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The Most Important Leadership Competencies, According to Leaders Around the World

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Research over the past few decades has shown us that the most important leadership qualities are centered around soft skills and emotional intelligence. But do these skills point to deeper competencies? A survey of 195 leaders from more than 30 global organizations suggests that there are five major…

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Have you ever been in a group where someone took control of the situation by conveying a clear vision of the group's goals, a marked passion for the work, and an ability to make the rest of the group feel recharged and energized? This person just might be what is called a transformational leader.

Transformational leadership is a leadership style that can inspire positive changes in those who follow. Transformational leaders are generally energetic, enthusiastic, and passionate. Not only are these leaders concerned and involved in the process; they are also focused on helping every member of the group succeed as well.

Quick Background

The concept of transformational leadership was initially introduced by leadership expert and presidential biographer James MacGregor Burns. According to Burns, transformational leadership can be seen when "leaders and followers make each other to advance to a higher level of moral and motivation."﻿﻿

Later, researcher Bernard M. Bass expanded upon Burns's original ideas to develop what is today referred to as Bass's Transformational Leadership Theory. According to Bass, transformational leadership can be defined based on the impact that it has on followers. Transformational leaders, Bass suggested, garner trust, respect, and admiration from their followers.﻿﻿

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Components

Bass also suggested that there were four different components of transformational leadership.

1. Intellectual Stimulation: Transformational leaders not only challenge the status quo; they also encourage creativity among followers. The leader encourages followers to explore new ways of doing things and new opportunities to learn.

2. Individualized Consideration: Transformational leadership also involves offering support and encouragement to individual followers. In order to foster supportive relationships, transformational leaders keep lines of communication open so that followers feel free to share ideas and so that leaders can offer direct recognition of the unique contributions of each follower.

3. Inspirational Motivation: Transformational leaders have a clear vision that they are able to articulate to followers. These leaders are also able to help followers experience the same passion and motivation to fulfill these goals.

4. Idealized Influence: The transformational leader serve as a role model for followers. Because followers trust and respect the leader, they emulate this individual and internalize his or her ideals.

So what are some typical signs of a transformational leader? Groups led by this type of leader tend to be both successful and loyal. They give a lot to the team and care deeply about the group's ability to accomplish its goals. Turnover tends to be quite low as transformational leaders are able to inspire a great deal of commitment in their followers.

In their classic text, Transformational Leadership, authors Bass and Riggio explained:

"Transformational leaders...are those who stimulate and inspire followers to both achieve extraordinary outcomes and, in the process, develop their own leadership capacity. Transformational leaders help followers grow and develop into leaders by responding to individual followers' needs by empowering them and by aligning the objectives and goals of the individual followers, the leader, the group, and the larger organization."

"Research evidence clearly shows that groups led by transformational leaders have higher levels of performance and satisfaction than groups led by other types of leaders," explained psychologist and leadership expert Ronald E. Riggio in an article for Psychology Today.

The reason, he suggests, is that transformational leaders believe that their followers can do their best, leading members of the group to feel inspired and empowered.

What can you do to become a more transformational leader? Leadership experts suggest that having a strong, positive vision of the future plays a critical role. Not only is it important to believe in this vision yourself; you've also got to inspire others to buy into your vision as well.

Link to Well-Being

According to the results of one study, this style of leadership can also have a positive influence on employee well-being.﻿﻿

The study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine involved surveying workers at several different German information and communication technology companies. Researchers asked participants to answers questions about their employer's leadership style.

A score for transformational leadership was then determined based on qualities such as providing intellectual stimulation, giving positive feedback for good performance, leading by example, and helping employees feel like they were making a contribution toward the goals of the group.

The researchers discovered that employees who identified a higher level of transformational leadership in their employers also had higher reported levels of well-being. The effect stayed significant even after researchers controlled for factors that are linked to well-being such as job strain, education, and age.

"The results of this study suggest that a transformational leadership style, which both conveys a sense of trust and meaningfulness and individually challenges and develops employees, also has a positive effect on employee well-being," the authors summarized.

Real-World Applications

So what impact could such results have for managers and workers?

The study's authors suggest that the results are important and can help companies develop leadership training programs that can be used to teach transformational leadership skills. Acquiring communication skills such as resolving conflicts in the workplace and recognizing the needs of employees are an important part of transformational leadership.

"Such training programs can be seen as another essential component of workplace health promotion and prevention efforts and therefore should receive wide support," explained the study's authors.

A Word From Verywell

The transformational style of leadership can be highly effective when used appropriately, but it might not necessarily be the best choice for every situation. In some cases, groups may require a more managerial or autocratic style that involves closer control and greater direction, particularly in situations where group member are unskilled and need a lot of oversight.

One way to improve your own leadership skills is to assess your own current leadership style and think about ways in which your strengths can benefit the group you are leading. By evaluating your own skills, you will be better able to play to your strengths and work on improving your areas of weakness.

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How Do Transformational Leaders Inspire and Motivate Followers?

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Have you ever been in a group where someone took control of the situation by conveying a clear vision of the group's goals, a marked passion for the work, and an ability to make the rest of the group feel recharged and energized? This person just might be what is called a transformational leader.

