Make Leadership Effectiveness a Priority with These Steps

Leadership roles are the foundation for success in a business. They will either make or break a company so leadership effectiveness has become an essential metric. So what can businesses do to determine what makes an effective leader?  

Contrary to common belief, leaders are not born. They develop a unique skillset that taps into their charisma and makes them a visionary. These skills are learned through experience and effort. This is great news for businesses because you can cultivate these skills in a workforce.   

Great leaders understand that their skillset is developed through effort, which is why those with leadership traits are always attempting to learn more. They hire life coaches, attend seminars, and buy self-help books all in an effort to gain even more knowledge. Leadership effectiveness is a never-ending journey that demands consistent improvement.  

Businesses that implement practices that promote leadership effectiveness are going to attract the best types of employees. We’ll walk through some steps to get you started.  

Understanding the Traits that Define a Great Leader 

Certain traits are used as metrics to define what makes a leader effective. So before we dive deeper into leadership effectiveness, brand these traits into your mind.  

• Leaders have infectious personalities that motivate and inspire everyone around them.  

• Interpersonal skills are a must-have trait that leaders share.  
• The ability to communicate and earn the trust of those around them.  
• Top-notch decision-making skills. 
• Top leaders always act in the most ethical manner possible and exhibit the values to back it up. 

Leadership Effectiveness Steps that Businesses Should Follow 

Businesses have the ability and responsibility to provide resources that help build leaders. Top companies like Apple planted these seeds years ago and have seen them blossom into what has become a new business model. Today, the best companies build leaders to guide them into the future.  

Create Systems to Help Leaders Develop their Skillset 

Let’s face it. At first glance, coaching and building better interpersonal relationships don’t seem nearly as important as some of the tougher decisions that leaders face in a given day. So it’s easy for leaders to lose focus on developing these soft skills. This is a reason why some individuals appear to be great leaders until they are thrust into a leadership position. The truth is that they just stopped developing those skills.  

Businesses must put a system in place to prevent this. Have programs that are designed to keep leaders engaged with developing their leadership skills. Make it seem like a high-priority task so they don’t ignore it.  

For instance, remind management teams that it’s their responsibility to boost employee morale and that it’s just as important as any other decisions they make. Consider taking it a step further and having a feedback system in place where employees are encouraged to rate their manager. Having metrics that gauge employee engagement will show leaders where they might be lacking and help them develop.  

Most importantly though, make it seem like a big deal! Encourage these programs.  

Leadership Effectiveness is Based on Emotional Intelligence 

This is another area where leaders struggle. Sometimes it’s easy to get swept up in the corporate flow and let this important skill slip so businesses should install programs that serve as a reminder that emotions still play a valuable role.  

With so many deadlines and meetings, those who are promoted into leadership positions are usually so overwhelmed that they lose touch of the traits that got them the promotion in the first place. Sure, tasks are important and the overall productivity of employees needs to be maintained, but you can’t make it seem like it’s more important that the employees themselves.  

Leaders must continuously cultivate relationships with everyone around them. This boosts morale and keeps the workplace pleasant.  

Fortunately, businesses have one valuable traditional tool at their disposal here – performance reviews. These are a normal part of business and can be adapted to include emotional intelligence. Use performance reviews to gauge leaders and their sensitivity to stress. Again, you can set up a feedback system and then review this feedback with leaders to help them see issues.  

What this does is remind leaders of the traits that got them into the position in the first place.   

Personality Assessments Identify Negative Traits 

Everyone has negative traits that creep up at the most inopportune of times. The difference is that good leaders acknowledge and limit these negative traits. By understanding the problem, it’s much easier to keep it from happening.  

In most people, negative traits will show up in their personality at some point in time. It usually happens at the most inopportune moments. So it’s important that businesses implement systems that help leaders self-assess their strengths, behaviors, and their weaknesses. One of the defining traits that separate great leaders from poor ones is their ability to acknowledge their own flaws.  

Look at the reason why people use life coaches. They don’t help us find areas we excel in. Life coaches show us the dirty side – the one that we’re usually avoiding. That’s how we push through to the next level. So businesses should create a culture based on coaching.  

Future-proofing is a common business practice but many of these programs don’t include coaching, even though leadership effectiveness is the most important step to future-proofing. Consider having some kind of coaching program within your business to help current leadership discover their flaws and improve their skillset. Furthermore, this system can also be used to seek and develop new leaders.  

This will be an expense but it will have a huge impact on performance.  

Leaders Must Communicate the Vision of the Company to their Teams 

Leadership must commit time to reflect on the overall vision of the company. It’s up to the business to determine how this is done, but there needs to be a clear process in place. Furthermore, leaders must then be able to communicate this vision to employees.  

Everyone wants to feel like they are accomplishing something positive. The truth is that many employees feel as though their efforts have a very little impact even though a business is only as successful as those working within it. But so many leaders fail to communicate this to their teams.  

Great leaders build teams who take pride in their departments and are passionate about their work. This is fostered through communication and attitude.  

Businesses must make their vision crystal clear in order for leaders to communicate it. Develop a plan and update it regularly so that leaders can keep their teams inspired.  

One of the biggest issues I see with businesses is that they develop plans but are not transparent enough with their department leaders. Or worse, department heads are not sharing this plan with their teams! Avoid this by being transparent and communicate the vision and plan with everyone involved.  

How to Be Effective Leadership that Puts Employees First 

We’ll end this blog post with a few final thoughts on the importance of putting employees first. Effective leadership will hit a wall if employees are not treated equally. Yes, some individuals are better suited for leadership positions than others but it’s essential that everyone is measured using the same metrics.  

Communication and transparency are the keys to unlocking better leadership within a company.