In an earlier post I talked about how reaction to the Pandemic has put a spotlight on employees – those who excelled in attitude and approach and those who have not. This situation has played out much longer than any of us hoped or wished and the spotlight is rightly now on leaders.
Once in a while you meet a leader who stands out, even in a room filled with skilled, experienced, successful people. They simply think and act and lead differently than most people and this has been amplified over recent weeks and months.
Those rare individuals don't become outstanding leaders overnight. While some are born with an aptitude for leadership, truly outstanding leaders are made. Through training, experience, and a healthy dose of introspection they learn how to make quick decisions. They learn to work with different personalities. They learn to nurture, motivate and inspire. Unfortunately in our Brexit uncertainty and Covid -19 world today, poor leadership is even more blindingly evident. It stands out for all the wrong reasons.
Great leaders learn to lead, they create patterns of thinking, being and behaving that develop into skills. In time those skills become automatic. Great leaders are thinkers and often that thinking happens behind the scenes. In the moment, in the crisis, when people look to them and need them most, they act swiftly, decisively and confidently.
So what does it take to be a truly outstanding leader? Here are eight things that great leaders do naturally, automatically and instinctively:
1. Catch them doing it right! Make it a priority to notice and tell people when they get it right. For a truly outstanding leader giving praise is almost like breathing. Its’ natural, automatic, frequent and, most of all, genuine and sincere.
2. Decisive. Thinking is essential, ideas are great, but implementation is everything. Outstanding leaders quickly weigh, assess, decide, and then immediately act. Decisiveness and action build confidence and momentum. Making a decision is often better than making no decision at all as most mistakes can almost always be corrected.
3. Take responsibility. We all make mistakes and what matters is what we do after we make those mistakes. Outstanding leaders say, "I was wrong” or "I made the wrong choice. Outstanding leaders admit their mistakes early and often because they take responsibility and because they want to build a culture where mistakes are simply challenges to overcome, not opportunities to point fingers and assign blame.
4. Communicate. Great leaders are great listeners. It’s not absence of communication that is the problem it’s the quantity and quality of communication. Great leaders create great clarity in the communication processes and over communicate the WHY. Tell me what to do and I'll try to do it; tell me why, help me understand why, help me believe and make that why my mission too ... and I'll run through proverbial brick walls to do the impossible. Clear communication is more about listening than talking and we sometimes forget that.
5. Lead by example. “Leaders doing what they said they would do, when they would do it has more impact on the bottom line than good customer service” (Stanford university). Employees notice everything, you are on stage, everyone watches what you do. They watch how you do what you do ... and what that says about you. Outstanding leaders do what they do simply because it's important to them. It's part of who they are. They care about doing the right things that are aligned with aspired values and culture.
6. Give feedback. Because they care about their employees, not just as workers but as people, outstanding leaders instinctively reach out to give others the chance to succeed and do better. Outstanding leaders naturally try to support and help and are prepared to have the candid conversations, even if it's uncomfortable.
7. Ask for help. In the Peer-to-Peer groups I chair, I often hear “it’s lonely at the top”. Leaders often feel the burden of leadership and wrestle with the assumption that you're supposed to know everything. Of course that's not true. Outstanding leaders don't pretend to know everything. In fact, they purposely hire people who are better than them or know more. They ask for help and in the process show vulnerability, respect for the knowledge and skills of others and a willingness to listen.
8. Challenge. Outstanding leaders create a clear why, focus on communicating with clarity and then challenge their employees by giving them the autonomy and independence to work the way they work best. They set vision with clearly articulated boundaries and expectations and then they support, care for and challenge to help others thrive and succeed.
That's a challenge every employee wants to face and one that outstanding leaders instinctively provide.