When do we need leadership

People will ultimately judge leadership on the organization's performance in terms of employee engagement, productivity and profit. What works for one organization and in one situation might not work for others. But effective leadership of whatever shape or scope is crucial, and without the direction that leaders give, companies can sink fast. So every organization should know what good leadership looks like for them. Leaders matter: they inspire people, motivate them to perform to a higher level, and embody company values and culture.

Effective leadership will:. A study carried out at the University of South Africa showed leaders who kept staff informed, set a clear vision, showed they were caring and were open and honest were associated with high satisfaction levels. Trust in leaders is one of the top factors cited in helping improve employee engagement. It helps create a culture of openness and trust throughout the organization. Currently, CEO leaders and businesses are enjoying higher levels of trust than their politician counterparts - something organizations need to capitalize on.

Influential leaders inspire people to feel confident in their abilities and their work. This has the knock-on effects of improved productivity and better quality products and services.

Leaders set the tone, both for the overall organization and their teams. Effective leadership is essential to steer employees smoothly through the process - as McKinsey puts it, to "encourage employees to win over hearts and minds. While great leadership can have a great effect on an organization, poor leadership can be hugely damaging. If people feel unappreciated or even bullied, it will impact their wellness as well as their productivity.

Plus, it will make them more likely to quit. When leaders are weak, authoritarian or aloof, other people will step in to fill the gap. Letting this negativity get a foothold in the organization can accelerate the growth of toxic workplace culture. Leaders who bully or have favorites can contribute to a negative culture, making coming to work an unpleasant experience. This can lead to high staff turnover and poor service, eventually impairing the performance of the whole company.

Both managers and leaders work towards organizational goals. But while leaders create a vision for what they want to happen and inspire people to achieve it, managers are more focused on the nuts and bolts of how to get there. Leaders, on the other hand, will be in charge of influencing and enthusing others.

Some people frame it as management being more of a science and leadership more of an art. So, the two roles work together. While the leader goes about innovating and inspiring, the manager has to focus on turning their vision into reality. So what are these essential personal ingredients of leadership? The importance of moral and ethical leadership came to the fore after the financial crisis and is under the spotlight again during the coronavirus pandemic.

People see leaders as moral touchstones. The social intelligence needed to intuit, understand and react to what others feel is seen as an essential quality of leadership. Ninety-six percent of people taking part in a Harvard Business Review survey said it was important for their employers to show empathy. Effective leaders have to inspire and motivate - and that depends on being able to get messages across to people at all levels of an organization.

This is why great leadership communication is so important. They listen to employees' worries about their work, provide positive feedback and ensure the office environment brings out the best in them.

Leadership boosts staff morale by winning their trust. It assures employees of the leader's confidence in their abilities to deliver on the vision and mission of the organization. High morale among employees reduces distraction and motivates them to devote their energies to achieve organizational goals. The best leaders create an environment where others can grow. They are open to new ideas and methods of achieving results and are flexible enough to admit their mistakes.

Successful leaders encourage subordinates to provide inputs on how to improve work processes and reward excellence to increase creativity and loyalty. Effective leadership balances personal interests with organizational objectives. Leaders know that employees have personal reasons for working with their company. They create an environment where the organization can achieve its goals without sacrificing employee satisfaction. Find jobs. Company reviews.

Find salaries. Upload your resume. Sign in. Career Development. What is the importance of leadership? Why do teams need leaders? Effective leadership. They also want her to be happy and proud of them, and they feel deep guilt if they cause her suffering—a fact that some mothers use to control their kids.

Beneath the guilt is the unconscious fear that the mother will cut off her life-giving nurturance. Maternal transferences generate greater expectations of empathy and tenderness from bosses than can realistically be met. A colleague of mine saw this when he coached the year-old vice president of a home-building company, who was told in no uncertain terms by the president that he had handed in a bad proposal.

The VP complained that the president should have shown more emotional intelligence in rejecting the proposal. As my colleague immediately realized, the VP was projecting an inappropriate maternal transference. Positive maternal transferences can give people a powerful sense of support. However, even positive maternal transferences can have bad effects.

