What makes a GOOD Leader?

As a manager, it’s our job to create an inspirational environment where people can meet their potential and be motivated to do so. 

As a leader, I know it’s a challenging task getting delivery from your team and making sure they are committed, engaged and 100% dedicated to realising the team objectives. My current role makes me responsible for the delivery of the company’s goals.

So how does a leader get all of this done, ensuring delivery without compromising the inspirational environment within their team? Well quite simply there are several essential factors to keep in mind:

Look at the bigger picture and the goals

It is vital that everyone on your team understands what the bigger picture is and more importantly their role in reaching the goal. People with clear goals and direction of how to achieve that goal perform better than those with no goal to aim for.

Assign tasks to each team member’s strengths

For your team members to be happy and most productive, it is essential to concentrate on their strengths. A team will be more engaged if I distribute work according to their strengths. Not only does this make them feel confident doing tasks that they are clearly very good at but more importantly they perform better.

 Sharing and generating ideas

Teams are known to achieve better chemistry and results if there is a way to share ideas.  Conducting a brainstorming session to generate GOOD ideas makes everyone feel involved and have responsibility to the team’s goal. There are other benefits to brainstorming like quicker problem solving and team building. 

Encouraging people

All the goal setting techniques are tools to help the team achieve better results, but we must remember that we are dealing with humans. People are emotional beings and although setting goals and giving tasks per their strengths increases the chance of success, it doesn’t mean you should not motivate them as well. The best time to encourage your team is at the beginning and end of the process. It is good to reinforce the knowledge that they are moving in the right direction and that they are a vital part of the outcome. Constantly give feedback and recognition to help motivate your staff and keep them on track.

Increasing engagement

This is key to the success of any organisation - if you do not have engagement you do not have productivity. Research different ways to get your employees engaged, they can range from professional development through gaining a qualification relevant to their role or understanding their work life balance and setting out career development paths. (engageforsuccess.org/what-is-employee-engagement)

If you have capability and engagement, then you will have a successful workplace. Keeping your employees engaged is difficult but there are several tools and strategies that you can use to tailor your approach. It's important to remember that every individual and situation is different, so make sure that you mix things up a little. A big theory I always remember is the Pygmalion Effect 

This highlights how your expectations can affect your team members' performance. For example if you doubt someone will succeed, you can make them feel undervalued and you undermine their confidence. The Pygmalion Effect is useful because it reinforces the idea that you can encourage people to perform better at work by having higher expectations of them and communicating these expectations to them.

Do you have an adivce on what makes a GOOD Leader? Please contact Kelly Laine on 01628 857343 or kelly.laine@bps-world.com