Seven Forward-Thinking Leadership Attributes Your Organization Needs Today
After more than a decade of advising, consulting and coaching, I've found it so hard to ignore specific patterns that are needed - more today than ever - from leadership and executives, regardless of the size of their company. These are patterns that always fall into the “people” bucket, regardless of how, when and why the business was started or what challenges are faced as a result of either new technology or process change and implementation. New models that are produced because of a leadership team’s functions (or dysfunctions) are at a pivotal point and affect everyone, especially the team's valuable talent.
The fact is that many current leaders focus way too much on the tangible, measurable aspects of their businesses, such as a new technology, profits or winning big accounts, and they forget that behind all that success is an exceptional talent, leadership, and management team.
By now you may also be wondering, as many of my clients do, how you can find and keep exceptional talent, leadership or management that will help you to succeed - not only today but also in the future. Talent needs to be invested in through listening, support, trust, and respect, as well as leadership and coaching. The best part is that truly forward-thinking leaders anticipate talent, team, organizational and client needs way before they may be evident to others. There is no silver bullet, right? But indeed, looking for these seven attributes in your leaders maybe a bulletproof solution.
The key is forward-thinking leadership, which can be identified by the following:
1. Results
Sure, we all want to see results. The measurable ones are generated internally from our efforts, time, skillset, team, and overall organization. However, what is often misunderstood and missing is a shared understanding of the priorities and key objectives - and road maps for how to achieve them. As a result, it is challenging to identify the challenges and determine appropriate solutions that, at the end of the day, positively affect everyone in the organization, as well as the bottom line.
2. Execution
How can we execute on anything important without structure or other leaders involved? Yes, we all must compete, but we need to step away from the silos and start to think about how our decisions and actions or, better yet, lack of them will affect others. This is a problem we see too often due to leadership-team dysfunctions and lack of alignment. It is essential to ask ourselves: Are we acting as gap closers or as gap creators? And, are we sharing knowledge and information and driving toward solutions by simplifying, centralizing and creating an integrated process within departments to develop team collaboration and the stellar execution it generates?
3. Impact
Every action we take creates a reaction that needs to be assessed because, at the end of the day, it will create an impression, desirable or otherwise. This impact on the talent, team, clients, and vendors takes time to develop and even more to fix. It is fascinating to see how often a lack of leadership’s guidance and support creates the gap in the cascading flow of what is/should be working and what needs to change and improve. This is a real test for talent and leadership competency.
4. Performance
As we all know, nothing great can be achieved without effort or commitment. Today’s talent and leadership performance encompasses so much and is more complicated than ever before. However, to set your organization apart, it is essential to reach a level of high-performance impact demonstrated through enhanced leadership training, development, increased talent, leadership authority and empowerment across the whole organization.
5. Strategy
Who knows their organization's current approach and strategic agenda? This legitimate question often gives me very bleak answers simply because way too often strategy is not shared with leaders and executives across the organization. Imagine how a team is feeling when they need to make something happen as if by magic. The fact is that the end goal can be reached in many ways, but what makes the most sense for the current situation and business scenario? How fast can we adjust or change? Who is putting on the brakes and why? And, best of all, who is accountable for it?
6. Effectiveness
We all know how hard it can be to balance multiple teams and competing projects or departments with other aspects of the business. However, team and organizational effectiveness is not just a theoretical concept. It is living, breathing evidence of every corporate culture, for better or worst. It is alignment between a forward-thinking leader’s actions and the company’s values, goals and priorities.
7. Transformation
Today, before any of the above steps are taken, the way individuals and the organization respond to change provides a snapshot of how successful an organization is, and it will dictate how successful it will be in years to come. Why is this? Transformation is the pulse, like the internal GPS of an organization, that forward-thinking leaders know and understand at any given moment. They do this by supporting and navigating all challenges, changes and desired outcomes so they can thrive instead of merely surviving.
By establishing your organization with forward-thinking leadership and leaders, you will be able to tap into your knowledgeable, talented, innovative, creative, dedicated, daring, driven, diverse talent and teams much faster and more effectively. The quicker you develop, establish and integrate the backbone of your organization - your forward-thinking leaders -the more successful your organization will be.
NOTE: This article was originally posted on Forbes. Feel free to share or comment!
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I wish you massive success to you on your journey as a leader. Izabela
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