A close friend of mine taught for 18 years in a private school where most teachers had a maternal transference with the headmistress, who created a family-like culture. The teachers loved their boss and felt cared for and protected by her, but the warm feelings they had were not a good measure of her ability to perform. As she neared retirement, the school was in the red, and it became clear that the headmistress had done little either to evaluate and develop the teachers or to help them deal with discipline problems.

Maternal transferences can sometimes be quite subversive of the formal organization even as they facilitate results. In one software company a colleague of mine consulted at, a number of male executives had a positive maternal transference with a woman coworker. She was the person they went to with their problems.

These men were extremely competitive, but they were very comfortable communicating with one another through this woman.

But over the past generation, sibling transferences have become less rivalrous and, at the same time, more influential. Instead, many of them develop close relationships at an early age with their siblings or with other kids in day care. As children cannot always rely on hard-working parents to be there when needed, they depend more on siblings and friends for emotional support. In fact, rather than trying to get what they want by pleasing their parents, kids learn at an early age to play on parental guilt and negotiate for privileges.

Increasingly, these attitudes toward authority are being transferred to the workplace, making leadership even more difficult. In the course of my research and consulting, I have consistently found that the employees who take most readily to horizontal organizations like cross-functional and project teams are those who were brought up in nontraditional families.

I asked Nichols whether she felt comfortable handling this account by herself. She conceded that she did need assistance with some of the data, but her friend Annie Hellwarth from information services helped her out there. And what about her manager? What was his role? But even though Nichols did a good job and was highly motivated, she was not fully qualified to develop the business relationship with the customer.

Popular advice to management on empowering employees ignores this sort of problem. Employees like Nichols—who comes from a family where both parents worked and who not surprisingly has transferential ties to coworkers rather than to managers—function best as players in a game with clear roles, rules, rewards, and relations to authority.

Otherwise, they tend to ignore authority, which can sometimes lead them to commit the company to bad deals. Indeed, one consequence of the rise in sibling transference in leadership is that people are becoming increasingly critical of and ambivalent toward their bosses. People coming from nontraditional family cultures tend to evaluate bosses in terms of their value as leaders, which is very much the way children see team captains in the school yard.

Thus, the newer generation of employees shows less interest both in being mentored and in mentoring, and more interest in developing reciprocal relations in their networks of peers. Of course, these kinds of followers are hard to lead, for they often have an anarchic ideal of leadership.

But their attitudes do fit the needs of the many companies that are moving away from product-based business models to total-solution strategies. To avoid narrowing profit margins, companies like GE Energy are wrapping products in services that require employees to work interdependently with customers.

To boost profits, we explored the potential of doing business with large customers like the zinc-mining and smelting company Cominco, which proposed partnering with ABB rather than merely buying equipment to increase energy efficiency and decrease environmental pollution.

To pursue this opportunity, ABB had to pull people together from its different business units to work with engineers from Cominco. Newer generations of employees are susceptible to sibling transferences. They thrive in peer networks but can be hard to lead because they often have an anarchic ideal of leadership. Companies shifting from selling products to coproducing solutions recognize that they need to move away from traditional hierarchical models.

He describes it in terms of forming cross-boundary networks that require leaders who can build trusting relationships to facilitate decision making and create consensus. IBM, once the poster child of hierarchy, is taking the lead in this change. The CEO, Sam Palmisano, is trying to move the company away from a pure hierarchy as he organizes to integrate technology with business processes. There can be no clearer sign of the increased importance of sibling transferences.

Sibling transference has even made its debut in politics with the first baby boomer U. Although he had his critics, Clinton was never really expected to be a model of good behavior. Even the closest relationships combine objective reality with images and emotions carried over from the past, and there will never be any way around that. Followers need to do that on their own—and in some cases, it can require years of therapy with a highly trained analyst.

But you can safely guide them in the right direction by taking these three steps:. Get constant reality checks from family, outsiders, and business associates. Build a team of close colleagues to help keep your perceptions grounded in reality.

