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Leadership is hard. Many employees struggle to balance working while also having a personal and family life—imagine how the people who make the decisions feel. Decisions never happen in a vacuum, and there are a lot of pros, cons, and consequences to consider, balancing the results that the company needs with those that will make people happy.
Now, if you’re aiming to grow in a company, you must understand why is leadership in the workplace important, which skills are needed, and how a lack of leadership affects even the most stable company.
Leadership can be hard to define, but in short, it is a set of attributes that people possess that inspires others to follow them. These attributes can be out of sheer force and designation or soft and hard skills that inspire others to follow willingly.
It aims to inspire people to work towards a common goal. Leaders can work in different types of leadership, and no two managers are the same. Besides, a boss is not always a leader, but they can step up.
According to Warren Bennis, “Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.”
Leadership is not exclusive to CEOs, C-suite level, and management. Anyone can be a leader, even a team member, who does not interfere in big decisions. Everyone makes choices, so anyone has the capacity to inspire others to believe in what they say just as long as they have the skills.
Leaders come in all shapes and sizes, each with its own particular style, which each has its time and place. A company, a football team, and a creative conglomerate all need leaders, but maybe they all need completely different styles to reach their own particular goals. Or do they?
Everyone needs leadership skills, regardless of their rung in the workplace hierarchy. In fact, companies must develop leadership in their employees if they want to have a strong workforce full of high-potential professionals.
Leadership development is something that managers and companies should do, but any employee interested in career growth can take charge by developing their skills.
“Leadership skills need constant honing. And though investing in a degree and certifications may not seem ideal financially or time-wise, there are plenty of resources leaders can take advantage of to make an impact on their growth and skill development.”
By focusing on developing necessary leadership skills, managers can make sure that all employees are on track to become high-potential employees. Not only that but it has been proved time and time again that offering growth and development at work and having a good leader are both big factors in the acquisition and retention of employees.
If you’re wondering what skills are those that companies and workers should be focusing on to improve leadership, here are 10 skills that a leader must have as follows:
As we mentioned before, there are many different types of leaders. A leadership style is the particular way leaders get people to follow them. This can be through inspiration, appealing to their intrinsic motivations, or sheer intimidation. Now, understand that this example goes to extremes, but none is better than the other. It’s more complex than that: there is a time and place for every kind.
There are more leadership styles than can be properly dissected in this article (some say four, others nine, some even 16!), but we can explain the main differences. According to Vantage Circle, a good leader provides a clear vision of the company’s goal while giving workers a sense of purpose behind their actions.
Some of the most popular leadership varieties are transactional, transformational, autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire leadership.
Transactional leadership is when someone gives, and someone gets. It doesn’t particularly aim to inspire, build a deep relationship, or push people to think outside the box. This doesn’t mean it is bad; it is better used for short-term goals and crisis management, with a clear structure and prioritizing fairness.
Transformational leadership is more about finding a way to change for the better. This leadership style allows people to look for the best way to grow and experiment with new ideas. Of course, this can lead to conflict, especially if the higher-ups or other teams don’t tolerate risky leadership. Another big problem is that the freedom to do stuff can result in burnout for the employees, as there is always some chance of failure.
Since leaders inspire, they are most important during rampant crises. Good leaders create certainty among chaos, help clear communication, and give directions on how to move forward—or that is in an ideal scenario. Reality is more complex, as there are leadership challenges in the workplace that can supersede leaders or even be created by them.
The leader is responsible for challenges such as communication, team building, growth and development, and project management. As such, they should be the first ones to be able to work well with others, especially by building bridges with those that can have completely different working or leadership style than them.
Another challenge can be the distinction between managing and leading. Managers have to control different projects, tools, assets, budgets, and people simultaneously. Because of this amount of responsibility, people tend to think that managers are the same as leaders, but there are many key differences. Managers can be micromanagers who lack trust and care more about results than people.
Leadership at work is vital for the correct continuous functioning of a team and even a company. A team with a poor leader can lead to employee disengagement, problems of retention, and even problems finding new people.
This is why it’s important that leadership is cultivated by managers and by the employees, as a good company culture can be rotten by a single bad team leader. The first step is building a leadership mindset to become powerful and influential. This is done in three steps:
1. Understand the limits of your inner champion
2. Be a coach, not just a boss
3. Project the change you want to see
These inner changes will help employees and managers find the qualities of a good leader within themselves. From there, they can hone their skills and climb the corporate ladder. Soft skills such as emotional intelligence, problem-solving, and inclusive leadership are essential to the new ways the workplace moves. Combining them with strategy, management skills, and constant learning is a perfect recipe for success.
“ Studies have shown that what C-level executives have in common is the development and mastery of those power skills, such as crisis and change management, strategic analysis, decision-making, communication, adaptability, and many more.”
Everyone has biases, but a leader needs to see beyond that and choose what’s best for everyone. Inclusive leadership can be defined as a strategic approach to utilizing the strengths of diversity in a professional environment.
The qualities of inclusive leaders are commitment to their decisions, courage to recognize shortcomings, awareness of their biases and how to fix them, openness to more cultures, cultural intelligence, and great team collaboration.
New generations in the workplace, such as millennials and Gen Z, have continuously put Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) as a big factor when it comes to their decision to enter or stay at a company. These generations want a culture and values to match their own. Bad leadership can turn these people off.
According to Forbes, self-awareness about faults is the first step to developing the emotional intelligence needed to improve leadership. Biases are natural, but moving past them to champion a diversity of opinions and points of view is the path to innovation.
At the end of the day, leadership can be built through skills and turning introspective work into clear actions. By focusing on the different types of leadership at work, people can find a style that suits them better to find the balance and inspire others. Constant growth and learning are key for any leadership position, as they need to be open to change and committed to their team and decisions.
Contribute by Ana Martinez
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