What is Effective Leadership?
- Effective leadership in the business settings plays an integral role in the success and reputation of the business in the long run.
- Leaders are the ones who show and create the path for the members, they are the ones who create the strong work ethic with the set of goals to achieve and delegative the work and responsibilities accordingly.
- Leadership is a skill which helps people channelise the actions through someone towards the right direction. Effective leadership and motivational strategies can provide individuals with the range of insights that are applied in various personal and professional settings.
- Leadership proves to be a powerful tool in Management and organisational behaviour, it helps in influencing individuals to achieve organisational goals and maximize the performance and profitability in the long run.
Characteristics of Leadership:
Learning Agility:
- Learning agility is the most important factor which a leader should possess, it is the ability to know what to do when you don’t know what to do. Often such situations take place where one has to think from a neutral perspective and take the best decisions. If you are able to excel in unfamiliar circumstances you might already be learning agility.
- Favourable situations is something everyone is comfortable with but critical/ unfavourable situations are the ones which make the difference, a powerful, effective, efficient and true leader is able to tackle such experiences with easy taking into consideration the highest good of all.
Learner:
One has to keep learning throughout the life. There is a lesson in each and every situation that you interact with on a day to day basis. Great leaders are really considered to be great learners. Observing and learning from situations helps a person to become a good leader.
Observation:
Effective and efficient leaders are great observers, they have a keen command and check of their surroundings. Observation helps them to analyse the internal workforce, managemnet and the external investors, other stakeholders. With great observation skills they are in the position to take the accurate decisions in the greatest advantages of the oragnisation as a whole.
Laser Sharp Focus:
Leader is someone who has to show the path and create the way towards the attainment of the same. They need a lazersharp focus inorder to get to this point. Effective focus leads to incremental growth, the efforts are put into the right places. Being focused helps organsations to achieve excellence execution, exponential growth, productivity, efficiency, improved profitability and a strong reputation/ goodwill.
Communication:
Effective leadership and communication have a direct relationship. The best leaders are efficient communicators who are able to communicate in a variety of ways right from transmission of information to influencing others. Communication turns out to be the most important factor of a leader as the quality and effectiveness of communication among leaders of the organisation directly impacts the success of the business.
Courageous:
A leader should be courageous and fearless enough to take control of terrible/critical situations. It can be hard to speak up at work whether you want to voice a new idea, provide feedback to a direct report or flag a concern for someone about something. Rather than avoiding problems having courageous, ambitious leaders to step up and move things towards right direction turns out to be breakthrough element.
Respect:
True leaders are known for their ability to give and take respect. Treating people with respect and integrity is one of the most important things a leader can do. It will minimise stress, tensions, conflicts among people and lead to improved trust and cordial relations. Being respectful is not that difficult, it can just be started with simply being a good listener who truly cares and values the opinions of its members/ employees/ individuals. Treating each and everyone with respect should be the core element of the value propositions of the company.
Gratitude:
Being thankful can lead to higher self esteem, reduced stress and better relations. Even the strongest leaders require dedicated effective and efficient teams in the organisation as a whole to get done a particular task. To be an effective leader you must know how to encourage the teams by being grateful to them from time to time.
Delegation of Responsibilities:
In the business settings there are huge responsibilities in terms of work functioning, variable functioning of various departments, controllership of finance, the record keeping of the same, the cost controls, etc. Here comes the part of deligating those responsibilities effectively, which forms the core value proposition and responsibility of an effective leader. A leader has to delegate the responsibilities in an effective manner to get done the work smoothly, systematically, efficiently and accurately.
Effective Listener:
A leader is someone who is supposed to be good listener. He or she should listen to the grievances/ disputes if any, of its employees and take actions to make it right. Simply being a good listener solves half of the issues concerning the business operational activities. The workforce feels a sense of support just by taking into account their problems and making a notes of it.
Styles of Leadership:
Authoritarian Or Autocratic Leadership Style:
- As the name itself suggests that authoritarian leaders are as such, who carry a powerful impact and presence in their working ecosystem, also referred to as autocratic leaders. They are the pioneers and create the path towards the goals, they have top tier command and control over their peers.
- In this scenario the decision making is centralised, meaning that there is only one person who has to make the critical and important decisions. An authoritarian leader is one who has the clear vision and mission of the bigger picture but only involves the rest of the team on a task by task or needed basis.
Participative Leadership Style:
- Participative leaders also known as the democratic leaders, are the ones who positively welcome everyone’s opinions and at the same time are ready to collaborate. These leaders make everyone participate and distribute the responsibility of decision making with everyone.
- Participative leaders form an essential part of the team, they are the ones who invest their time, energy, decision making their colleague’s growth because they know that it will intern lead to the attainment of the final goals. These leaders work with everyone and let everyone participate in the crucial decisions pertaining to the business and create a friendly work ecosystem, whereby, the workforce is involved majorly in the operation of the business.
Delegative Or Laissez-faire Leadership Style:
- Delegation means to handover the tasks to the people, which is the workforce who is incharge of getting it done. Leaders with effective delegation style help the organisation achieve great heights. The deligative or Laissez-fair leadership style offers a very little guidance to the group thus, basically gives the workforce complete freedom in the decision making process.
- Laissez-faire leaders allow their followers to have the autonomy to make their own decisions and manage their own desks. They give their team support, guidance, consultation, and training when it’s needed, but trust them to handle the details and execution of their tasks and projects.
Visionary Leadership Style:
- Visionary leadership style as a name suggests, here the leaders are visionaries, they have a vision and mission in their minds. They have a set of clear long term goals and visions to achieve. They have the ability to inspire and motivate the workforce.
- This leadership comes into play when the company is usually big sized, needs a big change and a clear direction to move forward towards its exponential growth path. Here, the leader gives a clear path and the followers follow it into the unknown. This system or fashion of leadership works only when there are no clashes of opinions and disputes.
Coaching Leadership Style:
- Coaching leadership style is the one where the leader trains the workforce by determining and analysing the strengths and weaknesses in order to improve, train and and retain those employees which in turn helps to the long term success and stability of the organisation. The rention of its corporate workforce is a core business objective as the rentention of effective and efficient employees helps the organisation to significantly reduce the recruitment and training costs associated to it and leads to better performance and higher profitability.
- The coaching leadership style is successful when the leader is creative, willing to go to great lengths to make the changes happen, encourages collaboration and feedback. The leader should be wise enough to coach people as coaching leadership style is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Affiliative Leadership Style:
- Affiliative leadership style is as such which works on the framework of fostering positive work relationships with the workforce.
- The primary intention of this leadership fashion is to create harmony within the working ecosystem, to build and foster relationships which lead to a more collaborative positive work environment.
- A leader should naturally posses the ability to be able to handle critical situations and turn them to the favourable ones by building trust, positively, hearing out the problems of the employees. As a positive working ecosystem is the primary aim that every organisation considers to reach great heights in terms of success.
- Happy satisfied, well taken care of employees are the assets also referred to as the human capital. By fostering positive work ethic and collaborative working ecosystem the company promotes the betterment/ concern towards its workforce which helps them further to build a stronger reputation, fundamentals and future sustainability.
