Written by: Leah Tomlin, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.” John C Maxwell, American author.
Is it time for you to level-up your leadership? Leadership is vital to the success of organisations (Jing and Avery, 2016, Avolio, 2011), whether multi-national companies, small one-person businesses, charities or educational settings. Leadership is arguably the greatest determining factor in organisational success, with leaders having a significant impact on their people, and on a company’s return on investment (ROI) (Shenkman, 2007).
Great leadership is about creating the optimal environment for success, placing people as the priority, inspiring everyone with the vision and setting up strategic systems and plans to achieve goals. Of course, leaders have complex roles which need to be carried out equitably, but we see large scale failure of them, even in the top positions globally. Approximately 40% of new leaders fail within the first 18 months of appointment to their leadership role (Skipton Leonard and Lang, 2010).
Leaders at all levels need to take action to become better leaders and adopt strategies for learning and developing their leadership. Leadership should be assessed, measured and tracked to ensure greater sustainability of organisations. The best leaders take time to reflect on their leadership, consider their strengths and areas for development, and proactively plug the gaps to increase leadership competency. A sound place to start self-assessing and measuring leadership is to use the free online tool: Level-Up Your Leadership.
Effective leadership can be categorised into the following 6 core areas, each of which can be enhanced to create an exceptional, well-rounded leader:
Business Planning
Productivity
Credibility
Managing People
Networking
Self-Development
Business Planning
Orchestrating all the following elements of business planning will ensure employees and leaders alike are signed up to the vision and work towards the shared business mission:
Understanding and articulating personal core values, and assessing how much they align with the organisation
Understanding and articulating the core values of the organisation
Communicating a vision and mission statement that have clarity and purpose
Creating strategic plans that set out goals to achieve the mission
Setting leadership goals that leaders live by day to day
Writing daily actions (5 maximum) that serve as the small steps to enable leaders to achieve goals
Ensuring that financial and administrative systems function smoothly and free up leadership time for further strategic thinking and action
Core values are at the heart of everything the organisation does, and they should drive emotional engagement of all employees. When there is clarity with values, making decisions becomes easier. Honest and open talks about values need to take place, and individuals across the team need to understand their place in demonstrating organisational values. People who personify the organisational values should be openly celebrated.
In basic terms, the vision is the destination, and the mission is the journey to get there. An inspiring vision statement will state where the company ideally wants to sit in the world, and the global reason for its existence. Every organisation should have an aspirational vision that clearly articulates where it wants to be, so that all employees can get excited and see the relevance of their work in the world. A mission statement, on the other hand, will state how the company plans to achieve the vision. It should serve as the road map to reach the vision.
Leaders need goals and a strategic approach to ensure that the organisation's mission is achieved. Systems and strategic plans should be in place to enable everyone in the organisation to understand their roles and responsibilities. Financial and administration systems must run smoothly and can be automated where possible, leaving leaders to focus on more strategic elements of leadership.
Productivity
Being productive by working smartly (instead of simply working hard) is imperative, not just for business but also for mental health. Working hard can cause overwhelm and can be detrimental to wellbeing and productivity. Prioritising and using time wisely, is what leaders should model and promote in their organisations, to improve motivation, focus and efficiency.
Planning systems, routines, habits and reflection time are essential considerations. Blocking out time for deep work in the week, helps focus energy and time in the right place to enhance productivity. This might include writing a report, creating a funding proposal, writing a strategic plan or creating a presentation. Keeping firm boundaries around these non-negotiable times is essential.
Leaders should do 5 things every day to achieve goals, discarding those long lists that merely serve to pre-empt failure. Employing smarter productivity in work will propel organisations forward and be beneficial to wellbeing. Ask yourself which jobs can be delegated or outsourced and pass them on.
Breaks are crucial to the working day. Neuroscience studies show us that we learn more profoundly when we take a break directly following a significant learning period. The neurons create new connections more readily during the sleep or rest that follows intense learning than during the learning activity itself. Breaks and quality sleep are fundamental to great leadership, transformational learning and longevity.
Credibility
Credibility is the leader's super-power. With it, a leader can influence and lead people with ease. Without credibility, a leader will struggle to take anyone with them or convince people of their ideas. Once lost, credibility is almost impossible to regain.
A leader must nurture their credibility and learn to relish opportunities to step out of their comfort zones, as this is where exploration, excitement and transformation happens. It might require you to speak publicly or tackle something that you’ve always feared. Trust yourself, take a deep breath and know that you can, and must, push your own self-imposed boundaries.
Starting with a consistent social media presence on your chosen platform(s) is a great way to develop connections and demonstrate your insights and value. Find the right platform for you and allow your thought leadership to organically increase your credibility online. If you write a blog, repurpose this by creating social media posts, short video snippets, or compiling insights into an e-book or a newsletter. Offer these to people who will value your insights.
Public communication and opportunities to be in the media can be grasped to maximise credibility and to have your brand more widely distributed and celebrated. Don’t wait for the media to contact you. Contact editors or present a high quality and thought-provoking article to a relevant outlet. You can also take the initiative by creating a podcast, interviewing someone else who could help increase your reach and using their audience to improve your own organisation’s brand awareness. You certainly don’t have to do it all, but each opportunity you take will help enhance your credibility within your organisation and/or with people across the globe.
If your organisation is making good progress, ask someone to nominate you for an external award for your leadership, or nominate your team. There are plenty of awards out there, where your achievements can be given a badge of honour and certificates to be proudly displayed online and/ or on the staff office wall.
