How Effective Leadership Boosts Business Performance – Guest blog by Ian Kirkby

There are three traits that good leaders consistently demonstrate:

1. They see the future and articulate the vision in such a compelling way that others will follow them to achieve it
2. They have a keen awareness of their own and others’ strengths and weaknesses, which enables them to create and maintain highly effective teams
3. They flex their style to match the needs of the task, team, individuals and the wider cultural/strategic environment.

Most people have a preferred or ‘go-to’ leadership style which they lean on heavily. One of the problems with this, of course, is that people have different needs, motivations and desires, so constantly using a particular style will only appeal to those who are similar.

If we are to achieve the significant business benefits of higher engagement from our teams and of clear direction and alignment across the organisation, it follows that the leader must become more emotionally intelligent and learn how to better relate to diverse individuals.

The first steps to doing so are to improve self-awareness and gain a deeper understanding of others’ motivations and behaviours.

Improving self-awareness

There are two primary tools I use to begin this process: 360 degree feedback and psychometric analysis of the team using tools such as Everything DiSC®. I then start to develop the leaders and teams by using the information gleaned to address live business opportunities and issues.

I also use The Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team™ to help teams enhance their effectiveness and enjoy working together more; the initial assessment provides a useful benchmark against which to measure progress. Concurrently, individual coaching and mentoring sessions allow more in-depth personal applications to be surfaced.

Organisational health

As these ways of working become more ingrained, wider organisational health (OH) initiatives gain more traction and lead to further benefits.

Aspects of OH include:

• Clarity – the mission, vision, values, strategic objectives and plans to achieve them must be clear, aligned and understood. So too must the requirements for teams and individuals.
• Communication – what is important should be clearly and consistently communicated up, down and across the organisation.
• Accountability – there are effective processes for monitoring progress and leaders/managers hold people to account for delivery. In a very healthy organisation, peers and even subordinates will hold others to account (appropriately!) thereby cementing the team further and reducing the in-house workload of the leader, who can then focus on wider-ranging matters.

I have never met anyone in business who did not agree that doing the above better would positively impact the bottom line. It creates a more agile, innovative, resilient and committed organisation.

Not only are the business benefits significant, it’s much more satisfying and fun to work in an environment where meetings are lively, open, focused, productive and decisive, and where challenging goals are regularly achieved.

The gift of time

One of the best payoffs is that this actually saves that most precious of resources: time! That’s because it reduces the need to revisit old issues repeatedly and negates the silo-based political behaviour so common in many organisations today.

It also reduces staff turnover. The Harvard Business Review, quoting the Gallup ‘State of the Global Workplace’ Report, noted that half of all employees in the United States have quit their jobs at some time to get away from their bosses. The figures for Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa are similar or even higher!^[1]

Leadership, team and organisational health don’t just reduce the financial costs of finding, interviewing, recruiting, on-boarding and training new staff, they also save significant amounts of time and stress by reducing the requirement to do so.

Step by step

The above process is just that: a process. Whilst it is not so perfectly linear in the real world, there is nonetheless a definite progression through the various steps, and the key to making all of this work is consistently good leadership.

Most bad bosses are not bad people: they have often been put in positions of significant responsibility for others with little or no training and must learn quickly to survive. It is a common misconception that to do so they must appear to have all the answers (nobody does!) and be always directing rather than listening. Such bosses miss out on the valuable contributions their teams could otherwise be making and guarantee sub-optimal performance and results.

Back to the beginning

This brings us back to the necessity of the first step: to improve self-awareness and a deeper understanding of others’ motivations and behaviours.

I hope that this short blog will help you on your journey to becoming a more effective leader so that you can enjoy positively impacting your team, organisation, family and wider society.

Oh, and there’s another trait that good leaders share: they are constantly willing to learn, so even if you are enjoying success at present, why not start looking for the next big thing to master?

Managers are necessary; leaders are essential

– Field Marshall William Slim

Ian Kirkby, Aspire Management Consultancy Ltd. Ian is the founder and owner of Aspire Management Consultancy Ltd and an Everything DiSC Certified Facilitator. Aspire works with leaders and their teams to help them fulfil their potential and transform their businesses. A former RAF squadron leader, executive and interim director with numerous business-related qualifications, Ian loves using his in-depth, multi-sector experience to help senior and aspiring senior leaders and their teams reach new heights. He provides coaching, mentoring, training and consultancy services, and is available for NED opportunities. Find our more on Aspire’s website and Ian’s LinkedIn profile.

[1] Harvard Business Review, December 2016, ‘Do you Hate Your Boss?’ (https://hbr.org/2016/12/do-you-hate-your-boss).