Your Competitive Advantage 7. Leadership

How do you describe your leadership style?

Great leadership is critical to the success and stability of a business, and it comes in many styles, 8 key ones in fact with Empathetic Leadership being a necessary component of all.  But unfortunately only 40% of leaders possess this element which means they are achieving 50% less earnings than there empathetic competitors.

Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people toward achieving a common goal.  In the workplace, this is the act of directing workers and colleagues with a strategy to meet the company's needs. 

Great leadership is a business’s bastion of competitive advantages; allowing you to produce goods or services better or more cheaply than your rivals enabling you to generate more sales or superior margins compared to them. 

The qualities of a great leader are the ability to:

1. Inspire commitment
2. Lead employees
3. Plan strategically
4. Manage change
5. Develop employees
6. Embrace Self-awareness
7. Leadership Development. 

So, let’s break down these 7 factors relative to the workplace.

1. Inspiring commitment – is the skill of leading people to engage and dedicate themselves to an outcome and/or cause enthusiastically and strongly.  A great way to do this is to understand that whilst every leader and worker is there to support the company’s needs the company and leader are also there to support the workers’ needs. 

2. Lead employees – this is about travelling with your workers on the journey as opposed to directing them and leaving them.  This does not necessarily mean ‘doing’ but rather applying the skill of delegation.

3. Plan strategically – This is taking the company vision and translating it into doable acts and outcomes that when brought together have achieved the vision. 

4. Manage change – this is so topical and one of the most difficult skills in great leadership.  To effectively apply this skill the leader must first have established trust with the workers.  Change is difficult for most and there will always be resistance to it so a great leader needs to be confident in managing the change and they need to genuinely be working in the best interests of all stake holders.

5. Develop employees – This is the act of growing the worker for their role and to the benefit of the business whilst meeting their personal development goals. 

6. Embrace Self-awareness – This is the leader’s ability to recognise their limitations, admit any failings and willingly to take responsibility for both without hesitation. 

7. Leadership Development – like other workers, leaders also need to be on a continuous pathway of growth and development.  A great leader never loses sight of opportunities to learn.

Being a leader is not easy and its not for everyone and being a great leader reflects your ability to influence rather than rule from a position of power or authority.  It requires a spirit of fairness, courage, the ability to build trust, maintain credibility and create opportunities for collaboration.