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3 Leadership Styles Similar to Transformational Leadership

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Spread the loveA transformational school leader ensures students focus on their studies by being considerate of individuality, being charismatic in influencing them, and inspiring them. Instead of using set problem-solving techniques, he or she involves students and teachers to come up with solutions to problems as they arise.

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Think Forward Consulting - Business Development

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It's known and understood amongst most business owners, CEOs and MD's that good leadership is critical in organisational growth. Organisations are increasingly aware of the importance of the workplace environment for employees and the role that leaders play in this.

The leadership role is evolving to not just be focused on results but to focus more on the employees and providing a supportive approach. This adds another dimension to a role that traditionally has been largely profit focused. Leaders are now expected to be more people focused and to know how to join this up with profit expectations - not necessarily an easy thing to do in complex business environments.
What is Supportive Leadership?
Supportive leaders are those who are willing to focus on identifying what changes and support is required to ensure the well-being of their team and, in turn, deliver a high standard of performance by alleviating any unnecessary obstacles.

In supportive leadership, the manager is not so interested in giving orders and managing every detail as in giving employees the tools they need to produce results themselves. Delegation is still a crucial part of supportive leadership, but it is not about simply assigning tasks to then receive the results. Instead, they work through the tasks with employees to improve skills and talent until the manager does not need to worry about a task being done correctly and the employee is fully empowered in a particular area. A major upside to supportive leadership is that the manager will work with the employee until he or she is empowered and skilled enough to handle tasks with minimal supervision in the future. This helps develop a productive and loyal team that can deliver effective results for business growth.

Creating a supportive environment, by its nature provides a mentoring approach for employees to benefit from, which in turn benefits the leader and so the business.

6 key abilities of supportive leaders

1. Ability to see the bigger picture

Time can be tight for a leader in a business, but having the ability to take a step back and view situations and see what's on the horizon can identify what expectations need to be considered and how they are to be handled and what involvement is required from the team.

2. Ability to prioritise

It's vital to identify key priorities and communicate them effectively to the team so they understand what needs to be achieved and why. A supportive leader will be able to explain and engage an employee in the need of a project and to show support through to completion.

3. Ability to empower and inspire

It's not always easy to know how to inspire teams and individuals, but by the nature of being supportive, a leader can motivate through empowerment and demonstrating trust. By enabling employees to take ownership, and by encouraging individuals to give a new opportunity a try combined with being honest, can create loyalty, confidence and high productivity as employees have a clear understanding of the need and expectation.

4. Ability to communicate

You would expect this to be the easier of the skills required as a supportive leader, and yet it is so easy for leaders to minimise the information they pass down, or due to tight schedules forget to sit and talk through projects and expectations. Leaders can often assume their teams know and understand what is required, yet poor communication can lead to many numerous working issues and misunderstandings. Learning and implementing different methods of communication can quickly turn an under-performing team into a productive and engaged team.

5. Ability to accept mistakes

We are only human at the end of the day and everyone makes mistakes. A supportive leader is not only able to accept that mistakes and failures do happen, but will also have the type of relationship with their employees which creates an open dialogue for individuals to feel 'safe' within to learn from the mistakes and grow.

6. Ability to make yourself available

Being accessible to employees when required can help foster an underlying safety blanket, whereby they know they can ask for support when needed and they will be taken seriously. Being able to empathise at certain times and provide relevant support and direction will aid loyalty, encourage success and employee retention.

Leadership, or supportive leadership does not always come naturally to people, and there are many aspects of the role of leadership to be considered, not just with teams and employees but with expectations for business objectives and your own role in helping to grow the business.

Creating a supportive leadership team

Think Forward understand and have direct experience of the pressure leadership teams face to deliver on objectives with limited time and resource and with ever increasing expectations. Being a supportive leader is not just about being there for your direct reports, but the senior leadership team also need to be supportive of each other, helping and boosting each other when needed.

But it can often be challenging for leaders to focus on this or even see the benefits of being consistently supportive when there are so many other activities to juggle. At Think Forward we have seen first-hand the positive impact on productivity and team morale when leaders pull together to acknowledge the strengths, fill the gaps, agree consistent approaches and learn together.

Knowing how to engage with teams and employees to get the most out of them does not always come naturally to people, so at Think Forward we implement a collaborative approach to firstly better understand the leaders themselves, alongside business objectives, and then by using our coaching expertise combined with using tools from the Lumina Learning suite, we are able to identify key traits to strengthen and define development plans for long-term leadership growth.

Penny Strutton, Think Forward founder, says "Creating and building a supportive leadership style does not come overnight, and it varies according to the business and the team themselves. We work closely with leaders to create a bespoke development plan based on informed and identified outcomes from the Lumina Learning tools and the individual consultations we do. From this an integrated program is created to help support and grow the business leaders to make the changes needed for a supportive leadership infrastructure."

To discuss strengthening and developing your leadership team, just get in touch for an initial consultation - call 0115 880 0098.

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The importance of supportive leadership | Think Forward Consulting - Business Development

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It's known and understood amongst most business owners, CEOs and MD's that good leadership is critical in organisational growth. Organisations are increasingly aware of the importance of the workplace environment for employees and the role that leaders play in this. The leadership role is evolving to not just be focused on results but to focus ...

