Effective leadership is critical in any business in order to succeed and never more so than in today’s complex and ever-changing business environment.
Leadership is almost entirely about engaging, enabling, and empowering those around you. After all, having fantastic ideas will only get you so far if your team are not inspired and motivated to join your vision.
“The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow,” as Seth Godin, business entrepreneur and author, stated.
There are many different leadership styles, and no two leaders are the same, but a fundamental aspect of leadership is authenticity – an alignment between words and actions and to be true to yourself.
A copy and paste approach to improving leadership in your business is not an effective method to genuinely lead with purpose and meaning, but there are five key areas to strong and effective leadership.
Have a strong sense of purpose. Living and breathing your vision and values will help define who you are and what you believe in. Too often they are a novelty and are put on the company website but don’t mean anything to the business or its people. Your company’s vision and values should be shared and embedded into every element of the business. Get this right and you will inspire, motivate and influence your team to want and live and breathe them too.
Manage risks and maximise opportunities. Understanding the influences and impacts on your business, what poses risks and where opportunities lie will put you in a position of great strength. There will always be changes and disruptions in the economic environment that impact businesses. Being adaptable, with robust contingency or change management plans, will provide a degree of certainty to confidently lead your business and team into the future.
Take your team on the journey with you. As a leader you will always be thinking what’s next or where you want to take the business in the future. Creating objectives with your team to capture key steps to achieving your vision for the business makes it more tangible to others, showing how they can support that journey and monitor the business’ success along the way.
Communication is key. Creating an effective structure for proactive communication throughout the business that promotes collaboration, openness, and trust, enables a business to better manage challenges or maximise opportunities, but also to pre-empt them before they happen. This strength allows your business and team to be more adaptable and versatile whilst being aligned in your decision making, vision and values.
Build a strong, positive culture. Creating the right environment to engage, enable, and empower your staff to take ownership and responsibility will not only reduce the number of issues raised, but will also increase continuous improvement, efficiency, and productivity. This will result in a trusting, productive environment where business objectives are accomplished faster and change managed as smoothly as possible.
No matter how well you know your industry, change can reshape business overnight and these key aspects of strong leadership are fundamental to operating a thriving business whatever challenges you face.
Absolute Quality provides support to help you develop the structure to leadership and get clarity and direction to make decisions based on fact. Get in touch for details.
Discover how to establish, improve, and refine your business Rubik’s cube, which is a common-sense approach to managing your business, protecting and managing risks whilst optimising opportunities and developing your people, relationships and reputation.
