Successful leadership is the cornerstone of a successful organization. The best leaders are those that inspire team members to be a better “version of their selves”
Leadership is never about being at the top it is about being the enabler. It is about letting your team develop so they can make a positive contribution to your organization and develop their personal skills.
We live in a time of great change and personal challenges. This is also a time of great potential, to change some “outdated norms”. This can be achieved by promoting successful leadership skills. I have recently taken the time available to see what these challenging times are teaching me about leadership.
Trust Matters
The most important lesson this crisis has thought me is that we need to trust our leaders. During times of crisis difficult decisions need to be made and this only works if we trust our leaders have our best interests at heart. When we trust our leaders we will accept decisions that otherwise we would not accept.
Value Your Team
Many organizations went out of their way to look after their teams financially, logistically and emotionally. This support to a team in a time of crisis means these employees feel valued and will continue to the make important contributions to the organization in the future. Successful leadership is about making a team member feel valued and an important part of an organizations future.
Customers Are Fickle
There is nothing like a crisis to show how “fickle” customers can be. In a pandemic long established loyalties are destroyed in a “blink of an eye” and personal safety becomes paramount. Leaders that recognize this is not personal and adopt their model to the “new normal” will thrive. Those that ask their teams to develop strategies that will entice customers back will do best. Leaders that inspire teams to think creatively will come up with the solutions to entice customers back.
The Need To Continually Innovate
When the world is in a “state of flux” the ability to innovate is critical to leaders. They need to innovate fast and repeatedly as circumstances change. They need to deal with a very fast changing landscape where even the experts are continually revising their opinions. Facts need time to emerge in the course of a pandemic. The leaders that are able to innovate fastest in reaction to uncertainty seem to do best in a changing world.
In Ireland where we had one of the strictest lockdowns I see daily examples of businesses adapting to the “new normal”, car sales rooms that have prioritized customer and staff safety have adopted new retail models, hair dressers organizations have developed “new work practices proposal” to allow the sector to reopen faster. All over the country leaders are innovating and thinking of new ways of making their sales models safe in this changing world. Successful leadership is about accepting change and innovating accordingly.
You Need A Strong Vision
In times of change I have found leaders need a strong vision. It is not enough to have the vision they need to communicate this vision. In times of uncertainty teams need to know there leaders have a vision. The number of times I have watch as teams looked to their leaders for a vision over the past few months. They desperately needed to know their leaders had a vision supported by a plan on how to go forward. The leaders that did this well inspired their teams and they willing followed them. The leaders that lacked a vision will struggle going forward. Obviously in times of uncertainty predicting the future is difficult. Successful leaders use what they know to help deal with the unknown and develop their vision accordingly.
The Best Enabler
The best leaders creates a team that becomes a unit of individual leaders who work as a group to implement the change needed to progress their organisation. They have acquired the skills necessary to deal with an ever-changing world.