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Grading during the Coronavirus

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As the nation's schools lurch into an unprecedented experiment with distance learning, with all of the hiccups and false starts that entails, teachers and administrators alike are starting to wrestle with a question deeply at the heart of the learning enterprise: How are they supposed to assign grades?

It's a tough call. Districts must balance what's fair for students, considering that many don't-or won't-have full access to their teachers. There's also an art to the messaging-they don't want to communicate that they're blowing off the rest of the school year.

The Mountain Empire district in California stretches more than 660 square miles, includes students from three Native American reservations, and serves a half dozen distinct communities. Internet access ranges from decent to nonexistent. The district will be offering instruction both online and, for families who lack sufficient access, photocopied work packets.

That hasn't stopped the district from trying to put together ambitious learning plans for its 1,700 students, like an interdisciplinary project for them to explore a topic of interest over several days.

Read More: See Which States Have Cancelled Spring Tests Because of Coronavirus

But it does mean that students will have varying types and intensity of interaction with their teachers.

Given those disparities, the district plans to recommend that, as long as students participate, teachers should revert to their previous progress grades. Students could potentially improve those scores, but they wouldn't be penalized.

"I don't want to give everyone an A because we're just trying to be nice," said Patrick Keeley, the principal of the district's single high school. "But we don't want to ruin people's chances in the future, either," especially when it's due to factors outside of their control.

Contrast Mountain Empire's context with that of the Salem City district in Virginia, near Roanoke.

The district serves a small, fairly compact city. Every student in grades 3 through 12 has a Chromebook through its one-to-one program. Salem has about 200 "hot spots" for WiFi connectivity, and a cable company has agreed to provide free internet access for students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches.

So when its spring break ends on April 13, the district plans to make a legitimate go at covering the most essential of its remaining state standards via online learning-and to continue issuing letter grades for students' work.

"We realize that if we tell kids today, 'Hey, your grade can't be any lower than it is now,' or if we tell them we're not going to grade them for the rest of the year, we're going to have a big chunk of kids check out," said Curtis Hicks, the district's assistant superintendent. "And that's not healthy for them for the short run, and it's not healthy for the long term, if students are underprepared for what comes next."

Those two anecdotes outline the different tension points surrounding grading, but there's also potentially a larger conversation to be had.

Grading has been on the backburner as educators have focused on other measures of student progress, like graduation rates and standardized tests scores, but the coronavirus is prompting new questions about how it should work.

It comes down to this: What is the point of grading, anyway? And how might it need to evolve in the age of the coronavirus?

Cross Purposes?

In the United States, grading is almost exclusively a local prerogative, with rules set by its more than 14,000 school districts.

To try to give some shape to this far-flung, locally developed system, states and other public and private bodies have built a variety of policies around grades to force them, imperfectly, into a common currency.

Every state sets credithour requirements for graduation, for example. Grade point averages are used for college admissions, scholarship programs, and even eligibility for participation in extracurricular activities and sports.

Some states use grades to determine whether students are eligible for special programs, like magnets or gifted education; a handful use them as part of their 3rd-grade reading laws to determine whether students should progress to 4th grade.

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing states and districts to give some serious reconsideration to nearly all of those policies.

Most states are attending to the most pressing needs first-those of high school seniors set to graduate. To date, the states of Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, Oregon, Mississippi, Virginia, and Wisconsin have all waived various graduation requirements, including certain mandated courses, end-of-course examinations, and minimum attendance hours. Many of them are now allowing districts to decide whether students have met the requirements for graduation.

The broader question of grades, though, is complicated by the fact that the purpose of grading has become a bit of a muddle, said Jack Schneider, an assistant professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who is co-writing a book on the history of grading.

Sometimes grades are meant as motivation, to help spur students to do better. Sometimes they're supposed to communicate mastery of content to parents. And sometimes, in their most weighty function, they're used to compare students to one another, as when colleges and universities look at transcripts.

Most of the time, the A-to-F grading system is pressed into supporting all those goals even though some of them arguably work at cross-purposes, Schneider noted. And that effectively makes it harder for districts to tease out what to do with grades during an extraordinary disruption-like the school closures wrought by the coronavirus.

"People will begin to realize they do want feedback, for instance, from their student's teachers on how their kids are doing," he noted. "But unless the playing field is equal or they're getting the same type of supports they usually get, they don't want that kind of communicative effort to end up living forever on a student transcript."

Equity Concerns

Most of the districts interviewed by Education Week still want teachers to be providing lots of feedback to students on the assignments they complete. But they're less certain about the other functions of grades.

Many districts cite equity concerns for wanting to take a pause from traditional grading schemes, pointing to ways in which grades could penalize students who are low-income, lack access to a device and the internet, or who cannot rely on parents to help with home-based learning.

"Already our achievement scores are reflective of poverty in Ohio," noted Michelle Novak, a school board member for the 6,400-student Middletown City district, in Middletown, Ohio. Her district serves many students in poverty who come from single-parent households, and the opioid epidemic hit the area hard. It estimates that 1-in-5 students don't have access to both a device and the internet.

