To perform at best ever levels and to win

Unfortunately, many leaders and managers either have not been taught or do not understand how to employ leadership strategies that can improve their ability to influence action and improve performance on their team. Others may just need a little reminder to help reignite your use of these important leadership strategies.

1. Define & Communicate Vision

The eye looks, but it is the mind that sees.
~ proverb

Your vision is a vivid, aspirational leadership strategy that paints a picture of the future of your organization. It is long term and it is measurable. Hopefully, you already have a vision for yourself and your organization; a purpose that drives you to do what you do every day. But are you able to share that vision with others and put it into action to drive results?

When you lead a team without a vision, everyone still ends up working, and often working quite hard, but important goals might not be achieved. Positive results are not achieved. Your vision brings the team together under a common goal so you are not simply working, but performing together toward something. Something that is big and exciting!

Your vision answers the question: Where are we going?

And you need to be crystal clear in your definition of what that destination looks like, even if you do not yet know exactly how you are going to get there. This leadership strategy gives you and your team the ability to know exactly where you are located within the vision at any given time, and whether you are getting closer to or further away from your destination.

2. Encourage Recognition

When individuals and teams work above and beyond expectations to achieve great results, celebration and recognition are how you encourage continued commitment to the organization’s vision, mission, and goals. It is how excellence is encouraged over time, and how it stays strong even in times of high production volume and stress.

What gets rewarded gets repeated. This statement has become a business maxim, yet managers still often overlook the positive impact of this simple, yet effective leadership strategy.

Studies have shown that only 60% of adults in the workplace will agree that personal recognition is important to them and that it works well to help keep them motivated. That means that 40% think they do not really need recognition, they are self-motivated enough to work well without recognition. And yet, 96% of the people in that same group responded that when they receive personal recognition, it definitely inspires and motivates them to do more work. The conclusion is that, while your team may not need recognition, recognition does inspire people to do more and better work.

Even better, when you create a culture of gratitude and recognition on your team, they will pick it up and start to recognize each other on their own. This creates a great sense of community and cohesion that motivates everyone to perform at their highest level.

3. Speak from the Heart

Do you speak about your organization from your heart or from your budget?

Many people mistakenly believe that leadership is something that some people are born with and others are not. The truth is that leadership is a choice. It is a choice that only you can make; leadership can not be given or forced upon you.

When you communicate with your team, they know whether or not you are passionately engaged in being the leader by how you speak about your company’s vision, mission, and goals. They can sense in your daily interactions if your commitment to their growth and development is as important to you as your own.

4. Delegate & Empower

Perhaps the best leadership strategy to engage your team is to empower them by delegating greater responsibility. It can be exciting to be entrusted with a position of responsibility, so if something makes you feel a sense of self-worth, give that self-worth to others on your team. Find areas where you can give people the responsibility and, importantly, the authority to get things done.

Have you ever heard from your team that they can not finish their work because they are waiting for you? Are they waiting for you to take a look at or approve their work? That may be a prime example of an area that you should consider letting go of. Empower and, if necessary, train them, coach them, encourage them, and reward them.

Take a minute to do a mental exercise. Imagine you have been given a special assignment that will require you to be out of the office for the next three months. During those three months, all of your work still has to get done, but you are not allowed to hire anybody new. The assignment will only last for three months, and you have thirty days to figure out how you will redistribute your work.

Pick up your pen and, for a few seconds, think about to whom you would start delegating more responsibility. Write down one to three things you would start delegating. The reality is that a leader can not perpetually do everything that needs to get done. You need others who are empowered to complete critical tasks, and you need backup.

5. Commit to Continued Education

This includes sharing your knowledge and experiences with others. They say you never learn as much as when you are teaching, and we are truly fulfilling ourselves as leaders when we are in the role of the coach and mentor. Commit to developing your team’s leadership skills as much as your own, and you will find not only gratitude and fulfillment but will also lay the foundation for a strong leadership pipeline.

About Crestcom International, LLC.

Crestcom International, LLC is an international leadership development organization, training more than one million leaders for 25,000 businesses in over 60 countries across the globe. Crestcom achieves this through a blend of live-facilitated multimedia video, interactive exercises, and shared learning experiences. Crestcom implements action plans and coaching accountability sessions to ensure measured development in key leadership competency areas. For more information, please contact your local Crestcom representative found here.

Anyone can be placed in a leadership role, but to be good and thrive in that position requires solid leadership skills. Good leadership skills are top of the list of competencies that recruiters need to focus on when hiring people or when managers promote leaders from within the organization.

The highest ranking companies hunt for people with well-honed leadership skills to fill their most sought after executive positions.

The 8 Leadership skills you need to know:

After ticking off all items outlined in this article, you’ll have enough confidence to finally hand in your resume and apply for that job you’ve been working so hard for and become a great leader

Some leaders will say they that they do not need to be loved in the workplace to succeed. This may be true, but to build a cohesive and more engaged team, great managers need the leadership skills to forge strong working relationships with their employees.

Leaders with strong, trusting and authentic relationships with their teams know that investing time in building these bonds makes them more effective as a leader, and creates a foundation for success.

Good working relationships increase employee engagement and according to Gallup’s meta-analysis of employee engagement, business units with good employee engagement have 41% fewer quality defects and 37% less absenteeism. A 21% increase in productivity was also seen to result from higher employee engagement.