Managing People
People management and relationships are widely considered to be the most important element of leadership, so leaders must make time for them. The manner in which leaders communicate, and the methods and consistency of communication, all provide the foundations on which effective teams are built. Get this right, and you will have your entire organisation, and your network, signed up to work with you.
It’s important to be confident that you've set clear, specific, measurable and achievable expectations of your team members. Taking time to reflect on communication, and the nuances of your communication, is a first step in considering how best to further hone your listening and responding skills.
Recruitment processes are crucial to ensure you get the right people into new positions. It is vital that processes, from advertising to creating the Person Specification, Job Description, shortlisting and interviewing, are thorough and targeted to make sure that the best people are employed.
Creating a positive culture, where expressing ideas is welcomed, making mistakes is accepted, and learning from them and each other should be the expected norm. Communicating expectations effectively, valuing individuals, nurturing relationships and placing an emphasis on emotional intelligence, places leaders in an excellent position to command respect and understanding from teams. Research frequently demonstrates that emotional intelligence is the most significant leadership characteristic in terms of getting the best out of people and developing capacity to build highly successful organisations (Goleman et al, 2013). Developing others through coaching, mentoring and training helps to create a culture of support, learning and excellence.
Networking
Pursuing external networking opportunities and building a wider network is an essential element of leadership. Leaders run the risk of isolation and burnout if they don’t proactively engage with other professionals that might support them and the organisation. Research demonstrates that 85% of new roles are now filled through networks. Ultimately, the people in your network help you. These people include your friends, past and present colleagues, bosses, teachers and lecturers who have taught you, coaches and mentors, associates, your peers…
In your network, it is crucial that you make sure you have a rich supply of:
Supporters (people who are on your side, lift you up and boost you) ‒ These may be friends, social media contacts or colleagues
Consultants (people who have the information, skills or influence to help you achieve your goals) ‒These might be qualified coaches or individuals and companies with expertise outside of your remit
Role models (people you admire, respect and wish to emulate) ‒ These may be a mentor, a coach, an expert leader, a successful business person or a thought leader
If any of these people are missing from your network, seek them out, befriend them and offer them something of value. Nurture these relationships and they may later serve you well. LinkedIn is the world’s largest database of professionals, with more than 800 million users, and provides an unprecedented opportunity to network with other leaders and potential clients. Taking advantage of social media platforms can build your network and have remarkable benefits for you and your organisation, both immediately and down the line.
Self-Development
The qualities of a leader’s character, such as integrity, authenticity, honesty, decision-making or resilience, are key to engendering a culture of trust, openness and cooperation. It is imperative that leaders prioritise themselves, their learning and their development. Organisations benefit from a self-aware and continually developing leader.
Self-awareness is integral to leadership development. Analysing current leadership skills, behaviours and habits is important to enhance self-awareness and to develop a greater understanding of how leadership behaviours impact other people, and the organisation. The Level Up Your Leadership tool provides quantifiable data for leaders to score and track their leadership progress. Such analysis highlights areas for development, and is the place to start in the leadership transformation journey. This analysis can inform next steps and determine an action plan for improving leadership competency.
Leaders need a development diet that is rich in new leadership learning, be that from books, articles, podcasts, video, talks or courses. Research shows that coaching with a qualified Executive Coach is an effective means of improving leadership competency, organisational success, culture and ROI (de Haan, 2021). Coaching is particularly effective when rolled out across an organisation, to create a coaching culture where everyone values learning and self-development. Make sure that you have good rapport with your coach and that you can trust their expertise in helping you to grow.
Prioritising wellbeing and making time for yourself and your relationships are critical. Finding the balance and harmony between work, family, friends, hobbies, exercise and creative/ nature pursuits doesn’t only create a happier and healthier you, but it will enable your leadership to shine and your organisation to flourish.
Leah Tomlin, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Leah coaches professional women for transformation in leadership and life. She holds an exceptional range of qualifications and skills as a certified Executive Coach, business owner, published Neuroscientist and qualified Head Teacher. Her understanding of the brain, and how people learn, ensures she inspires transformational, life-long positive impact for leaders and their organisations. Her scientific background allows her to employ evidence-based brain and coaching methodologies that achieve success. Leah is passionate about gender equality, helping propel more women to the top and seeing them succeed as incredible leaders. She empowers women to understand how their brains can help and hinder them, enabling them to develop greater self-awareness, confidence and a dare-to-dream vision. Her clients love the way she coaches with emotional intelligence and warmth, focused on improving their leadership competency and helping them develop new and effective professional behaviours and habits. Working with Leah, leaders achieve greater success for themselves and their teams, as well as creating supportive cultures of excellence in their workplaces. Leah lives in Bristol, England, as a single mum to her three young children. She is passionate about wellbeing and takes time to enjoy her hobbies, including music, film, reading, art and design, yoga and dog-walking.
References:
Avolio, B.J., 2011. Full range leadership development. Sage Publications.
de Haan, E., 2021. What Works in Executive Coaching: Understanding outcomes through quantitative research and practice-based evidence. Routledge.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R.E. and McKee, A., 2013. Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press.
Jing, F.F. and Avery, G.C., 2016. Missing links in understanding the relationship between leadership and organizational performance. International Business & Economics Research Journal (IBER), 15(3), pp.107-118.
Shenkman, M. and Gorbaty, B., 2007. Your highest‐yielding (under‐capitalized) asset: the ROI of leadership. Business Strategy Series.
Skipton Leonard, H. and Lang, F., 2010. Leadership development via action learning. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 12(2), pp.225-240.
