Key Ingredients to Developing Key Leadership Skills
Quality leadership skills can make a huge difference to the lives of people and the success of organisations. Have you ever wondered what it takes to become a leader and what kind of a leader you could be?
A leaders’ vision is based on aspiration, ambition, integrity and a powerful sense of purpose. It is powerful but it is only part of the job. To be successful, a leader needs to find a way to ignite others.
To be a good leader it is important to bear in mind the following key ingredients:
1. Vision: Learn how to become more than one’s self and to look to the future. In order to see the possibilities of the future through fresh eyes, it is necessary to disentangle oneself from the grip of the past. The first step towards leadership through strategic intent is to become more than oneself, to the extent that one’s sense of identity is limited by one’s ‘truths’ about the past. It is vital for any leader to be operating from a sense of purpose that is future driven. To view the present from a desired future is a very powerful perspective. It requires the leader to be committed to that future, to care about it, to want it, and to use it as their basis for decision-making.
2. Ignition: Leadership is a process of commitment, envisioning and advocacy. Until you put people to the test, you cannot know what you or they are really committed to. Only when the challenges get extreme do people’s irreducible commitments show up clearly. It is important to ignite passion in your work; once this has been achieved you can begin to ignite that same passion in others. A leaders’ job is more than vision setting. It is about acting as an ambassador for the organisation’s vision and enrolling others to believe in it and act for it in a committed way. Only then can the vision be achieved.
3. Performance: To be a good leader you need to continually improve and be committed to the future. It is natural to come up against setbacks, reversals and breakdowns – it is also important to find a solution to these problems so as to show others, as well as yourself, that you are in control and that something can be learnt from this experience for the future. Being absolutely committed to performance breakthroughs from their people means leaders should spend vast amounts of their own energy not in the actual delivery of tasks (that is for the managers and operators in the organisation), but in creating the right environment where their people can deliver. This usually looks like culture creation and the development of capability to deliver in others. In this way, performance reaches hitherto unrealised levels.
The step-up to being a true leader requires making a number of paradigm shifts. It is not enough for a manager to do more of what he/she currently does or simply do it better. Leadership is not an advanced level of management.
At their best, these 10 shifts involve developing a new way of seeing the world, challenges, people and yourself. You already have well-established patterns of thinking and behaving, so will need to heighten your awareness of the ‘mode’ you are in and actively practice new ways of seeing, thinking and behaving.
In a nutshell, becoming a leader involves shifting from managing content to managing context. It’s about seeing the big picture and leading those who can see it less clearly. This is a major shift. It does not come immediately to all but can be achieved by many with practice. Here are some aspects of managing context that you may need to practice to become a good leader:
You are now a co-owner of the whole business. This requires more than being the head of a function. Your first job is to have the whole succeed, not just a part.
Leading does not start with what already exists and improving it. Leadership always steers off ‘where do we most want to be and what do we need to do now to get there?’. Leaders see the future, they can tour it, and they can talk about it so others can see it. But they are also energised by the thought of it and can spark that energy in others. They know what the future business is that they want, as well as the future look of their department, their people, their relationships with others, and, ultimately, themselves as leaders.
Magic occurs when this is a conscious act and might seem contrary to company culture. All problems have practical and human elements; the shift is to avoid the tendency to solve the practicalities and then deal with the human side of business, and instead to enter the more risky feeling of both in the same moment.
More than ever you will create success through your influence, your persuasion, your collaboration, and, ultimately, your engagement of others. All this happens inside your relationships. Leaders actively build the relationships needed to get the job done and they learn how to do this fast.
The first and foremost job of a leader is to manage his or her energy, and help manage the energy of those around them. We are all a bundle of energies: intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and physical. We are inclined to major on the intellectual and physical to get the job done. Leadership needs a shift to more active management of your and others’ emotional and spirit energies.
You will now be a ‘public’ figure more than ever. Your every move will be watched and talked about more than ever. ‘Board watching’ is a very popular sport. You will bring your ‘light’ to many situations and at times you will cast your ‘shadow’. You will need trusted colleagues around you giving feedback on your impact.
To grow leadership skills in others requires you to have them be aware and to practice a new skill – different to managing a process; you act a coach to develop the organisation.
Implementation, if solely through your own force, will leave you exhausted and the task probably incomplete. Increasingly your skill is to shift from ‘I get things done’ to ‘I have others who want what I want and are engaged to deliver it’.
You can attempt to succeed in the new role by going alone. You will get much further with a ‘team of support’ around you. At the heart of your team will be colleagues committed to seeing you succeed and grow, who also feel safe enough to give you full and honest feedback.
You have been successful as an operator and so were promoted to manager. You have then been promoted to leader. You will have a tendency to return to being operator or manager, when the situation and people around you need you to be leader. High self-awareness in the moment is needed for you to choose to be leader and live in the shifts above.
Leadership is not hierarchical – leader is with a small l, not leader with a big L. Anyone can make a difference, no matter what their position in an organisation. Leadership is about strength, guidance, vision and aspiration – without a good leader an organisation is rudderless. That extra bit of ‘magic’ is what leadership provides and without that all you have is management, which is not enough to overcome the challenges businesses can face particularly during these trying times, businesses need both.