Three Key Components of Great Leadership

July 10, 2019

Highly effective teams rely on strong leadership, cohesion and motivated individuals.

All good and well, but what does that boil down to? This isn't a comprehensive article, at all. But, if you're a developing leader, you're about to be promoted, or you want to know if you're doing it right? Read along.

Effective communication, at all levels, forms the basis of every high performing team. This means communication going up and down the chain. Everyone should be comfortable talking about everything, to everyone.

What else is in the leadership toolbox?

• The leader assumes ultimate responsibility, and should shield the team from any external parties or threats, allowing them to perform at the highest level and knowing they are safe in doing so.
• A team performs at its highest capacity when it is provided the opportunity and environment to do so. To the degree that, the leader works for their team, not vice versa.
• Facilitating the team and ensuring that they have the network, information and assets they need to perform, is the leaders’ ultimate responsibility.

Fundamentally, great leaders do not claim responsibility for success, instead they praise their team for great performance. Great leaders accept ultimate responsibility for poor performance without any deflection unto their team. Team discipline is ultimately the team leaders’ responsibility, external rank or any other parties should never undermine this. 

Stop me if you think that makes sense, but reality doesn't reflect this.

Maintaining high standards through effective leadership is done by acknowledgement. Acknowledge your team and their efforts. Praise and reward them often, and fast. Hard work and great achievements must be rewarded in addition to the previous three examples. Great leaders employ these tactics naturally and genuinely. It must become a natural flow of events where the leader sets the tone, and it is the entire process that creates and maintains great teams, positive work environments and happy employees.

This perfect storm of events is the leaders’ responsibility. Transformational leadership done correctly has been correlated with higher employee job satisfaction and emotional well-being. 

Retention 101.

Conversely, where great leadership can include numerous positive indicators of employee satisfaction, toxic leadership correlates with a near equal number of negative indicators of employee satisfaction.

A key indicator of a poor leader, is micromanagement. This must be avoided at all cost, as a micromanaging leader severely undermines team autonomy, innovation and trust.

What other indicators do you associate with a poor leader?

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