Effective leadership is one of the essential fundamentals to building excellent organisational cultures. A leader is someone who has authority or influence over an organisation, regardless of the title. Above all, they set the tone for organisational values and culture.
Leaders can reinforce values while also holding people accountable. Their influence over others can either be good or bad, depending on their leadership style and how they execute strategies. However, both effective and ineffective leadership practices can directly impact company development. Leaders must be deliberate in creating a work culture where employees can thrive. Not having a strong corporate culture can negatively affect employees and the organisation as a whole.
Here’s how leadership will impact company development.
1. Leading the Brand
Strong leadership is an important steppingstone to propelling a business forward. A company with inadequate guidance is like a boat with no rudder that will get lost in an ocean full of competition, not to mention unpredictable market trends. Good leaders steer the organisation towards the right path, motivating everyone in the organisation to work together in attaining a common goal. Not only will this foster mutual trust and strong working relationships, but it also helps to create a healthy workplace culture where everyone feels connected and valued. More importantly, it instils positive values in the company and encourages employee engagement, which can benefit the organisation in many ways.
Research shows that highly engaged employees are more productive and are less likely to skip work. In addition, engaged workers are committed to attaining excellent performance and achieving high-quality results. They can make better decisions and work meticulously, from adhering to the right processes to ensuring workplace safety. In addition, these individuals have a better work-life balance, offer exceptional customer care, and are less likely to get stressed at work.
Indeed, having strong leadership can positively impact the organisation’s values and overall work culture. It has favourable effects on the organisation by encouraging and enhancing employee engagement. Therefore, leaders must know how to translate the company’s values into something that everyone will appreciate and can relate to.
2. Leading by Values
Company values guide everything an organisation does, from talent acquisition to professional development, carrying out the mission and fulfilling the organisation’s vision. Essentially, company values guide leaders in making decisions and interacting with people within and outside the organisation. It’s the foundation of how the organisation emotionally connect with each other.
Values-based leadership is one that instils a standard set of values for all employees in the organisation, improving their willingness and cohesiveness to work together. Understanding that company leaders have similar beliefs often encourages employees to religiously follow instructions, which increases the chances of success in every organisation. In addition, it enhances employee engagement, performance, and retention, all of these foster profitability and growth. Values-based leaders possess specific traits and qualities that make them the best at everything they do.
Values-based leaders know how to look at situations from different points of view and integrate a diversity of thought from the team while also leveraging core values when making decisions. They understand the value of each team member, and therefore, leverages the team’s strengths in all situations. These leaders know how to lead and where to set directions. They are more effective at decentralising leadership, and decision-making since higher degrees of trust exist up and down in the chain of command.
3. Leading People
One of the main responsibilities of a leader is to encourage the team to do the best they can for the benefit of the entire organisation. To achieve this, leaders must show employees the way and get them involved in the decision-making process. Above all, they should lead by example. For instance, a CEO might discourage unnecessary spending among employees to improve revenues. But if the CEO is very extravagant with his spending, the employees won’t be motivated to follow and will continue with unnecessary spending.
Sometimes, managers can become too busy providing directives and managing the team that they forget to listen to their followers. Thus, training managers to manage people better is essential. The leadership and management training will teach managers how to manage and lead the organisation into achieving and maintaining their best performance for the business.
A good leader must recognise that they don’t know everything and should consider learning something new from junior employees. Besides, most organisations hire staff according to their experience and skills in specific fields. Therefore, leaders should interact and listen to employees and learn something valuable from them. Although managers are meant to lead and give directions, they should not hesitate in getting involved in the actual work. For instance, he can accompany the marketing team on the field. Moreover, the leader should learn to pitch to clients in the same way that the marketing staff is doing, which helps boost the team’s overall morale. Aside from learning new skills, it’s a great way to establish a relationship and build trust with employees.
4. Leading in Recruitment
Recruiting leaders play one of the most critical roles in the company. They are among the most high-leverage leaders, and they partner with other leaders to shape their talent acquisition strategies and work to keep the bar high across the organisation. Recruiting leaders also have a significant impact on the diversity and culture of the company as they bring in new talents.
When leading in recruitment, you must know when to promote current staff or outsource using specialist recruiters. For instance, if the company needs to hire new electronics engineers, they can tap the services of electronics recruitment specialists in hiring experts in the field.
Setting clear expectations in recruiter performance is another vital role that recruiting leaders play. As a leader, you need to think about qualitative and quantitative measurements and, most importantly, connect them to the outcomes and behaviours you want. But take note that not all performance metrics are created the same. For instance, if you over-focus on the number of hires per month, you could end up emphasizing short-term thinking and overlook diversity, quality, and candidate experience.