"If we want to give our kids grades during this time, we're really going to be grading what their home life looks like," she said. "And I don't think it's fair to do that to anyone."

The Mountain Empire district, for now, says it wants teachers to focus their feedback on students' progress towards standards, rather than assessing simply to build a grade. As for the end of the term, "If they have an A and are participating, then they'll have grade maintenance. ... If there are kids sitting there that want to try to improve their grade, we'll allow for them to try to build that grade up," Keeley said.

Part of the decision, he added, is because admissions to the University of California and California State University systems are based on "A-G" subject requirements, and it's not clear how the new distance learning will impact that structured sequence, he said. (Other states, like Texas, have similar college-entrance systems that depend on students' GPAs or class rankings, which means that any decisions about grading will have to be squared with those systems.)

For their part, many colleges nationwide appear to be favoring a pass-fail, or pass-no credit system for work completed this quarter or semester, and some K-12 districts are inclined to follow them.

The Highline school district, in Burien, Wash., will assign scores of pass or no credit for work completed during its period of remote learning-the idea being that those students who don't initially earn credit could get opportunities to do so later in the summer or beyond.

"I think the whole grading issue is one where we've just got to wait and see," said Susan Enfield, the superintendent of Highline who also sits on the board of the nonprofit that publishes Education Week.

One of her rationales behind the temporary grade freeze is that there are over 100 languages spoken in her district. While the district has done a swift job translating learning materials into the top five mostly widely spoken, serving English-learners who speak other native languages will be much more challenging in a distance-learning environment.

A Question of Pedagogy

Teachers who have made the often-rocky leap to distance learning are advocating for a cautious approach, too.

Bobson Wong, a math teacher at a Queens high school in New York City, has noticed that his lessons are taking longer to deliver remotely. Partly that's because it is much more difficult to check for students' understanding and make teaching adjustments in an asynchronous learning environment.

He's focused on trying to get students through the remainder of the curriculum before the system's spring break, which begins April 9, and wants students to be motivated to finish-not frustrated.

"I feel like the most important thing I want to accomplish right now is to establish a routine in this environment and a sense of order and progress that we are actually moving forward, and this is not just 13 days of busywork," he said. "I have no idea how you could give a numerical grade for anything here."

But at the same time, Wong said there's some value in determining which students appear to have mastered the content, and which students will need more help in the future.

"You need something to differentiate a kid who is clearly doing a lot of work and walks away with some kind of knowledge, and a kid for whatever reason just hasn't- their parents may be sick, or they may lack internet access," he said. "Grades aren't a judgment of character."

And he agrees that a larger conversation about grading could ultimately benefit students.

"Perhaps we emphasize them too much, or we use them in ways we shouldn't be using them," he said. "Maybe we should look at why we give grades in the first place, and what we should be doing with them."

Students are getting in on the action, too. In Georgia, more than 70,000 had signed a petition on Change.org calling on the state to void fourth-quarter GPAs.

"Without the proper help from teachers or having the ability to actively question teachers and receiving rapid responses, students are not truly learning, but rather grabbing the information temporarily," its organizer, Ellison Gonzalez, wrote.

'You're Going to Make Mistakes'

As a testament to how fraught the issue of grading is, the nation's two largest school districts, both of which have begun their remote-learning plans, are keeping things open on how they'll determine grades.

The guidelines in the Los Angeles district say teachers should "continue to grade and give timely feedback to students," with opportunities for those who cannot access instruction to make up missed assignments. But it doesn't say what will ultimately appear on students' transcripts. A spokeswoman declined an interview, saying the district would issue more guidance in future weeks.

New York City expects that teachers should continue to assign and grade remote work, but says it will give them the flexibility to adapt if students don't have the same access to devices or outside learning supports.

Some states are offering guidance where they can, though they are aware that districts must make the final calls on their own.

In Virginia, the second state to close school buildings and in-person instruction for the remainder of the school year, the Virginia School Boards Association and Virginia Association of School Superintendents recommended some practices for districts to consider if they move to pass-fail systems. They might choose to institute pass-fail only for certain courses rather than instituting a blanket policy, for example.

Though the Salem City, Va., district is holding to traditional grades for now, it wants to give students a fair shot. Teachers will stagger the days they're instructing so students aren't slammed with assignments for seven courses every day. They're being told to boil down the state standards to the most essential ones.

The district also plans to establish safeguards: If at the end of the school year students feel that their grade is not consistent with their academic history, or negatively impacted them, they could lobby to have that grade counted as pass-fail and drop it from their GPA calculation.

The flexibility is intentional, Hicks said.

"If you try to make decisions too fast, you make mistakes. If you try to make decisions that are projecting well into the future, you're going to make mistakes," he said. "We don't want to paint ourselves into the corner."

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Grading Students During the Coronavirus Crisis: What's the Right Call?

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As the nation's schools lurch into an unprecedented experiment with distance learning, with all of the hiccups and false starts that entails, teachers and administrators alike are starting to wrestle with a question deeply at the heart of the learning enterprise: How are they supposed to assign grades? It's a tough call.

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Servant & Authentic Leadership Presentation

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Servant & Authentic Leadership Presentation

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Peer Presentation

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A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better. - Jim Rohn, American entrepreneur.