So even if you think you don’t need to be loved in the workplace, you will definitely need to be skilled in building good relationships in order to be an effective leader. 

If your team is highly engaged and happy in the workplace, you are likely to be well respected as a leader with employees who love what they do, and hopefully the strong relationships you cultivate will help your team perform at their highest level.

In a study conducted by Development Dimensions International in 2008, one of the most important leadership qualities, was the ability to facilitate change. Fast-forward to 2022, adaptability is  one of the most important leadership skills. 

Leaders need to contend with a hyper-competitive business environment, geo-politics, climate change, the changes advanced by the COVID-19 pandemic and many more factors, all of which require leaders to adapt and develop agility.

Effective leaders must be able to adapt to both internal, and external changes – even if that means working outside of your comfort zone. As a leader you need to develop a lifelong learning mentality to ensure that you are not left behind by shifts in your industry, and can give your business the competitive edge. This is where as a leader you need to be agile and adaptable, which is easier said than done.

One key way to develop leadership agility and adaptability is to be accountable and assume your responsibilities, making sure that you have laid out a plan on how you should respond to change.

This plan should contain an achievable timeline, allowing you to constantly check your progress on how well you are adapting to the change and how you are exemplifying this to your team.

Innovation in leadership is of utmost importance for every company. Successful innovation begins with ideation — the phase where outstanding ideas are developed and become the foundation of innovation success.

Consider some of the industry leaders, what did it take for Apple to become a leader technology industry? They made innovations to products with their customers in mind.

Steve Jobs, and perhaps even more so Tim Cook led the innovation and creativity for Apple Inc. by continuously forging ahead of the competition, and this probably made them some of the most innovative leaders within the tech industry.

The increasing demand for creativity and innovation will continue to be a driving force for executives, as  who must harness their leadership skills in these areas to be effective and competitive.

In close connection with relationship building, the ability to motivate your workforce is as important as keeping employee engagement high. One of the most effective leadership skills is knowing how to continuously motivate employees, which requires leaders to be connected to their teams and attentive to what is going on around them.

In a study done by the firm Interact on 10,000 employees in the US which cited that the number 1 complaint (63%) from employees concerning their managers is lack of appreciation, and, conversely, when managers appreciate their contribution, their engagement increases by 60%.

In another study by Westminster College, it was found that boosting morale is the top (32%) motivational technique employees prefer. If employees are not motivated, the company can be negatively affected (financially) with absenteeism, attrition and low productivity.

Motivated employees are much more engaged, they are also more self-confident in what they do, and can do. This leads them to know how to react in difficult situations and develop innovative ideas that could help optimize business performance.

A leader is tasked with making decisions all the time. To be an effective leader, those decision making skills need to be top notch. Critical decisions affecting your organization on a large scale need to be sound, rational and solid.

In reality, your decisions as a leader will determine your – and potentially your organization’s – success. Making decisions, however big or small, are a fundamental part of Leadership, as a leader you need to develop strong decision-making skills and have the conviction to stand by your decisions, whilst also recognizing the need to adapt when those decisions do not lead to the desired outcome. It is a unique balancing act.

Remember, some decisions may not always be favorable. Making an unpopular but necessary decision is probably one of the most difficult tasks as a leader, but it is vital that as a leader you are able to recognize your responsibilities and make clear decisions for your team or organization.

According to the American Management Association a manager spends an at least 24% of their time managing conflict. Conflict can happen in any area of business.

A conflict is considered to be any issue between two or more individuals that can potentially disrupt work. Conflict in business may go beyond the workplace as it can involve customers, suppliers and even competitors.

When a conflict arises, an effective leader should be able to jump in and resolve or at least mitigate the conflict before it affects the business negatively. When properly dealt with, a conflict may even turn out to be positive for your organization, as it can often lead to stronger bonds or new ideas.

To be effective as a leader, you must be good at identifying conflict, and have foresight on how to resolve it. It is also essential to be rational when faced with confrontation. Conflict management is no doubt one of the most important leadership competencies but Robyn Short cited a study that found 60% of U.S. employees have not received any conflict management skills training.

As a leader, it is important that you are able to manage conflict, but developing these same skills in your team can help avoid conflict altogether.

Negotiation is a process where two parties with different ideals get together and mutually agree on what an outcome should be. According to Skills You Need, the process of negotiation involves 6 stages:

1. Preparation
2. Discussion
3. Clarification of goals
4. Negotiation towards a Win-Win outcome
5. Agreement
6. Implementation of a course of action

Good negotiations can be beneficial to an organization because they will build better relationships, both internally and externally. They will also help find the best long-term solution by getting the most out of two different sides. An effective leader must be well versed in his negotiation style to move an organization forward.

As a leader, negotiation is used to understand the interests of your employees and to find ways of satisfying those interests, in order to achieve organizational goals.

Leading a business is unquestionably very challenging. To be successful, a leader must make a lot of difficult decisions. Research by the Brandon Hall Group shows that critical thinking is the most important skill required of leaders to successfully lead an organization.

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly, whilst building a logical connection between different ideas. Critical thinkers are intelligent decision makers, highly analytical and generally always rational. These attributes are essential to lead an organization towards achieving its goal.

Typically,  critical thinkers will rigorously question ideas and assumptions, they will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings represent the true picture and are commonly able to recognize inconsistencies and errors in reasoning to achieve the desired outcome.