What exactly does effective leadership mean?
Soft skills?- 5 Levels of leadership?
- Getting projects organized?
- Getting a team in place?
- A book you read, a class you took, a workshop you attended?
And a host of other “answers” that don’t put the question into focus.
To bring effective leadership into focus let’s start with the word effective. According to Dictionary.com Effective is defined as:
Adequate to accomplish a purpose; producing the intended or expected result.
Actually in operation or in force; functioning
What I like about this definition is the focus on accomplishment of a purpose and producing expected results.
The leadership part focuses on a purpose and expectations.
So effective leadership is all about producing expected results with a purpose.
Effective leadership…
- Builds accountability in teams.
- Creates teamwork where everyone is working to the same goals. (less in-fighting)
- Sets a purpose for you personally and your organization.
- Produces financial results in terms of more profit, sales and personal income.
- Produces successful projects.
Soft skills are part of it, just like project management, time management, teamwork all play roles in effective leadership.
However, effective leadership requires more.
Create effective leadership
Back to the question, “How to create effective leadership?”
It always starts with an intention to be effective and be a leader. So, here we go! Intention to do something then acting and doing it.
Know what you intend to do—know what you want. This is sometimes called a vision. It is a picture of the future you want to create for yourself, your team and and your projects.
I often hear, “I’m not running a big business, why do I need a vision,” or “I work for someone else, why would I need a vision?” or my favorite, “I just get things done, I don’t need a vision.”
Okay, substitute, “to know what I want” for “a vision” in each of statements above. The statements sound ridiculous don’t they? Yes, is the answer, in case you weren’t sure. You need to know what you want, essentially a vision for yourself regardless of what you do.
Understand your big why behind what you want to do. Values define why we choose the things we choose. Values direct our decisions day in and day out. These decisions and what tugs at us defines values. Understanding your values puts you in control of your decisions in a powerful way.
Our big why, that is values are step 2 in a 3 step process of our behavior. I partner and train with a research group that does research on professional behavior patterns. To-date they’ve researched over 200,000 professionals around the world. There is meat in the results.
We perceive the world, measure the perceptions against our values, and then decide on an action based our behavior preferences. We all flow through this process daily with countless items.
Since we decide everything measured against our values, it would be beneficial to understand our values (the big why) explicitly.
Set up goals, specific measurable, attainable, realistically high and time based goals. We all set goals often. We rarely set SMART goals. And even less often write them down and share them. That takes discipline.
Execute to the goals. This implies activity plans aimed at the goals following the values. Nothing happens without execution. And decisions on activities are simplified by knowing your values. Knowing what you want, why you want it, and specifically what to accomplish gives you a huge advantage for successful execution.
So effective leadership boils down to knowing what you want, understanding your big why, and setting goals to accomplish what you intend and achieving expected results. Easy.
Why, then do so few people practice effective leadership?
In a word, Practice.
Effective leadership is a skill and requires practice. Practice of any skill means breaking old, unhelpful habits and developing new habits. Which is why it is so hard to do it on our own.
As a business development coach, I continually train and work with people to improve their skills so they can become effective leaders. It takes determination and continuous practice to become a master at effective leadership. Reading a book or even this article won’t do it.
If you want to talk through your journey to effective leadership, let’s set up a time and talk.
Email me at Phil@PhilBride.com or call me at 503-753-9971.
Get unstuck. Make things happen.
