5 Skills You Need to Be a Great Leader
Even if you have no plans of being a manager or director on your career journey, leadership skills can come in handy in any job where you have to be a team player.
Organizational scientist, executive coach and leadership development consultant, Sunnie Giles, shared her findings about the traits of a great leader in the Harvard Business Review.
After surveying 195 leaders from 30 global organizations, Giles identified the top ten leadership competencies and grouped them into the five major themes below.
Demonstrate strong ethics and provide a sense of safety
These particular attributes were the top rated features of a strong leader. Providing a sense of safety for employees has been shown to allow for “social engagement, innovation, creativity, and ambition.” This is a point that is supported by neuroscience, which shows that when employees are in a flight-or-flight state, they are less able to open up their higher faculties and may shut down work approaches that lead to dynamic output.
So, how do you create this sense of safety? Giles, suggests that you make sure you are sticking to your ethics at all times.
Business News Daily explains that "To be an ethical leader, you need to ensure ethical values are aligned across the organization, promote open communication, avoid bias, lead by example, be willing to accept responsibility and admit mistakes."
In our article, Qualitites of an Effective Leader, Dr. Marcia Robinson, offers that another way effective leaders can demonstrate strong ethics is by avoiding bias and treating everyone fairly and respectfully. For example, "when the manager makes it clear to everyone that he or she has favorites who can do no wrong; overall workplace morale will decline." Low morale damages employees' feelings of safety.
Empower others to self-organize
Strong communication and "providing clear direction while allowing employees to organize their own time" is an important trait of a leader.
Forbes echoes Giles' suggestion that the benefits of empowered teams include increased employee satisfaction, lower turnover rates, stronger commitment to the team, increased productivity, proactivity and profitably, and better customer service.
It’s a myth that in order to be a leader, you need to hog control. Insead, Giles suggests that great leaders need to put trust in the “decision making closest to the action.”
Foster a sense of connection and belonging
Great leaders foster open, honest communication with their teams and help employees understand that strong team dynamics (succeeding and failing together) are essential to the organization. This ultimately fosters a strong foundation for connection and belonging. Connection is important to the mental health and satisfaction of employees and thereby improves the company's bottom line.
Giles suggestions for fostering connection and belonging might seem like common sense, but underscore the fact that just because we’re at work, we shouldn’t forget about our humanity. Giles believes that great leaders should: “Smile at people, call them by name, and remember their interests and family members’ names. Pay focused attention when speaking to them, and clearly set the tone of the members of your team having each other’s backs.”
All of these promote a sense of connection and belonging.
Show openness to new ideas and foster organizational learning
The best way to foster employee learning is by demonstrating your own openness to learning. Giles suggests trying to "approach problem-solving discussions without a specific agenda or outcome." This demonstration of openness allows everyone to feel safer to express ideas and build off of one another's ideas.
Nurture growth
Giles suggests, "If you want to inspire the best from your team, advocate for them, support their training and promotion, and go to bat to sponsor their important projects." Employee Connect acknowledges a powerful benefit of nurturing growth: employees who are given opportunities to flourish, "apply innovative approaches to their tasks, resulting in the creation of exceptional, cutting edge work."