Everyone on Samit's team knows that he's "there for them." He checks in with them often to see how they are, and he helps them develop the skills they need to advance their careers, even if this means that they may move on.

Samit also makes an effort to see situations from others' perspectives. He makes decisions with the team's best interests in mind, and ensures that everyone has the resources and knowledge they need to meet their objectives.

As a result of this, his team is one of the most successful in the department, with low staff turnover and high engagement.

Samit is an example of a "servant leader." In this article, we'll explore what servant leadership is, and the advantages it can bring you as a leader. We'll also look at situations where it isn't appropriate.

What Is Servant Leadership?

Robert K. Greenleaf first coined the phrase "servant leadership" in his 1970 essay, " The Servant as a Leader." However, it's an approach that people have used for centuries.

As a servant leader, you're a "servant first" - you focus on the needs of others, especially team members, before you consider your own. You acknowledge other people's perspectives, give them the support they need to meet their work and personal goals, involve them in decisions where appropriate, and build a sense of community within your team. This leads to higher engagement, more trust, and stronger relationships with team members and other stakeholders. It can also lead to increased innovation.

However, servant leadership is problematic in hierarchical, autocratic cultures where managers and leaders are expected to make all the decisions. Here, servant leaders may struggle to earn respect.

Important:

Remember that servant leadership is about focusing on other people's needs - not their feelings. Don't avoid making unpopular decisions or giving team members negative feedback when this is needed.

Also, do not rely on it exclusively - use it alongside styles like Transformational Leadership, where you develop an inspiring vision of the future, motivate people to deliver this, manage its implementation, and build an ever-stronger team.

How to Become a Servant Leader

According to Larry C. Spears, former president of the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, these are the 10 most important characteristics of servant leaders:

1. Listening.

2. Empathy.

3. Healing.

4. Awareness.

5. Persuasion.

6. Conceptualization.

7. Foresight.

8. Stewardship.

9. Commitment to the growth of people.

10. Building community.

Once you've decided to prioritize other people's needs over your own in the long term, you can work on developing your skills in each area. Let's look at how you can do this.

1. Listening

2. Empathy

3. Healing

This characteristic relates to the emotional health and "wholeness" of people, and involves supporting them both physically and mentally.

4. Self-Awareness

You can become more self-aware by knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and asking for other people's feedback on them. Also, learn to manage your emotions, so that you consider how your actions and behavior might affect others.

5. Persuasion

There are many tools and models that you can use to be more persuasive, without damaging relationships or taking advantage of others. You should also build your expert power - when people perceive you as an expert, they are more likely to listen to you when you want to persuade or inspire them.

6. Conceptualization

This characteristic relates to your ability to "dream great dreams," so that you look beyond day-to-day realities to the bigger picture.

7. Foresight

Foresight is when you can predict what's likely to happen in the future by learning from past experiences, identifying what's happening now, and understanding the consequences of your decisions.

You can use tools such as SWOT Analysis and PEST Analysis to think about your current situation and environment, while Scenario Analysis helps you understand how the future could play out. Use the ORAPAPA checklist when you make a decision, to learn from experience and make sure that you've considered all the angles.

Also, learn to trust your intuition - if your instinct is telling you that something is wrong, listen to it!

8. Stewardship

Stewardship is about taking responsibility for the actions and performance of your team, and being accountable for the role team members play in your organization.

9. Commitment to the Growth of People

Servant leaders are committed to the personal and professional development of everyone on their teams.

10. Building Community

The last characteristic is to do with building a sense of community within your organization.

You can do this by providing opportunities for people to interact with one another across the company. For instance, you could organize social events such as team lunches and barbecues, design your workspace to encourage people to chat informally away from their desks, and dedicate the first few minutes of meetings to non-work-related conversations.

Encourage people to take responsibility for their work, and remind them how what they do contributes to the success and overall objectives of the organization.

Tip:

See our article on Leadership Styles to explore popular leadership approaches and the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

And see this Expert Interview for a valuable discussion on the misconceptions and realities of servant leadership.

Key Points

You are a servant leader when you focus on the needs of others before you consider your own. It's a longer-term approach to leadership, rather than a technique that you can adopt in specific situations. Therefore, you can use it with other leadership styles such as Transformational Leadership.

You can become a servant leader by working on these 10 characteristics:

1. Listening.

2. Empathy.

3. Healing.

4. Awareness.

5. Persuasion.

6. Conceptualization.

7. Foresight.

8. Stewardship.

9. Commitment to the growth of people.

10. Building community.

Servant leaders are likely to have more engaged employees and enjoy better relationships with team members and other stakeholders than leaders who don't put the interests of others before their own.

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Servant Leadership: Putting Your Team First, and Yourself Second

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A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better. - Jim Rohn, American entrepreneur. Everyone on Samit's team knows that he's "there for them."

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While servant leadership is a timeless concept, the phrase "servant leadership" was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay that he first published in 1970. In that essay, Greenleaf said:

"The servant-leader is servant first... It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions...The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

"The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people's highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?"

A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the "top of the pyramid," servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.

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What is Servant Leadership? - Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership

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While servant leadership is a timeless concept, the phrase "servant leadership" was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay that he first published in 1970. In that essay, Greenleaf said: "The servant-leader is servant first... It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.

