The most important key of effective leadership

According to a study by the Hay Group, a global management consultancy, there are 75 key components of employee satisfaction (Lamb, McKee, 2004). They found that:

1. Helping employees understand the company's overall business strategy.
2. Helping employees understand how they contribute to achieving key business objectives.
3. Sharing information with employees on both how the company is doing and how an employee's own division is doing — relative to strategic business objectives.

Principles of Leadership

1. Be technically proficient - As a leader, you must know your job and have a solid familiarity with your employees' tasks.
2. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions. Analyse the situation, take corrective action, and move on to the next challenge.
3. Make sound and timely decisions - Use good problem solving, decision making, and planning tools.
4. Be a good role model for your employees.
5. Know your people and look out for their well-being - Know human nature and the importance of sincerely caring for your workers.
6. Keep your workers informed.
7. Develop a sense of responsibility in your workers.
8. Ensure that tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished - Communication is the key to this responsibility.
9. Train as a team.

Environment

Environment reflects on the type of organization and its mission, goals and objectives. It varies in almost every organization and if properly nurtured will bring high level of productivity in the organization. An employee suits themselves to the organizational environment as a part of adaptation process so it is very important to set the organizational environment in the right direction which might be formal or informal.

Goals, Values, and Concepts

Leaders exert influence on the environment via three types of actions:

1. The goals and performance standards they establish.
2. The values they establish for the organization.
3. The business and people concepts they establish.

Successful organizations have leaders who set high standards and goals across the entire spectrum, such as strategies, market leadership, plans, meetings and presentations, productivity, quality, and reliability.

Values reflect the concern the organization has for its employees, customers, investors, vendors, and surrounding community. These values define the manner in business how will be conducted.

These goals, values, and concepts make up the organization's personality or how the organization is observed by both outsiders and insiders. This personality defines the roles, relationships, rewards, and rites that take place.

Culture and Climate

Each organization has its own distinctive culture on its purpose. It is a combination of the founders, past leadership, current leadership, crises, events, history, and size (Newstrom, Davis, 1993). This result in rites: the routines, rituals, and the “way we do things.” These rites affect individual behaviour on what it takes to be in good standing (the norm) and directs the appropriate behaviour for each circumstance.

The climate is the feel of the organization, the individual and shared perceptions and attitudes of the organization's members (Ivancevich, Konopaske, Matteson, 2007). While the culture is the deeply rooted nature of the organization that is a result of long-held formal and informal systems, rules, traditions, and customs; climate is a short-term phenomenon created by the current leadership. Climate represents the beliefs about the “feel of the organization” by its members. These activities influence both individual and team motivation and satisfaction, such as:

• How well does the leader clarify the priorities and goals of the organization? What is expected of us?
• What is the system of recognition, rewards, and punishments in the organization?
• How competent are the leaders?
• Are leaders free to make decisions?
• What will happen if I make a mistake?

The Process of Great Leadership

The road to great leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 1987) that is common to successful leaders:

• Challenge the process - First, find a process that you believe needs to be improved the most.
• Inspire a shared vision - Next, share your vision in words that can be understood by your followers.
• Enable others to act - Give them the tools and methods to solve the problem.
• Model the way - When the process gets tough, get your hands dirty. A boss tells others what to do; a leader shows that it can be done.
• Encourages the heart - Share the glory with your followers' hearts, while keeping the pains within your own.

Good Leaders

We need to recognize that there are two kinds of leaders: strategic and operational. However, there are four things that both strategic and operational leaders can do to make teams and organizations successful. They are selecting talent, motivating people, coaching, and building trust.

In Organizing Genius (Addison-Wesley, 1997) Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman point out those leaders of great teams pick talent on the basis of excellence and ability to work with others. Good leaders are not afraid to hire people who know more than they do. Jack Welch has said that his biggest accomplishment has been finding great people.

In Why Work? (Second edition, Miles River Press, 1995), I suggest thinking about motivation in terms of four: responsibilities, rewards, relationships, and reasons.

The combination of intrinsic motivation with extrinsic rewards and recognition can produce highly motivated people. A good leader also strengthens motivation and develops competence through coaching. In particular, he or she knows how to keep people focussed, recognizing that unless technical staff keeps their eyes on priority goals, they will tend to drift into paths that are attractive to them, but not essential for the business.