How to Know What Is Effective Leadership Behavior For Your Organization

Every organization requires its unique style of leadership. There are many books and consultants out there with great tools for guidance, but no one model can meet your needs. Room always needs to be left for flexibility. Here are ten ways to ensure you have the best leadership model for your organization:

1.     Excellent communication:

A good place to start is to build excellent communication. You create a unique connection with regular staff meetings, space for people to ask questions, and weekly written communication through memos and newsletters.

2.     Get to know your team:

Spend time with your team helping them to understand your goals for your organization. Show flexibility through paying attention to the questions and suggestions your team has. The more participation you have from your team, the greater ownership they will take in your business.

Even if you come from a large organization make sure someone on the team connects with each employee. The more employees feel part of the running of the organization the more they will contribute.

You want to build a sense of community in your team, so they will know they are valued. You can do this through informal gatherings during and after work. Show interest in their well-being. Let them know you want them to be happy.

3.     Build up trust in your organization:

You want to trust your team. When you ask a person to do a particular task, trust they will do it. If you can't, you hired the wrong person, or you have trust issues yourself. Always keep the door open for team members to bring in questions and concerns.

4.     Use tools such as the Enneagram:

There are many methods and tools to help your organization work more effectively together. The teaching I most recommend is the psychological tool called the Enneagram. It will give you great insight into the type of leadership you need.

The Enneagram will help you to:

·         Improve communication

·         Prevent and deal with conflict

·         Provide ongoing personality development

·         Bring out the best in each other

·         Find the right people for each of your positions

·         Hire the right people to work well together.

·         Ensure you have a balanced team with a breadth of knowledge and personality styles.

·         Keep your team emotionally healthy

·         Provide excellent human resource support

·         Support employees who are not working at their best.

Read More Here about how the Enneagram can enhance your leadership: Click Here

5.     Find out how others are managing their companies in similar fields:

You can not lead your team all by yourself. You not only can benefit from internal and external coaches, you learn from your industry. What are other businesses doing? What is working? What isn’t working?

6.     Provide employees with the knowledge they need to do their work through continuing education:

Sit down with each of your team members to see what they need to learn every year. Practices and technology are changing so fast, so your team needs to stay updated with all the new information. You might want to encourage each member to set learning goals each year.

7.     Trust your intuition:

You not only learn with your brain, you learn through your emotions and your body. When you pay attention, your body will give you intuition. When you have those experiences, pay attention. It is often right.

8.     Pay attention to your heart:

When you are emotionally healthy, your heart will give you great wisdom. An organization that cares about more than the bottom line is going to be better off in the long run. A team that cares for each other and the people they serve are going to attract more clients.

An open heart will give you clues on how to best support your team and clients. This wisdom is often subtle, but it can make a big difference.  It makes a big difference through the deep connections you are making with your people. You pick up more insights when you connect to the heart.

9.     Experiment with styles of leadership and see what works best:

Whenever you initiate a new form of leadership, you need to give it enough time to see if it works.  It might need a little change to work, or you might need to try something different. One management style doesn't necessarily work in every organization.

Don’t give up on trying something until you find something works. But don’t get too comfortable because what might work well in the life of the organization may need to be changed in months or years.

Pay attention to your whole team. Your team will let you know what is working well and what is not working.

Read more about Effective Leadership: Click Here

10.  Take care of yourself.

You are not going to do an excellent job if you don't take care of yourself.  Overworking is not going to help you. You do not make your best decisions when you are burnt out.

Are you getting enough time off?  Are you eating well?  Do you have time for yourself, your family and friends?  Are you staying fit? Are you emotionally healthy? As a leader in the organization, you need to model how you want your employees to take care of themselves.

If you are feeling overwhelmed don't be afraid to ask for help. There are many professional coaches, counsellor and other practitioners who can help you. By getting the help, you are showing courage and strength to your team.

With intention, you will find what useful leadership behaviour for your organization is.  But remember this is something that will need to keep changing to keep up with the changes in the world.

You need to keep building excellent communication, team building, trust, use excellent tools such as the Enneagram, learn from industry knowledge, encourage continuing education, pay attention to our intuition and feelings, experiment with leadership and practice good self-care.

For this, to work, this requires the full involvement of the whole team. It requires everyone to participate. It requires openness and flexibility. It requires learning from our mistakes. It involves managing with all our knowledge centers, emotions (heart), thinking (head), and intuition (body).

Effective leadership will come out of healthy leaders. Leaders who take care of their physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual selves

Effective leadership will come out of a team that works and plays hard to bring out the best in each other.

Effective leadership comes out of caring for the whole person whether it is employees or clients.

The healthier you are, the more present you will be. By being present you will know inwardly the path you need to take for your organization and so will each person on the team.

I am, Roland Legge a Leadership Coach here to help you and your organization to know what is effective leadership for your organization.  You can sign up for a Free 30 Minute Discovery Call with me in my Acuity Scheduling Calendar.