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Lead
The 7 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make as a Leader

Everyone makes mistakes, but leaders are accountable to a much higher standard for theirs. Avoid the following seven common mistakes made by leaders.

Leadership is a tricky path, and for inexperienced leaders, it can be intimidating. While every person's leadership style is unique, and no approach to leadership is perfect, there are certain critical mistakes that can compromise the respect and effectiveness of your team. For the most part, the tenets of leadership must be acquired through discipline and experience, but there are a series of pitfalls that you can learn and avoid in order to maximize your potential as a leader.

If you're just starting out as a leader, be that in a position of management or direction, or if you're just trying to perfect your own approach, be wary of these dangerous leadership mistakes:

1. Not providing feedback.

Leaders exist to provide feedback. In most cases, you'll be the most experienced or most knowledgeable person on the team, and in all other cases, you'll be the one people look to for feedback and support. It's a crucial role that you'll need to play if you want to nurture the best in your team and nip any problems in the bud.

The biggest potential pitfall here lies in personal appeal; many bosses are afraid to give their employees negative feedback because they fear it will compromise their motivation or make them resentful. On the contrary, giving negative feedback in a positive way can encourage confidence as well as performance, so long as you follow up and acknowledge improvements along the way. If you want your team to perform their best, you have to be there to guide them--with negative feedback as well as positive.

2. Not being clear about your vision.

As the leader of your team, it's your responsibility to establish and reinforce a vision. In some cases, this is a vision for the entire company, and in others, it may just be a vision for a simple campaign. No matter what the scale, your vision is going to set the tone for your entire team, and if you fail to set that tone, the entire mission may be compromised.

Even if you assign and delegate the individual tasks that will help your vision come to fruition, if your workers can't see the broader impact of their individual responsibilities, they may become demotivated or unwittingly deviate from your plans. Establishing your vision also opens it to feedback from the team, who may be able to provide a second set of eyes on your ideas and improve them for the better.

3. Failing to understand true motivation.

All leaders understand that it's their responsibility to motivate their team, but not all leaders understand that motivation isn't the same for every team, and it isn't the same for every individual. Some employees will be motivated by money, and a raise or a bonus will be sufficient to keep them invested in their work. Others will be motivated by praise, seeking a pat on the back for a job well done. Others are motivated by a challenge, or a goal, and still others are motivated by the strength of the overall team.

Simply putting up a motivational poster, or giving a daily pep talk, or giving bonuses and rewards to your employees isn't enough. It's your job as a leader to understand what truly motivates the individuals within your team, and provide that motivation throughout your project or campaign.

4. Not playing to the strengths and weaknesses of your team.

All teams have strengths and weaknesses. Your goal shouldn't be to build a team with nothing but strengths--that simply isn't going to happen. Instead, your goal should be effectively managing the strengths and weaknesses of the team you do have.

For example, pair your team members up according to their complementary abilities. If you notice your social media marketer is brilliant when it comes to timing and engagement but lacking in writing skills, bring your writer in to fill the gap. If you find that your writer is skilled in technical elements of writing, but isn't coming up with great topics, have your SEO analyst step in to help him/her out. Use your team members in groups to get the most out of every element of your business.

5. Lacking a goal structure.

Leadership is a matter of directing individuals toward a series of accomplishments. If those ideal accomplishments aren't defined, your team won't know what they're working for, and their work is likely going to suffer as a result.

Setting an overall vision is one element of this, but you also need a clearly defined goal structure. That means having a big, central, long-term goal, dozens of smaller, incremental goals, and some intermediary goals in between. When your team meets a goal, celebrate the accomplishment. When your team fails to meet a goal, investigate to determine why, and work together to meet the next goal in order. Goals will keep your team on track, and will give you a backbone for all your internal tasks and individual efforts.

6. Being impersonal.

There are those who would argue that personality doesn't have much to do with success in the working world. After all, making small talk doesn't necessarily make you work more efficiently. However, being an impersonal leader can have detrimental effects for your team. If you are seen to be cold or impersonal, your team members will be intimidated by you, and may feel that they cannot bring important matters to your attention. They may also, by extension, feel as though they are not valued.

The solution to this is to go out of your way to be on friendly terms with your team. Ask them how they're doing. Be open to humor, and showcase your personality out in the open. Don't try to turn every team member into your best friend (since that has negative consequences, as well), but do cultivate positive, human relationships in the office.

7. Trying to do everything yourself.

This is a common problem among entrepreneurs, especially those who are new to such a position. You have a team for a reason, and it's important to utilize them.

One common motivator for trying to do everything yourself is a belief that you're the only one capable of handling the task at hand. You may see your employees as unable to handle a responsibility due to a lack of experience or innate ability. However, if this is truly the case, you may have a fundamental problem in your team. You need to build a team that's capable, a team that you can trust to handle these tasks. If you can't, you may need to do some restructuring, but before you make any hires or fires, take a deep look at yourself and ask if you're merely holding onto the tasks yourself because you're afraid of giving up control.