Make sure people know you. Share your foibles wisely. Make sure everyone knows the rules that you play by and that you want them to play by. Buy time for self-knowledge and mutual understanding by rallying people against an outside threat.

The classic path to self-knowledge is introspection—the approach favored in psychology. The trouble with introspection, of course, is that it can paralyze a leader, especially one with a strong obsessive bent. Endless self-analysis will prevent her from making quick decisions. Consequently, many of the most effective leaders rely on an outsider to provide an incisive reality check.

Other people turn to a longtime friend or associate, as British tycoon Lord James Hanson relied heavily on his U.

Increasingly, leaders also work with executive coaches to get an outside view. This effort is especially important when staff members view a leader through different transferential lenses. In order for employees to effectively cooperate with one another, they need to have the willingness to do so. A big part of earning their willingness to cooperate is by building morale. An effective leader can boost morale so their team can achieve optimal cooperation.

Subordinates look towards their leaders as an example of how to act. A good leader will show their subordinates the right way to behave and instill enthusiasm for the work they are doing. If leaders are humble and accountable, subordinates will also learn to behave this way.

Leaders can also provide team members with a good feel for the company culture in the process. Leaders can bring together team members in order to work towards a common goal.

This is achieved by coordinating the efforts of different team members and ensuring that they align their personal interests with organizational goals. Effective leaders are able to recognize the potentials of team members and will have the ability to select the right people for the right jobs. This will then allow leaders to trust the people they have appointed to get the job done correctly. Leaders are not only responsible for managing their teammates. They are also responsible for ensuring that their organizations have a positive public image.

As spokespersons, good leaders will be sure to present their organizations in a positive light when spending time in the public eye. By effectively performing the other functions that have been listed above, leaders can provide team members with a more positive and productive working environment. There are certainly people who are born with traits that help them to become great leaders. Having an outgoing personality can help people to become comfortable in the presence of others and allow them to take charge.

It is important to note, however, that many leadership skills can be developed over time. All you need is the right training and the dedication to succeed. Many organizations offer leadership training to their employees, while schools and universities often offer leadership programs as well. There are also many leadership courses offered online and in-person. This means that even if you feel that you do not naturally possess leadership qualities, it is never too late to learn them. Even if you are not currently in a leadership position, there are a number of ways that you can develop your leadership abilities.

Discipline is a trait that both leaders and employees need to possess. You can develop your discipline in a number of ways, such as by meeting work deadlines, sticking to your work commitments, and showing up at the office on time for work. To be a leader means being responsible for others as well as yourself. Asking to receive more responsibilities at work is a great way of preparing yourself for the increased sense of responsibility that you will have once you become a leader.

Also, by showing your ability to take on more responsibility, you can convince your employers that you would be a suitable choice for future job promotions. Sometimes, it is wise to listen to other people as a means of learning new things and improving the work environment.

A good leader is open to hearing feedback, criticism, and suggestions from their team members. This helps them to learn from their past errors. To be a good leader, you will need to start looking at the bigger picture. Think of the potential problems that could arise in different situations, and develop solutions to combat them in the case that they occur. Do your best to motivate and encourage teammates to succeed. This could be done by complimenting them on a job well done, and by providing them with encouragement and guidance whenever necessary.

The more you learn about new things, the better you can prepare for tackling new challenges that come your way in the future. Delegate some tasks to other people on your team. Not only will it be beneficial to give tasks to people who specialize in them, but it also helps to alleviate pressure from yourself. As a leader, it is important to remember that your team members will not get along all of the time. Be prepared to speak to team members privately in order to help resolve their problems.

Also, consider assigning team members to other roles if you cannot manage to resolve the conflict. Write down all of your work experiences so that you can reflect on them later. This will allow you to track your accomplishments as well as your failures. By doing so, you can determine which areas you are performing well in as well as where you need to improve.

In order to be enthusiastic about your leadership position, you will have to be passionate about what you do.