Even without an official title, and
irrespective of your position in the organisational hierarchy , you can be a
‘leader’ in your own right through your action and attitude. True. But the
story is vastly different when you are a
“leader” by title, i.e when you are ‘assigned’ a leadership position by your
organization, and are expected to lead a group of people assigned to you to a
certain goal. In this case, you are officially responsible for the outcome, not
only of your own productivity, but more significantly for the outcome of your
people’s productive behavior as well. You have to effectively convert a bunch
of people to an effective and successful team, that owns a shared
goal and achieves it together, following you as the leader.
Today’s workplace scenario –
especially with knowledge workers and service sectors – clearly calls for a set
of leadership skills, that is more
people-centric and less authority–centric. Positional authority no longer
guarantees that you will be accepted as the leader by your people merely by
virtue of your designation and will be able to ensure the deliverables through
them by using command and control strategies. In fact, as gleaned from history,
this had never really worked and people who delivered great sustainable results
were inspiring leaders with some other key human traits that do not flow from
one’s designation – a fact which is now being acknowledged more openly, as
compared to in the past. With concepts like “Emotional Intelligence”, “People
skills”, ‘social skills’ etc. gaining ground and almost becoming much-hackneyed
terms, there is no need to elaborate on why positional authority alone cannot
guarantee successful teams.
So, the next point is: how do you know whether you are the kind of leader that the modern
workplace needs? A leader today has
to steer their people through ambiguities, uncertainties and challenges and
make them want to give their best.
Goes without saying, when people want to give their best, that is evidence enough that they own the
project and also that they are on auto-pilot to ensure the best results.
Ask yourself 3 key
questions !
And honestly answer to those. You
will be pretty clear on whether you already are a leader capable of leading
your people to success, or whether you are currently lacking and where exactly
you need to work on yourself.
Question 1 : Do your
people trust you?
Question 2 : Do you treat your team members as human beings,
and not just as employees?
Question 3: Do you take active interest in the growth of
your people?
Remember, you are being watched
constantly by your co-workers/team mates/employees, even if you are not always
told about it on your face.
Co-workers would trust you only when they see fairness
and consistency in your action and intent through
various situations. In addition, if they accept that you would always, and
without hesitation, stand up for them whenever the situation warrants, they
will trust you completely, and will be inspired by your integrity and
credibility. Only this kind of complete trust in the leader brings out the best
in each employee – courage to innovate, take risks and stretch out-of-box to
reach the best results.
Leaders, I mean true leaders, demonstrate a very high degree of credibility and that makes it easy for
them to carry their people along without the need to “drag them along’ where
they need 100% of their team to be on the new destination! So, be
trust-worthy!!
No employee is your employee
only-they are also human beings having highs and lows in their important
personal spheres, at times may be just around the same time that the ‘employee’
in them is called to contribute. Do you, as the leader, see the worry on their
face when they are going through a personal crisis; or just miss out on it ,
lost in tasking your employees to
meet your official deadlines?
Showing empathy, sharing the
personal joys and concerns of your employees, till recently, was not seen with
favour in the context of tough, decisive leadership! But go through history and
look around. You will be amazed to see just how many of the super- achiever
leaders actually displayed this one quality, that made all the difference!! No
wonder, with time and greater research into leadership, the concept of “
Emotional Intelligence” has come up since quite sometime now and this quality –
i.e empathy for your people- has now been acknowledged as a key leadership
quality- ranking on the top slot of the skills set!
Yes, when people know that their
superior cares for them as human beings, they too reciprocate in terms of
higher engagement and productivity in the job. So, the golden rule is: respect
your employees as human beings first; most of the rest will fall in line.
The third crucial area that you, as
the leader, have to take responsibility for is: growth of your people! It is
easier to make people do things when you can make them see what is in it that
is for them, not for you! In a workplace situation, no employee can stay
engaged and charged without growth – in terms of growth in personal
knowledge-skill-competence matrix, career progression, and both in combination.
A superior who keeps this in sight in
respect of each of the team mates usually demonstrates genuine interest in the
growth of all the employees, without favour or unjust discrimination, through a
holistic approach of training-assigning responsibilities-mentoring-sponsoring
for higher jobs. Such a superior not only properly assesses each employee to
harness their potential, but also invests in growth of each, and makes it
visible to the team asto what growth prospects are there for each of them when
the shared goal is achieved! Undoubtedly,
such a superior would automatically inspire employees to give their best
to whatever organizational goals they are pursuing, not only because they themselves
stand to gain from it, but also for the fact that, their own superior becomes the face of the organization for them
and they would walk any length of extra miles for such a leader!!
The above three are perhaps the most
important human traits that tell a leader, whom people would gladly follow,
from the rest.