You'll never be a perfect leader, and you'll never have a perfect team. Be aware of your habits and characteristics, and definitely adjust them to avoid mistakes like these, but don't micromanage your leadership style to the point that it becomes overcomplicated. Your approach needs to be natural to some degree, and don't sweat it if you slip up from time to time. The longer you spend in a leadership position, the more you'll learn about what works and what doesn't for your team.

Leadership is a tricky path, and for inexperienced leaders, it can be intimidating. While every person's leadership style is unique, and no approach to leadership is perfect, there are certain critical mistakes that can compromise the respect and effectiveness of your team. For the most part, the tenets of leadership must be acquired through discipline and experience, but there are a series of pitfalls that you can learn and avoid in order to maximize your potential as a leader.

If you're just starting out as a leader, be that in a position of management or direction, or if you're just trying to perfect your own approach, be wary of these dangerous leadership mistakes:

1. Not providing feedback.

Leaders exist to provide feedback. In most cases, you'll be the most experienced or most knowledgeable person on the team, and in all other cases, you'll be the one people look to for feedback and support. It's a crucial role that you'll need to play if you want to nurture the best in your team and nip any problems in the bud.

The biggest potential pitfall here lies in personal appeal; many bosses are afraid to give their employees negative feedback because they fear it will compromise their motivation or make them resentful. On the contrary, giving negative feedback in a positive way can encourage confidence as well as performance, so long as you follow up and acknowledge improvements along the way. If you want your team to perform their best, you have to be there to guide them--with negative feedback as well as positive.

As the leader of your team, it's your responsibility to establish and reinforce a vision. In some cases, this is a vision for the entire company, and in others, it may just be a vision for a simple campaign. No matter what the scale, your vision is going to set the tone for your entire team, and if you fail to set that tone, the entire mission may be compromised.

Even if you assign and delegate the individual tasks that will help your vision come to fruition, if your workers can't see the broader impact of their individual responsibilities, they may become demotivated or unwittingly deviate from your plans. Establishing your vision also opens it to feedback from the team, who may be able to provide a second set of eyes on your ideas and improve them for the better.

All leaders understand that it's their responsibility to motivate their team, but not all leaders understand that motivation isn't the same for every team, and it isn't the same for every individual. Some employees will be motivated by money, and a raise or a bonus will be sufficient to keep them invested in their work. Others will be motivated by praise, seeking a pat on the back for a job well done. Others are motivated by a challenge, or a goal, and still others are motivated by the strength of the overall team.

Simply putting up a motivational poster, or giving a daily pep talk, or giving bonuses and rewards to your employees isn't enough. It's your job as a leader to understand what truly motivates the individuals within your team, and provide that motivation throughout your project or campaign.

All teams have strengths and weaknesses. Your goal shouldn't be to build a team with nothing but strengths--that simply isn't going to happen. Instead, your goal should be effectively managing the strengths and weaknesses of the team you do have.

For example, pair your team members up according to their complementary abilities. If you notice your social media marketer is brilliant when it comes to timing and engagement but lacking in writing skills, bring your writer in to fill the gap. If you find that your writer is skilled in technical elements of writing, but isn't coming up with great topics, have your SEO analyst step in to help him/her out. Use your team members in groups to get the most out of every element of your business.

5. Lacking a goal structure.

Leadership is a matter of directing individuals toward a series of accomplishments. If those ideal accomplishments aren't defined, your team won't know what they're working for, and their work is likely going to suffer as a result.

Setting an overall vision is one element of this, but you also need a clearly defined goal structure. That means having a big, central, long-term goal, dozens of smaller, incremental goals, and some intermediary goals in between. When your team meets a goal, celebrate the accomplishment. When your team fails to meet a goal, investigate to determine why, and work together to meet the next goal in order. Goals will keep your team on track, and will give you a backbone for all your internal tasks and individual efforts.

6. Being impersonal.

There are those who would argue that personality doesn't have much to do with success in the working world. After all, making small talk doesn't necessarily make you work more efficiently. However, being an impersonal leader can have detrimental effects for your team. If you are seen to be cold or impersonal, your team members will be intimidated by you, and may feel that they cannot bring important matters to your attention. They may also, by extension, feel as though they are not valued.

The solution to this is to go out of your way to be on friendly terms with your team. Ask them how they're doing. Be open to humor, and showcase your personality out in the open. Don't try to turn every team member into your best friend (since that has negative consequences, as well), but do cultivate positive, human relationships in the office.

This is a common problem among entrepreneurs, especially those who are new to such a position. You have a team for a reason, and it's important to utilize them.

One common motivator for trying to do everything yourself is a belief that you're the only one capable of handling the task at hand. You may see your employees as unable to handle a responsibility due to a lack of experience or innate ability. However, if this is truly the case, you may have a fundamental problem in your team. You need to build a team that's capable, a team that you can trust to handle these tasks. If you can't, you may need to do some restructuring, but before you make any hires or fires, take a deep look at yourself and ask if you're merely holding onto the tasks yourself because you're afraid of giving up control.

You'll never be a perfect leader, and you'll never have a perfect team. Be aware of your habits and characteristics, and definitely adjust them to avoid mistakes like these, but don't micromanage your leadership style to the point that it becomes overcomplicated. Your approach needs to be natural to some degree, and don't sweat it if you slip up from time to time. The longer you spend in a leadership position, the more you'll learn about what works and what doesn't for your team.

