Leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could – Steve Jobs
In this era of digital disruption, businesses need to make plans to match their mission and vision. Leadership plays a vital role in making significant impact on the strategic management process. Competent leadership is of utmost importance to guide the organization through prodigious changes. To make leaders future-ready, new skills to improve behaviors and competencies are needed to be incorporated in leadership development programs. For aspiring leaders, it is paramount to learn and adapt to new conducts to deal with unforeseen business challenges.
Only 56% of organizations take steps to ensure overall goals of leaders are closely aligned with business goals of the organizations
– Leadership Development Research, Brandon Hall Group, 2019
As L&D departments are looking for new methodologies to modernize their leadership programs, let’s dig deep into the characteristics that make up for an ensemble to take up leadership role and bring agility from strategizing to executing:
Leadership and Management
Willingness to learn and self-awareness activities enable leaders to effectively reach across teams and move strategically into the layers of business to unlock success. With hierarchical structure being dissolved rapidly, it becomes necessary for leaders to go beyond dedicated role and undertake tasks cross-functionally. This leads to more employees take up responsibilities and learn various leadership qualities in order to supersede their job functions.
Critical Thinking
Unquestionably the most critical function of a leader’s role is thinking. A leader needs to plan and foresee circumstances before anyone else to ensure that the steps taken derive results which are best suited for the business. Definitive methodology helps in breaking down the problem, implement strategy and generate alternative solutions through critical thinking. Our Ultimate CLO Toolkit for Leaders lists the resources that support them navigate through this process.
Communication
Effectively transferring information is the cornerstone for any business accomplishment. The productivity, results, morale, relationships and expectations are directly affected basis how the communication has taken place. To ensure worthwhile communication, writing also plays a very important role because a lot of messaging happen over emails, collaterals and other documents. Sharing information regarding the project within the team is also a major part of a leader’s role, where effective communication becomes crucial.
Diversity and Inclusion
Leaders that display company’s culture in their work ethics tend to influence more workforce than those who don’t. Portraying organizational values by leaders build trust in employees and shows their improved ability to recruit and retain talent with better leadership effectiveness. Good corporate leaders identify the importance of diversity and inclusion to fuel enthusiasm and encourage the teams involved to outperform their tasks.
Project Management
Leadership development must have a direct influence in grasping the issues behind the problem. In addition to that, scenario planning is also one of the most efficient tools for project planning. As part of this process, leaders need to focus upon preparing various scenarios of what the business might look like in the coming years. Once these scenarios are outlined, teams can work backwards to achieve the objectives of the best-suited scenarios.
Sales and Customer Support
Customer needs are constantly growing and changing even rapidly, and companies are bound to meet those expectations. Effective leaders empower teams by not only improving team’s potential but also increasing their current performance in existing roles. One of the prime area of concerns of leaders in sales and customer support is to focus and enhance communication skills. For being a strong communicator, it becomes essential for the workforce to stay focused on delivering the right message.
Team Building
Working across cross-functional teams is a very common ask for leaders. This is beneficial from a business standpoint as it brings diverse minds to pool in for solutions on a specific need. Leaders work in such scenarios that push the workforce outside of their functional roles to develop strategies and achieve productive results. At times when challenges surface, the right leadership style outweighs obstacles to focus on better ideas and outcomes.
Based on the requirements and business demands, organizations need to understand the value of leadership styles, and proliferate communication more effectively. For better understanding, download our free eBook: High-potential Leadership Programs that talks about developing the right kind of leadership skills for a rock-solid talent bench.
Infopro Learning, a leading provider in corporate training outsourcing and human capital transformation, helps organizations create an exceptional employee and customer experience through bespoke eLearning solutions. For more than 25 years, the company has designed and implemented engaging learning experiences that attract, develop and retain talent across the entire employee lifecycle. To learn more, visit www.infoprolearning.com.
About the author: Divesh Srivastava is currently working as the Marketing Manager at Infopro Learning, a leading provider in corporate training outsourcing and human capital transformation. He has over 5 years of experience in marketing strategy development and is a certified Content Marketing professional. His interest lies in conducting market researches to understand learning business needs and develop best practices to benefit organizations and amplify their return on investment.