15/08/2015
Leadership: A Definition
According to the idea of transformational leadership [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] , an effective leader is a person who does the following:
Creates an inspiring vision of the future.
Motivates and inspires people to engage with that vision.
Manages delivery of the vision.
Coaches and builds a team, so that it is more effective at achieving the vision.
Leadership brings together the skills needed to do these things. We'll look at each element in more detail.
1. Creating an Inspiring Vision of the Future
In business, a vision is a realistic, convincing and attractive depiction of where you want to be in the future. Vision provides direction, sets priorities, and provides a marker, so that you can tell that you've achieved what you wanted to achieve.
To create a vision, leaders focus on an organization's strengths by using tools such as Porter's Five Forces [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] , PEST Analysis [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] , USP Analysis [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] , Core Competence Analysis [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] and SWOT Analysis [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] to analyze their current situation. They think about how their industry is likely to evolve, and how their competitors are likely to behave. They look at how they can innovate successfully [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] , and shape their businesses and their strategies to succeed in future marketplaces. And they test their visions with appropriate market research, and by assessing key risks using techniques such as Scenario Analysis [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] .
Therefore, leadership is proactive – problem solving, looking ahead, and not being satisfied with things as they are.
Once they have developed their visions, leaders must make them compelling and convincing. A compelling vision [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] is one that people can see, feel, understand, and embrace. Effective leaders provide a rich picture of what the future will look like when their visions have been realized. They tell inspiring stories [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] , and explain their visions in ways that everyone can relate to.
Here, leadership combines the analytical side of vision creation with the passion of shared values, creating something really meaningful to the people being led.
2. Motivating and Inspiring People
A compelling vision provides the foundation for leadership. But it's leaders' ability to motivate and inspire people that helps them deliver that vision.
For example, when you start a new project, you will probably have lots of enthusiasm for it, so it's often easy to win support for the project at the beginning. However, it can be difficult to find ways to keep your vision inspiring after the initial enthusiasm fades, especially if the team or organization needs to make significant changes in the way that they do things. Leaders recognize this, and they work hard throughout the project to connect their vision with people's individual needs, goals, and aspirations.
One of the key ways they do this is through Expectancy Theory [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] . Effective leaders link together two different expectations:
The expectation that hard work leads to good results.
The expectation that good results lead to attractive rewards or incentives.
This motivates people to work hard to achieve success, because they expect to enjoy rewards – both intrinsic and extrinsic – as a result.
Other approaches include restating the vision in terms of the benefits it will bring to the team's customers, and taking frequent opportunities to communicate the vision in an attractive and engaging way.
What's particularly helpful here is where leaders have expert power [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] . People admire and believe in these leaders because they are expert in what they do. They have credibility, and they've earned the right to ask people to listen to them and follow them. This makes it much easier for these leaders to motivate and inspire the people they lead.
Leaders can also motivate and influence people through their natural charisma and appeal, and through other sources of power [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] , such as the power to pay bonuses or assign tasks to people. However, good leaders don't rely too much on these types of power to motivate and inspire others.
3. Managing Delivery of the Vision
This is the area of leadership that relates to management [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] .
Leaders must ensure that the work needed to deliver the vision is properly managed – either by themselves, or by a dedicated manager or team of managers to whom the leader delegates this responsibility – and they need to ensure that their vision is delivered successfully.
To do this, team members need performance goals that are linked to the team's overall vision. Our article on Performance Management and KPIs [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] (Key Performance Indicators) explains one way of doing this, and our Project Management section explains another. And, for day-to-day management of delivering the vision, the Management By Wandering Around [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] (MBWA) approach helps to ensure that what should happen, really happens.
Leaders also need to make sure they manage change [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] effectively. This helps to ensure that the changes needed to deliver the vision are implemented smoothly and thoroughly, with the support and backing of the people affected.
4. Coaching and Building a Team to Achieve the Vision
Individual and team development are important activities carried out by transformational leaders. To develop a team, leaders must first understand team dynamics. Several well-established and popular models describe this, such as Belbin's Team Roles [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] approach, and Bruce Tuckman's Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing theory [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] .
A leader will then ensure that team members have the necessary skills and abilities to do their job and achieve the vision. They do this by giving and receiving feedback [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] regularly, and by training and coaching [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] people to improve individual and team performance.
Leadership also includes looking for leadership potential [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] in others. By developing leadership skills within your team, you create an environment where you can continue success in the long term. And that's a true measure of great leadership.
Note:
The words "leader" and "leadership" are often used incorrectly to describe people who are actually managing. These individuals may be highly skilled, good at their jobs, and valuable to their organizations – but that just makes them excellent managers, not leaders.
So, be careful how you use the terms, and don't assume that people with "leader" in their job titles, people who describe themselves as "leaders," or even groups called "leadership teams," are actually creating and delivering transformational change.
A particular danger in these situations is that people or organizations that are being managed by such an individual or group think they're being led; but they're not. There may actually be no leadership at all, with no one setting a vision and no one being inspired. This can cause serious problems in the long term.
