Visionary Leadership
Are you a Visionary Leader ?
To effectively lead your teams, you must have a vision of where you want your business to be. It needs to be inspiring, for both your workforce and for your customers, expresses the driving force of the business and conveys what you want your business to stand for.
This is what separates a manager from a leader. A good manager, who is part of your team, helps the team implement this vision. However, it you as the leaders that creates that vision. A good manager will help your teams climb the rungs of the ladder, but it is the leader who’ll make sure the ladder is leaning against the right building. These were Julia’s words of wisdom from her latest podcast.
Can you articulate your vision ?
Once you have that vision, you must be able to articulate that in a statement, that creates the picture that you want the world to see that sums up your organisation. Here are three examples:
“To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” – Tesla
“Spread ideas” – TED
“To enable shoppers to live richer lives for less” – Aldi
From the vision statement you create, you can then start planning and get your team moving in the direction you want. But there is far more to leadership than just putting across your vision. You need to care about each person in your team, their success and how you can best support them.
“A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.” Wise words from Jim Rohn, a highly accomplished entrepreneur and leadership coach.
Are you helping your team achieve your Vision ?
This quote refers to ‘Servant Leadership’, a philosophy put forward by Robert K Greenleaf in 1970. He said:
"The servant-leader is servant first... Becoming a servant-leader begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first... The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant first to make sure that other people's highest priority needs are being served.”
https://www.greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/
So what makes a good Servant Leader ?
Some of the qualities displayed in Servant Leadership are:
Listening to the views of your team members, giving them plenty of opportunity to share ideas, and be heard by you and the others.
Empathy to care about your team members, not just the business level but a personal level.
Resolution to solve problems immediately and not allow any ill-feelings to fester.Self-awareness of how your team sees you and your behaviour toward them.
Persuasion and guidance and not telling them what to do.
Foresight to help everyone, including you to learn from mistakes and set effective goals.
Development of yourself and set an example that motivates them to develop themselves.
Support each of the individual team members as well as the whole team, to create a cohesive and supportive environment for each other.
As a Servant Leader, you are leading by example, creating respect, and not demanding it. You need to be helping each individual understand why their particular role is important and directly affects the overall success of the company. This isn’t always easy but the benefits are huge, from creating stronger and more resilient teams, fostering a more encouraging and motivating work environment and increasing company loyalty within your staff.
We are here to help.
If this is something new to you and you’d like to explore it further, we’re here for you.
If you would like to talk about how we can work with you to improve your leadership skills click on the button to get in touch.