Apply These 6 Innovative Steps for Big-Impact Leadership
When you think of the qualities that define a top-level leader, what personality traits come to mind? Often, broad, sweeping characteristics are connected to impactful leaders, such as:
- Enthusiastic
- Compulsive
- Self-starter
- Bold
- Dominant
Although these personality traits are crucial to establishing yourself in the modern business world, they are not the be-all, end-all of a successful enterprise-level leader. As Ram Charan points out in his book The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company, enterprise-level leaders who strive to find true success in their position “must be long-term, visionary thinkers.”
When discussing enterprise leaders, Charan shares that this level of leadership demands a conscious mental adjustment of managing a group to focusing on the “whole” of the organization, including how to inspire “the entire employee population through a variety of communication tools.”
Long-term enterprise success requires innovative C-Suite leaders who take advantage of the fresh start that each new day brings. They choose to focus on daily, long-term improvements in both their personal leadership skills and the leadership capabilities of their team.
No one gets to the top by focusing solely on their own success. Mindful leaders with a positive mindset know that they’re a part of a larger team and work hard to optimize professional relationships, communication, and connection.
Big-impact leadership starts with innovative steps that enhance your leadership capabilities while inspiring and motivating your team and helping your company thrive.
To build stronger employees, resilient teams, and heightened leadership skills, implement these long-term, inspiring actions every day in your professional environment:
1. Take Steps to Help Employees Learn Instead of Lecturing
Your employees are a part of a larger team, and most of them don’t want to show up only to be told what to do on any given day.
High-potential team members are eager to learn and crave professional duties which challenge them.
In the modern, fast-paced business world, some leaders may find it difficult to delegate tasks appropriately, forgetting that their employees are not only there to complete work, but to learn as they go.
To create a positive cultural shift in the workplace designed to help employees – and in turn, your business – thrive, future-forward leaders should take the time to provide the tools and support resources needed to help nurture continuous learning.
Whether it’s an investment in online instructional tools or shifting from a facilitator to teacher mindset, your employees will feel more engaged and inspired when you motivate them to grow.
2. Re-Train Employees to Value Respect and Engagement
Consider your personal levels of engagement and motivators in your professional life. Most likely, one of the main factors of engagement and inspiration to do your best for your organization is a sense of connectedness to your values and mission. It’s up to leaders to inspire these same feelings in their employees, as a connection is directly tied to productivity. As The Mckinsey Global Institute demonstrates, productivity improves by 20-25% in companies with connected employees.
Luckily, leaders can inspire these feelings of connection and respect in the workplace. Although respect must be earned, a team member should always feel as though their work is making a difference to the greater good. By re-training employees to understand the value of respect and engagement to yield better results, businesses can experience high-value change.
3. Implement Daily Steps Towards More Mindful Leadership
Leaders who create big-impact changes in their organization don’t do so simply based off of a certain drive for bottom line increases. On the contrary; these leaders value mental health in the workplace and make investments in employee wellbeing by investing both time and finances to the cause.
According to a survey by Mental Health America, 35% of respondents reported that they miss 3-5 days per month due to workplace stress. Not only does this decrease productivity, but it can affect overall employee morale.
When people are stressed, creativity can be put on the backburner, and your organization may not be able to meet your KPIs as a result.
It’s up to leaders to start the conversation on mental health in the workplace and inspire a dedication to mental wellbeing within all team members. By being proactive with supportive programming and encouraging a healthy work-life integration, teams and businesses alike can thrive.
4. Encourage Ongoing Professional and Personal Growth
Although many modern employees may cognitively believe that increased responsibility at work may help them move up the rungs, taking on too much work can often leave them feeling overwhelmed and uninspired. Rather than pushing more work on willing employees, leaders can dedicate time to help their employees reach professional goals and experience personal growth through mentorship and guidance.
For leaders who have doubts about their ability to effectively mentor their employees, executive one-on-one coaching experiences can help them find the confidence they need to mentor their team while enhancing their personal leadership capabilities.
5. Be an Innovative Leader to Inspire Innovative Thinking
In the fast-paced modern workforce, it’s not just companies who have to stay at the forefront of innovations to stay sustainable, but their leadership as well. Innovative thinking and leadership strategies are the difference between a future-forward team and one that will be outperformed by competition.
As a leader, it’s up to you to take the time to gather your team together, share ideas, and find creative solutions to problems.
6. Motivate Your Team By Cultivating Understanding and Connection
For leaders to effectively inspire their team to create an overarching positive change in their workplace, they need to understand employees as individuals.
Best-in-class C-Suite executives work hard to spend time with their employees and pay attention to their unique characteristics and motivators.
Employees who feel understood and respected as a necessary part of their team are most inspired, as they feel genuinely taken care of. Many people spend the majority of their waking hours Monday to Friday at their job; it’s up to leaders to make their professional environment welcoming, engaging, and inspiring.
Leadership isn’t always about taking major steps or by creating strategies that propel your business forward leaps and bounds. Sometimes, the simplest of actions can strengthen relationships between colleagues and team members that positively impact your organizations as a whole. Huge change can start with the actions of one individual; why not inspire the change that you want to see?
If you’re a leader looking to make a big-impact change in both your team and yourself in 2018, start by taking these small, actionable steps for high-value results.
If you believe that you or someone you know may benefit from executive coaching or an optimized HR strategy, get in touch with us today on how you can use our Balanced Leadership Framework as your guide to enhancing your leadership capabilities.
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As the CEO & Founder of East Tenth Group, Michelle leverages 25 years of business and experience as a strategic advisor and executive coach to help drive actionable people solutions and provide practical insights on business strategy to senior leaders. she and her team and are fiercely committed to the development and growth of people and companies because we believe that when people thrive, business thrives.
