February 8, 2012
Leadership has changed with time and with varying economic and environmental circumstances. Early to mid 20th century, leaders often invoked a militaristic or autocratic leadership approach, and to most the extent, this worked for many successful companies and big corporations.
In the current age, the workforce is better educated with more rights. Values and ethics are important, and company and personal values and ethics need to align to achieve common goals. In order to compete on a global scale, leaders need to motivate and influence teams of valuable employees to thrive and survive.
Collaboration with team members
Leadership today is obviously quite different, with globalization, competition, values and ethics and people’s rights making big impacts on how leaders lead. The global economic climate is challenging and is multi-faceted. New leaders today need the ability to navigate through challenging environments, with multiple layers of complexity. A new leader must be able to collaborate with professionals adequately, and to be able to adapt quickly to changing environments.
Engaging others
Twenty to thirty years ago, businesses relied on manual analysis of localized information. Today, teams and leaders must competently analysis massive amounts of global information quickly. Where leaders lack capacity, leaders must be able to source and acquire capacity to assist in meeting organizational goals and objectives. Leaders need to have the skill to interact with, motivate and empower team members. Effective interaction with employees leads to better buy-in of goals and objectives. Frequent engagement tends to make the employees and teams feel valued.
Activating Efficiency
Today leaders must accomplish more with fewer resources. In order to stay competitive in global markets, leaders must stay on top with efficient operations. Leaders must have the ability to maximize results and benefits with decreasing levels of resources. Leaders must seek ideas for efficient operations from their teams, as these valued employees are the subject matter experts. There are several mechanisms to implement to achieve efficiencies, from empowering employees to take the lead, to compensatory mechanisms.
Ability to Vision
Experienced leaders thoroughly observe and analyze the past and present. A great leader can envisage a successful way forward. They are able to see an end goal and objective, and pathway to achieve the objective. Only a few have this innate ability; most develop the skill through experience in operations and management. This valuable trait may be the result of many years of experience leading to the ability to look forward, and some of it through trial and error. Leaders with vision understand why they are in the business and why the company’s products or services are valuable or needed by the consumer.
Effective Communication
Effective leadership involves a high level of rich communication. A great leader engages with others and can communicate the vision to the team. With powerful, transparent communications, leaders will need to be influential on others, with the ability to convince and encourage the team to follow and buy-in. The level of acceptance is a good indicator of the leader’s communication and influential effectiveness.
© 2012 Strategy Plan One
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