Are you the leader of an organisation? Maybe you have a small or a large team working with you. Have you ever stopped to think what it means to be a leader? As a leader you bring certain characteristics and strengths, but you also have responsibilities.
Leadership in business is about building a vision shared by everyone in your team and motivating and encouraging them to achieve the set goals. Your team is vital because they are the people who will help the business reach its goals. But they are relying on you to show them where the goals are and the best path to reach them.
Being an effective leader is about being a coach, facilitator, trainer and motivator. It cannot be achieved by sitting in isolation in an office. It has to be achieved by upfront leadership, excellent communication, articulating your vision while encouraging the opinions of your team and ensuring that appropriate systems are put in place so the team can perform their tasks effectively.
Effective leadership is vital to any business. It can help steer the business in the right direction and move it forward towards greater profitability.
What’s your vision?
What is your vision and have you shared this with your team? They need to know where the business is heading so they can find their niche and work towards the set goals. They need to be able to commit to the organisation. You’ve built the business, you may have had some very successful years, but is your business still on track with the original blueprint,
the vision? Ask yourself these questions so you can discuss them with your team.
- What do we have to do to achieve/maintain results?
- Where we are going?
- Who are we?
- What is our organisation trying to achieve?
- What is the identity of our organisation?
- What does it mean to our customers?
- What does it mean to our staff?
Your enthusiasm creates the team culture. You don’t want to be over-the-top about it but a leader does need to spend time communicating with and listening to their team about the ideas, goals and vision for the future direction of the organisation.
Leaders need to be able to paint the “big picture” so they can discuss with the other members of the organisation what the goals are and convince them that they are attainable.
Trust your dream
Leaders must have personal courage. You’ve taken the time to plan what your business needs to achieve. Now you need the self-belief, both in yourself and your team, to see it through to the end.
If the road gets shaky, keep your eyes looking forward. Don’t hide from the bad news – you’ve got to be seen and heard from in bad times as well as good times.
The leadership challenge
Leadership is a difficult role! And you wouldn’t be alone if you had some self-doubts along the way. But look at these doubts as challenges rather than problems. Where do your strengths and weaknesses lie? What resources do you have for getting around those areas of weakness?
As a leader you have to be continually aware of your own shortcomings and invest in development programmes as well as working with your accountant to advance your own skills. There is always help and advice available – the important part is acknowledging that you need it.
A leader’s attributes
Well run businesses are often led by people who have high personal capacities including:
- Drive and energy
- High levels of self confidence
- High levels of determination
- The ability to solve problems
- Sense of realism of the difficulties to be encountered in business
- Willingness to take advice
- Willingness to take personal responsibility
- Preparedness to undertake ongoing personal development in skills needed for business operations
- Ability to see the big picture
- Ability to gather data and interpret it
Understand their personal strengths and weaknesses.
