roles within growing companies. Leadership is about movement, change and direction whilst management tends to focus on order and consistency. The challenge for growing businesses is to strike a balance between the two and examine issues such as:

• identifying types of leaders needed
• identifying roles, styles and action to make leaders more effective
• developing a leadership process to create leaders at all levels

Deloitte partner and Sydney Growth Solutions leader Kate Hill says, "For growing businesses to succeed they need leaders who can embrace change, set direction and inspire others. Finding the right kind of leader is critical for growth.

"Leaders must be prepared to grow as companies grow," she continued. "Irrespective of where businesses are in their life cycle, leaders must be inspirational, strategic, innovative, adaptable and trustworthy.

"Basically leaders need to set direction, align teams, motivate and inspire those around them," Ms Hill says. "They must ensure they have effectively tackled each of these challenges if they are to be true market leaders."

This Reality of Growth booklet is a practical hands on guide with a ten point reality checklist to assist growing companies determine if they have the winning leader on their team.