Effective Leadership: How To Be A Better Leader & Why Is It Important?
Effective Leadership the best thing for a team lets understand that.
While there is no “I” in the team, there certainly is an “I” in disengaged.
Wondering what that has to do with leadership? Well, a lot, precisely.
Regardless of why, what, and where, if you are a leader, you are directly responsible for engaging the ones that follow you.
Engagement is backed by culture, which, yet again, you are responsible for as a leader. This is where effective leadership plays its part. For the sake of the organization, it is critical for leaders to conduct the right tone for the company to promote engagement, employee experience, and office culture.
You can be a leader anywhere – your office, class, or house; as long as you know how to inspire others to achieve the required outcomes, you will identify as an effective leader.
Therefore, it is totally up to individuals if they want to be an optimistic leader or a pessimistic leader, if they want to focus on engagement or a mere output.
“Improving your leadership begins with a focus on improving what you’re already good at.”
Effective leadership begins within the self. It can be a combination of equal portions of self esteem and high confidence and being paranoid if you are doing it correctly and looking for answers.
Whether you are a leader at an organization or any other setting, effective leadership constitutes the key element of improving what you are already good at.
What Is Effective Leadership?
Effective leadership is a concept that might be difficult to understand in practical or tactical ways.
But, before working on ways to make it effective, you need to first define it.
According to me, leadership, in its simplest form, is the act of having individuals positioned and moving in the same direction to fetch the desired results.
Imagine this –
A world where every leader was clear of what goals they wanted to achieve, was well aware of how to get their followers concentrated towards the very same goal, and knew how to effectively use their strengths to get to that point. The world would have been a much better place, wouldn’t it?
“Effective leadership has a lot to do with inspiring, aligning and then activating — but it doesn’t end there.”
The secret to effective leadership is the capability to define the outcomes, alongside helping individuals explore their talents and put them in the right places to achieve their goals. The most successful leaders know each of their people and are more concerned with their strengths than with their weaknesses.
Read More: What Is The Importance Of Leadership? 9 Importance A Leader Must Know About
Characteristics Of An Effective Leader
While some people are born with it, some need to work on themselves in order to incorporate the characteristics of an efficient leader within them. Even if you are born with it, there is always room for improvement when it comes to practicing effective leadership.
These are the key characteristics of an effective leader:
An Effective Leader Must Be Able To Influence The Other Members Of Their Team
“[Leadership] is all about influencing people,”
Kristin Lynde, the founder of the leadership development company Catalyze Associates, said in her live interview on Facebook.
When you initially start your career, you tend to exercise your authority over others by becoming the go-to person based on a certain subject in the organization or being an active listener and building consensus within the team. As you slowly grow, you start exerting influence over others by learning how to articulate the direction that you believe the company must head in.
According to Power and Influence for Positive Impact, influence is defined as
“the ability to produce effects on other people’s behavior.”
To influence other individuals, you will first need to build a strong level of trust with all your colleagues.
“This means [you] need to understand the types of resources people value when it comes to achieving safety and self-esteem,”
as per Julie Battilana, Professor at Harvard Business School.
You need to focus on understanding the motivations of others and accordingly inspire them to share their opinions. You can use the same knowledge to bring in changes and make them feel that their voice matters.
Be Transparent; Only As Much As It Is Needed
Transparency is one of the key elements to build trust. Being open and transparent with the employees about the goals and challenges of the organization will help them to easily understand their job roles and how they can put in their individual contributions towards the overall success of the organization. A sense of purpose and value translates further into the higher levels of employee engagement.
“To get people on board, they need to grasp what you’re conveying so they’re excited to join you in turning that direction into a reality,”
says Harvard Business School Professor Anthony Mayo.
“Your communication should meet people where they are, give them a sense of where the organization is going, and then give them a roadmap for how they can bridge the gap from where the organization is now to where you want to take it.”
While transparency is a commendable trait to promote knowledge sharing, collaboration, and accountability, unmeasured amounts of it can have the opposite effect, as per Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School Ethan Bernstein.
“Wide-open workspaces and copious real-time data on how individuals spend their time can leave employees feeling exposed and vulnerable,”
he wrote in his review.
“Being observed changes their conduct. They start going to great lengths to keep what they’re doing under wraps, even if they have nothing bad to hide.”
Bernstein has encouraged the balance of transparency alongside privacy and setting a certain limit of boundaries that will continue to foster collaboration and experimentation.
Encourage Taking Of Risks And Be Innovative
Experiments are important to establish and maintain your company’s competitive advantages. The greatest of the leaders recognize this and encourage taking risks and innovation within the company.
“You can’t wave a wand, dictate to people that they need to be more creative, and wake up the next day to find people taking risks and trying new things,”
Mayo added.
Instead, leaders must always focus on fostering a culture of innovation by encouraging experimentation, embracing mistakes, and challenging unwritten rules. These steps, when backed by data, can result in innovations that would have been impossible to bring about otherwise.
Some of the other character traits of an effective leader may include:
- Integration and accountability
- Having the patience to act decisively
- To be able to demonstrate resilience
Read More: What Is Delegating Leadership? Here Are Some Helpful Tips
The Bottom Line
Effective leadership is something that needs practice and patience. You cannot expect to become an effective leader just in a day’s time. It takes a lot of self-realization and humility to get to that position.
Therefore, if you want to be an effective leader anytime soon, this is your opportunity to take your stand and work on yourself as much as you can.
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upasana sarbajna
Upasana is a budding journalist who has a keen interest in writing. She considers writing as therapeutic and is most confident when she writes. She is passionate about music, movies and fashion. She writes in a way that connects with the audience in a personal level. She is optimistic, fun loving and opinionated.
