Whether you’re at the helm of your organization or you’re hiring a new executive to lead the charge, it’s critical to possess the right leadership and management skills. In increasingly diverse and inclusive work cultures, leadership has become more human-focused. This shift helps motivate, engage and bring out the best in people.
So how do you develop into the kind of leader that people want to follow? Speaker, leadership coach and consultant Marcel Schwantes says you must embrace the five principles of a human-centered leadership approach. This approach filters down to staff and creates a lasting impact on your business.
In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we explore the five rare signs that Schwantes says make a great leader.
1. Compassion. The best leaders work hard to create workplaces that are engaging, fun, and built on camaraderie. They also demonstrate compassion, which is something that can’t be taught in business school. Try looking at your employees with a compassionate lens and putting yourself in their position. What would you want from your job? What would make you excited to go to work every day? Consider your responses and go from there.
2. Radical loving care for others. Schwantes notes that unleashed, radical candor is rarely seen among executives. This goes beyond simply being kind to employees—this is sharing in life’s ups and downs with them, whether you sit in hospital waiting rooms with an employee tending to a sick loved one or you attend high school graduations, weddings, visitations and funerals of those who matter to your employees. Schwantes says love is not an initiative but just caring about the people you live and work with as you journey through life together.
3. Give people ownership. If you desire a high-performing culture, you must give your team members ownership over their work and let them know they play a vital role in your organization’s success. When you treat people as though they all have an equal stake in the company, you inspire employees to respond with more trust, loyalty and commitment.
4. Engage people in their work. Leaders know that if you don’t love your work, you won’t do your best work. The same is true for those on your team. A rare attribute among great leaders is the ability to get people to love coming to work every day. This helps build a loyal team and reduce turnover, which positively effects client satisfaction.
5. Build a unique culture. The best leaders strive to protect and enhance the culture they’ve built. This means being selective with the team to ensure that new hires are like-minded people who will fit into the culture. Although many managers rely on headhunters or HR departments to find talent, the rarest leaders are their own recruiters and find happy, successful, positive people to carry on the mission.
Truly admirable leaders bring their best self to work and encourage others to do the same. Do you exhibit the signs of great leadership?
Source: Marcel Schwantes is a speaker, leadership coach and consultant, and syndicated columnist drawing more than a million readers per month worldwide to his thought leadership. His powerful speeches teach the conditions necessary for creating human-centered workplaces that result in high-performing cultures.
