Leadership and Role Modelling Regardless of Your Title

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Leadership and Role Modelling Regardless of Your Title | Future Business

Powerful Storytelling

Having developed a clear vision for growth, it is also vital for any leader to be able to communicate this image to those around them. Lauren-Kristine Pryzant, an executive coach and professional development expert describes this ability to communicate to others as a primary quality of a good leader, noting “If you want to lead change and innovation within your organization, first you need to inspire others and share your vision in a memorable way. I call this ‘selling with stories’.”

This story-telling approach to leadership not only helps to cement bonds with team members but is also proven to be far more effective when it comes to motivating people. For many individuals entering a leadership role, the first instinct is to rely on data and bombard with statistics but as Pryzant explains “stories are remembered up to 22x more than just data alone… Use stories to illustrate why a change is needed and sell others on the impact”

Continuous improvement

While the above skills are common across most good leaders, there is no magic bullet when it comes to developing leadership talents. In fact, leadership can often be better understood as a continuous process of learning rather than a discrete skill that can be acquired.

Research by DDI suggests that leaders spend nearly 4.4 hours per week learning, but would prefer to spend about 7.5 hours, while analysis by training consultancy Barrett Values Centre shows that the top areas leaders identified in themselves as needing work barely ever overlapped with what peers and key colleagues saw as areas that needed improvement.

Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice at the London Business School, says “the leaders I see who are really building an organization that’s adaptable, that’s going to be able to upskill and reskill their employees over time, are those who not only are honest about their own failings but also create an environment of psychological safety for their employees so that they are comfortable making mistakes as they learn.”

This process of constant learning is set to define the workplace and of the future and the leaders that rise to the top are likely to be those that can foster a safe space to learn within their organisation and earn the trust of their colleagues.

“For most people, it’s likely that the job they’re in now will not exist in the future—or at least not in the same form. So leaders need to provide ongoing momentum for people to use their agency to decide for themselves, “What am I going to do next?” Gratton continues.

Service-leadership model

For some experts, such as Tim Welsh, vice-chairman at U.S. Bank, this process is driving a whole new method of leadership, based around the concept service-leadership. This approach has developed from recent shifts in working practices and emphasises more flexible, networked structures of leadership over traditional hierarchal arrangements.

This model encourages managers to become enablers rather than enforcers and centres around co-operative working rather than individual effort.  Under this approach, recognition and reward is also assigned based on the outcome of co-operative working groups rather individual performance.

“We may need to think about a whole new definition of leadership, a whole new set of attributes that a leader should have for this new working environment we’re talking about,” Welsh explains. “Most of all, we need humble leaders—in part, because increasingly they will need to be enablers of others, not in charge of others. This requires a very different mind-set. In a world of reskilling, a leader will be a person who needs to act in service to others, empowering a group of employees to do things on their own.

While this approach may require significant change for some organisations it also offers a range of opportunities for those in more junior roles. Whereas employees would have to ’work their way up’ in traditional hierarchies, a more collaborative working model allows people in any role to contribute and display their leadership credentials.

“The research clearly points to how great leaders create followership. In looking at the leadership skills that differentiate high performing companies from low performers, the three biggest areas are leading change, coaching and delegation, and building partnerships. These capabilities point out that great leaders don’t just lead. They also collaborate, partner, and bring people with them,” Byham of DDI concludes.

SEE ALSO: Do Women Feel Safe in Your Workplace?

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