How to be an Effective Leader

In the corporate world, managing a team effectively is your Olympic event. With the right strategy and collaboration, you and your team can achieve organisational goals and stand on the winner’s podium – but it all starts with the right leadership.

Leadership skills

What is meant by leadership skills?

Leadership skills are the qualities, abilities and strengths shown by people in senior management roles in the workplace. These people have the responsibility to lead, motivate, and guide their team members towards achieving a common goal or objective. The ability to be a good leader relies on a variety of soft and hard skills, such as communication, conflict resolution, analytical skills and many more.

What skills are needed to be a good leader?

Visionary direction – Great leaders have a clear vision and the ability to inspire their team. Leaders need to be able to provide a sense of direction and purpose to keep their team motivated.

Effective communication – Leaders need to be able to clearly communicate goals, expectations and feedback. But it’s not just about talking, good leaders need to be able to listen to their team’s needs. Encouraging open and transparent communication from everyone in the team is important to achieve this.

Emotional intelligence – Taking into account the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of team members builds trust and fosters a supportive work environment. Leaders with high emotional intelligence levels are also aware of their own emotions and how they might affect their behaviour and decision-making, ensuring they don’t drop the ball during critical moments.

Adaptability and Flexibility – Being responsive to change is vital to ensure the success of a team. Leaders need to lead by example by having the ability to adapt to new situations and challenges.

Change Management – While adaptability and flexibility go hand-in-hand with change management, change management skills are vital to take your team to success. Change management is a framework for managing the people side of change, having the ability to implement approaches to prepare and support individuals, teams and leaders in making organisational change.

How to manage a successful team:

An Olympic champion isn’t made overnight, and neither is a high-performing team. Both require commitment, training, and the right support. As a leader, here is how you should take your skills and build the path for your team’s victory together:

Establish a clear vision and goals:

Defining the business and team vision is important for employees to understand the importance of their role within the team and the business’s success.

This helps employees to feel a sense of purpose in their work and helps the team to feel aligned when it comes to working towards common goals.

Setting SMART goals can be a great way to establish clear targets for your team to work towards. These goals act as smaller goal posts that help to contribute towards a bigger goal for the team or an overall business objective.

A SMART goal is an objective that is:

  • Specific – The goal must have a clear objective so that anyone reading it can understand what is being set out to be achieved and who will do it.
  • Measurable – progress and results need to be able to be measured to track progress.
  • Achievable – The goal must be realistic for the individual or team for the organisation to achieve with their current resources and within their current environment.
  • Relevant – The goal needs to be relevant to contributing towards the overall success of the business, and its desired organisational direction.
  • Time-bound – The goal has a time frame for when the result wants to happen within.

Foster a strong team culture:

Fostering a strong team culture is vital for employee retention and motivation. Financial compensation in most cases, is not enough to keep your employees engaged, motivated and invested in your business.

Some ways you can foster a strong team culture:

  • Build trust – Encourage open communication and transparency. Make an environment where employees feel safe and able to communicate with you honestly. Rather than being the only person who gives feedback, encourage regular feedback from employees as well.
  • Promote collaboration – Encourage This is particularly important if you’re offering a remote of hybrid working system, as it can be easy for employees to feel alienated and separate from the team.
  • Recognise and celebrate your team – Making an effort to recognise and reward hard work or when someone has gone the extra mile will make your team feel appreciated. This doesn’t just have to be through financial companion, there are plenty  of other ways to show employee appreciation.

Invest in your people:

If you want your team to reach success, then you need to support and facilitate your teams professional development.

As a leader, you might want to offer continuous learning practises by providing opportunities for team members to undertake new courses, webinars, attend networking events, or gain new qualifications.

Or, you might want to look into mentorship and coaching, whether this is paring less experienced team members with mentors to guide their development, or working with external coaches to coach other members of your team to gain the skills to move into more senior positions.

Providing your team members with opportunities for professional development not only helps them to enhance their skills and improve productivity, but it also helps to retain employees by allowing them to feel like they are continuously developing.

Measure and celebrate progress:

Conduct regular check-ins to see how your team are getting on and if there’s anything they need from you. Successful teams need leaders to understand what is needed from them for the team to perform at its best.

 

Lead by example:

While it might sound obvious, as a leader you need to lead by example. Demonstrate the level of commitment and work ethic you expect from your team. Where possible, it’s great to communicate with your team what you’ve been up to so they can understand what you do on a day-to-day basis as well.

A successful leader ensures that they are approachable and supportive, allowing their team to feel like they can talk with them whenever needed.

 

Adapt and innovate:

Be prepared to adapt strategies, plans, and goals when new circumstances arise. A successful team has a leader who can adapt and flex plans whenever necessary.

Move forward as a team by creating a culture that encourages innovation. Make it clear that you welcome new ideas and create solutions from your team members.

Reflect and improve:

Make sure that you and your team don’t just complete projects, move on, and forget about them. Make time to reflect and seek feedback from your team about what went well, what could’ve gone better, what challenges occurred and did we overcome them in the best way possible.

As a leader, it’s important to listen to your employees, take their feedback onboard, and communicate how you are going to try to implement it going forward.

What can we learn?

By building on your skills and implementing these strategies, you can build a cohesive, motivated, and high-performing team capable of achieving gold. Much like training an Olympic champion, Consistency, dedication, and the right support are essential in leading your team to victory.