What makes one leader more effective than another? What do they do or say to get their troops to follow them, passionately and without question, into the everyday battle of business?
Filled with people at all levels who are part of an Organisation trying to achieve its goals, it’s leaders throughout the business who are ultimately responsible for getting the best outcomes from their people.
The role of you, the Leader
- Leaders are responsible for the Organisation’s overall success
- Leaders are responsible for the future direction and strategy of the Company and its ongoing sustainability
- They are the custodians of the people and it is their role to develop and grow them to be the best they can be
- Leaders are the creators of an Organisations culture and determine how people behave within it
- They are also the role models who the people follow, good or bad
- Leaders are responsible for the way in which the Organisation conducts its business – which is reflected in its reputation and how people view its brand.
A recent article, published by Sunnie Giles in the Harvard Business Review, shows that after extensive research in a recent study of 195 leaders in 15 countries throughout 30 global Organisations, 5 major competency themes were identified:
- Strong Ethics and Safety
- Self-Organising
- Efficient Learning
- Nurtures Growth
- Connection and Belonging
Source: https://hbr.org/2016/03/the-most-important-leadership-competencies-according-to-leaders-around-the-world
The behaviours underlying each competence
- Strong ethics and safety is about leaders having a robust moral compass, by doing the ‘right’ thing and providing a workplace that is trusting and safe to their people. Ethical leaders are fair and show confidence. Their people are comforted by the fact these leaders always follow the just and moral path. When employees feel relaxed and at ease, they are able to perform at a higher level. They also engage better socially and achieve better results.
Tip: This leader can be relied up to support staff and ‘take the fall’ when things go wrong. They confront problems when they arise and like to ‘clear the air’ and talk about issues when they arise.
- Self-Organising is about empowering people to do the best they can do, through clear expectations the leader has of them and by setting clear goals and objectives for them. No leader can do everything themselves. Positive and engaged teams are highly achieving, reach goals, provide better customer service and demonstrate higher levels of satisfaction and engagement in their work.
Tip: Talk to your people, often. Get them together for meetings, a coffee and discuss out ideas and challenges you all have. Give them the support to let them try things and compliment them on things well done. Leaders need to regularly explain to their people their expectations and go over their goals and how they are working towards them.
- Efficient learning is the competence of learning yourself, as a leader. You don’t know all the answers so be open to new learning. And then your people will. In meetings listen first and then speak. Give 5 people the chance to say something before you do. Learn from them, think about the problem and then make a comment.
Tip: Failing is an important part of learning because it’s often only then that we learn. As a leader don’t go hard when your people fail. Be encouraging. See failure as a chance for all of you, as a team, to grow and develop and do things better moving forward.
- Nurtures Growth is about developing people. This competence includes commitment to training and helping people grow in their roles. Employees love nothing more than a leader who shows care and commitment to their growth – who sees the value of spending money on their development and growing them as people. And in return, they are more motivated in their jobs and perform better.
Tip: Look at all your people. How can you up skill them? Where do they need help to grow? Get your Learning and Development Team to design individual development plans to up skill your team to be competent in their role or any future one (business succession planning.)
- Connection and Belonging is about the leader who values connecting with their team, is open to new ideas, helps their people grow and develop into future roles and encourages giving things a go. They fail if necessary, in a safe and learning environment. Humans are a social species. We want to belong, to feel part of something.
Tip: When you lead, create a supportive culture, by building positive working environments and fostering productive and happy teams who focus on helping the Organisation achieve what it sets out to.
Why Organisations need Leadership Competency Frameworks
Imagine a picture frame with a montage of pictures in it about a person’s life. One is of them at home, another at work, a third with their friends and the last may be of them at University. Everything about their life is in the picture frame.
This is what a leadership Competency Framework is. When Organisations create these Frameworks everything to do with leadership behavioural competencies lies in this framework and it can be used for:
- Performance Appraisals
- Rewards and Recognition
- Business Succession Planning
- Career Progression
- Identify and grow emerging leaders
- Develop and grow competencies of leaders at all levels of the Organisation
A competency framework is not a ‘nice to have.’ It’s a ‘must have.
To run efficient Organisations, leaders at all levels need to be competent technically and relation-ally. This is critical to the business’ success moving forward. A Competency Framework helps you develop, track and reward your people.