Leadership Tools for Success

Do you know how your team members like to communicate? Do they prefer face-to-face? Or email? While in most cases the manager or leader will lead the communication style, it’s important to be able to adapt to different team members and what works best for them.

Then comes the style and tone of your communication, which can have a significant impact on the way the message is received. Body language and setting can have a great impact on the message reception as well. If you’re addressing a performance issue with a team member would you have this casually over a coffee? Or in a meeting room for more confidentiality?

 “Most of us have concentrated on getting the technical skills, knowledge and information so correct that somehow or other, we have overlooked the importance of the interpersonal and communication skills. Do you really know how to listen well (not hear, listen!)? Do you ask powerful questions that make people think? Do you communicate in a positive way?” says Dr Darryl.

There are a number of different courses to improve your communication styles. Start with free online courses at FutureLearn for management and leadership skills. These short-courses are available online and offered by universities across the globe.

"Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion."

- Jack Welch

Having a strong vision is central to quality leadership. It’s how you focus everyone and everything on what matters most, and it’s the very definition of your dream and direction. A vision can encourage action, attract suitable employees and make a tangible difference to your bottom line.

According to Kristi Hedges, of The Hedges Company, the key characteristics of a strong vision are:

1. Future orientated: a vision lives in the future, and it’s about movement towards a goal, betterment, growth or success. To strengthen a vision, spend time considering what your team should be moving toward a year, or even five years from now. You have to see it first to orient everyone toward it.

2. Context creating: your vision should be connected to the larger vision of the organisation, as well as the external environment, and should be made to be relevant to the wider team.

3. Positive: paint a picture of a positive future. Visionaries communicate possibility, and instead of fixating on problems, they envision solutions. A vision can include challenges, but instead of being negative, take a positive approach to the issue. A vision can be wrong or need to be adjusted; the vision when recalibrated however should point in an inspiring direction.

4. Inclusive: working for a leader with a vision helps everyone to see how their work connects to larger objectives. A vision should paint a picture where everyone has a role that’s meaningful and important. Encourage others to embrace your vision by inviting them to help shape and define the vision while it’s still nascent.

5. Active: keep the vision alive through action. A vision that’s carefully developed and then rarely discussed is pointless. Strong visions aren’t rolled out so much as woven into the fabric of the work. If you want your vision to stick, bring it into conversations and presentations at every opportunity.

Make sure your vision is communicated to your team well and often. You could have posters around the office or remind everyone of the vision and common goals at team meetings.

Taking a direct and active interest in your team’s development can have outstanding results, and one of the most effective ways to do this is through coaching. Similar to the way a coach works in a sporting environment, coaching in business is designed to get the best performance out of individuals, as well as the overall team unit.

However, it’s hard for leaders to coach when everyday pressures seem all-consuming. Finding the time to coach seems just another challenge.

Dr Karen Morley, author of Lead like a Coach and Gender Balanced Leadership: An Executive Guide says that when you take the time to coach, people trust more, work smarter, collaborate better, and are more innovative.

“When coached well, people seek their own answers and become more resourceful. They work more effectively together because they engage in dialogue. Rather than seeing resistance as a threat, it’s an opportunity to explore other perspectives,” she says. 

Dr Morley has more advice on how to implement and manage a successful coaching program:

“Rather than see coaching as something to do occasionally, or only at performance review time, it pays to practice coaching as part of your daily routine. In every moment ask not whether or not you should coach, but what to coach for. To make it routine, take a few minutes at the beginning of your day and review your ‘to-do’ list. Identify the potential coaching moments available to you. Add prompts to your ‘to-do’ list, so that you seize the moment. Prime yourself to pause. Listen, ask questions and help others identify their options. These coaching moments need only take a few minutes of your time,” she says.

Research by neuroscientist Paul J. Zak at Claremont University shows that high trust workplaces considerably improve wellbeing and increase the enjoyment and sense of accomplishment that people have in their work. You can do this for all team members by coaching them more often.”

Fairness

Part of being an effective coach of a team is to ensure that you’re an inclusive coach. According to Dr Morley, there are a few key questions to ask yourself, such as: ‘How do I think about my role for inclusion and belonging for people who are not like me, as well as those who are?’ and ‘How am I responsive, how do I take responsibility for growing fair relationships with each of my team members?’

Dr Morley says: “There are two key measures leaders can track that will help them quickly identify whether they need to make changes to be fairer. Record, faithfully, how much time is spent with each team member for a month, as well as the topic/s of conversation. If everyone gets about the same time, and it’s spent on the same topics, well done.”

“Traditionally, leaders spend more time with male team members, and they spend more of that time focused on their career advancement than they do with women. Having this data can be helpful in adjusting coaching so that everyone has growth and career opportunities.”

Are you a person who walks the talk or just talks? Do you follow up and do what you said you were going to do? Do you get back to others when you say you were going to? Are you a person of integrity who has personal credibility and tells the truth? Are you the real deal?

Make sure you are a leader that a team and management can rely on. It’s good to have a high EQ and be a great communicator but if you can’t perform the duties of your role on-time and to a high quality then you’re not a great leader. It’s important to lead by example and showcase what you expect of your team by performing it yourself.