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The 7 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make as a Leader

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Lead Leadership is a tricky path, and for inexperienced leaders, it can be intimidating. While every person's leadership style is unique, and no approach to leadership is perfect, there are certain critical mistakes that can compromise the respect and effectiveness of your team.

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Too often, people step into leadership roles before they're ready. Sometimes it's by necessity: An organization loses a key member and suddenly needs someone to fill the role-so they promote a junior employee to a leadership position.

Other times, people seek out positions of leadership on their own. They advocate for opening a new department, or they decide they want to go off and start their own company. There is something to be said for being pushed outside your comfort zone and growing as a result. However, the challenge with true leadership is that it can't be learned overnight. And the reason is that quality leadership depends on how well the leaders know and lead themselves.

Unfortunately, however, most people are more in love with the idea of being seen as the leader than they are with nurturing leadership qualities. They want to be the boss more than they want to reflect on what they aren't doing well, and they want people to look up to them more than they want to work hard to serve others better.

Here are five mistakes most leaders make-and how you can avoid making them too.
1. Most Leaders Confuse Control With Delegation
For most people, becoming a leader means getting to tell other people what to do. They see their role as being the person who has an answer to every question. If anything, they want more people asking them how to do things because it proves how much they know. They want assurance that they're the one who is always right, and that everyone else is reliant upon their knowledge and wisdom.

Real leaders see this as a worst-case scenario and a waste of time. Real leaders would rather spend their time building teams they trust to handle things on their own. They don't like having to answer every single question that pops up. If they do end up fielding a deluge of questions, they recognize that they haven't built a strong enough team.

Being a successful leader isn't about being the one everyone always turns to for everything. It means having the awareness to build teams and surround yourself with other capable people so you can focus on what's most important. The more control you give up, the better.
2. Most Leaders Care More About The Title Than The Job Requirements
Too many leaders rely on the phrase "I'm the leader, that's why you should listen to me." When you have to remind people that you're in charge, you've essentially lost your own authority. Real leaders never have to remind those around them that they're the captain-because people already trust them.

Unfortunately, most leaders care more about being called the head manager, vice president or CEO than they do about the skills required in order to be an effective leader in the first place. They want their name on the door, their office by the big bay window, their name listed first on the proposal and a big bonus for being in their position.

But these aren't the qualities of a real leader. A real leader doesn't care whether their name is on the door. What they care about is the goal at hand, and empowering those around them to do great work. As a result, everyone sees them as the leader.
3. Most Leaders Want To Take Credit For The Wins, And Shift Blame For The Losses
Too often, when the stars align and everything goes according to plan, the leader is there to swoop in and take all the credit. And when things don't go well and everything falls apart, the leader is the first to point the finger.

Real leaders do the opposite: When things go well, they step aside and make sure each team member feels appreciated for their contribution to the success of the whole. And when things don't go well, real leaders are the first to admit where they may have gone wrong. They lead by example, and show others how important humility is-in both scenarios.
4. Most Leaders Work Less Than Everyone Else, And Expect More Than Everyone Else
It's amazing how hungry people are for a leadership role when they're just a junior employee, and it's even more amazing how quickly their habits change the moment they find themselves managing other people.

Most aspiring leaders work hard for an opportunity to lead. They build good habits, prove themselves and move into a higher position, but their work ethic can fall apart in an instant once they become a leader. They get their new title, and suddenly they feel like they can work half as hard as everyone else-and at the same time, they expect to be paid more, given more vacation days and treated differently.

Real leaders don't think this way. In fact, real leaders work even harder the moment they find themselves in a position of leadership.

Real leaders are there to turn on the lights in the morning, and are the last ones out at night. They're the ones who set the standard and show everyone around them what's expected-not by what they say, but by the habits they live by on a daily basis. Most leaders get comfortable as soon as they find themselves managing others. Real leaders never get comfortable.
5. Most Leaders Treat Others The Way They Were Treated
There is no real school for leadership. There are no classes in middle school or high school or even college on leadership. Rather, leadership skills are passed down from leader to leader. And most people who step into leadership roles end up treating people the same way they were treated-usually, not very well. Most leaders aren't aware of how they lead others.

Real leaders, however, reflect often on the ways they were led. They think about which tactics worked to motivate them and which tactics fell short, and then choose how they want to lead those around them based on their own experiences. They don't just treat people the same way they were treated in a previous environment. They work hard to create their own leadership system, refining it over time to yield the best results and bring out the most in people.

Most leaders fail because they don't devote time and effort to this sort of reflection process. They just go with their feelings in the moment, instead of always asking themselves how they can lead better.

For real leaders, this process is inherent. It happens every minute of every day. They're constantly optimizing for a better response in others, as a way to measure how they can be more effective themselves. That's the sort of leader you should strive to be.

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5 Common Mistakes Most Leaders Make (And How To Avoid Them)

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Too often, people step into leadership roles before they're ready. Sometimes it's by necessity: An organization loses a key member and suddenly needs someone to fill the role-so they promote a junior employee to a leadership position. Other times, people seek out positions of leadership on their own.