"The desire to keep learning is the hallmark of all the good leaders I’ve ever met." - Tom Barker
Many people aspire to leadership positions within their organization, but it takes more than an impressive title to be truly effective at leading a team.
Good leadership is vital to an organization’s success and to growing and particularly in retaining a strong team. A 2015 survey of over 7000 adults from market research firm Gallup found that about 50 percent had left a job at some point “to get away from their manager.”
1. Ask the Right Questions
So what does it take to be an effective leader? According to SCS Leadership Essentials Certificate instructor Tom Barker, the first thing it takes is a willingness to pose important and sometimes difficult questions to which they do not have the answers. “This is uncomfortable yet vital. The leader needs to have the courage of their convictions to pose the question and stay with it.”
Barker sites leaders like Shelley Lazarus of Ogilvy and Mather who asked the right questions to inspire the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.
“Organizations are full of smart people, but alas they are also awash with contradictory information, issues and noise,” explains Barker. “A leader can help everyone around them focus on what’s important, and then the smart folks can do the rest.”
2. Avoid Common Pitfalls
In addition to asking the right questions, it is vital for leaders to be authentic.
“People who adopt superficial leadership behaviours, saying the right buzzwords are quickly unmasked by colleagues and associates alike,” says Barker. “Authentic leadership comes from having and using clear personal values, being able to work with people and having people want to work with you. At the other end of the spectrum it also means being able to align your own goals with the organization’s business goals. That’s why the Leadership Essentials Certificate has helped so many leaders, as it provides an opportunity to improve all these areas.”
3. Develop Skills before you Need them
Another common pitfall aspiring leaders can fall into is waiting until they find themselves in a leadership position to develop their leadership skills. Barker says it’s important to work on developing your leadership skills from whatever position you are in so that when the opportunity to lead comes you will be ready. “I use the analogy of facilitation. Its difficult to facilitate a large business meeting. But people don’t wake up one morning and say ‘I think I’ll offer to facilitate the business planning meeting today’. That would be risky. Instead they could start to use facilitative behaviours in their interactions and meetings, things like summarizing discussions, validating other’s opinions and so on,” he explains.
“That way they are building skills as they go, taking small steps and mastering valuable skills each year.”
4. Think Critically and Manage Conflict
For a leader to successfully motivate a team, they also need to let go of the notion that there is only one right answer to an issue. “One of the realities that leaders recognize is that there is no such thing as the right point of view on any issue. There are many points of view corresponding to all the stakeholders and they are all different,” says Barker. “A leader who has the skills and strategies of conflict management to work through the options with stakeholders to reach an agreement, and the critical thinking skills to structure a win-win solution is one who will be in high demand.”
5. Be a Lifelong Learner
Finally, a critical component of successful leadership is the desire and willingness to keep learning. Barker says this is true for three reasons. “First because we either move forward and learn more or we slip backwards into unthinking repletion and lazy convenience,” he says. “The way to keep improving is to keep learning new things and challenging ourselves. Secondly, because to lead is to model behaviour, and if we want others to be inspired to learn then we must do so ourselves. Thirdly, to lead is to listen and in order to listen well requires us the believe that the person is going to tell us something that we can learn from. The desire to keep learning is the hallmark of all the good leaders I’ve ever met.
Tom Barker is a consultant, facilitator and passionate educator, leading his own consulting organization, Tom Barker Associates. Committed to helping adult learners succeed, Tom’s teaching focuses on business process management, business analysis and project management. He teaches several courses in the SCS leadership program.
Our Leadership Essentials Certificate courses are currently open for enrolment.