4 ½ Essential Traits for Social Impact Leaders
“Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50 percent of your time in leading yourself–your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20 percent leading those with authority over you and 15 percent leading your peers.” –Dee Hock
A recent LinkedIn report states that 85% of employees feel their training is inadequate and leaves them unprepared for leadership and management roles. How do organizations improve this statistic and better support the development of leaders and their teams?
Suppose that you could build the ideal leader. What attributes would you want to blend together to attain your ultimate leader? Admittedly, there may be many characteristics that we’d like to include, but let’s focus on the top four attributes that make up an effective and impactful leader.
The four critical elements of a dynamic leader are 1) Emotional Intelligence, 2) Openness, 3) Transparency, and 4) Dependability.
Imagine these elements coming together into the personification of your flawless leader. Now that you have your model leader ask yourself what training topics are important for developing all the leaders in your organization into your model leader?
Let’s explore the topic areas that will create your open, transparent, dependable, and emotionally intelligent leader that you seek.
Servant Leadership
The philosophy behind servant leadership is to focus on supporting your direct reports. A traditional leader focuses on recognizing obstacles to the organization’s success, but a servant leader identifies barriers to their direct report’s success. This approach is vital for building high-performing teams because it establishes a nurturing environment where everyone feels heard, respected, and appreciated.
Servant leaders see leadership as less of a position or rank and more as an opportunity to serve and support others. They seek to drive engagement through sharing power and measure success by the growth and development of the team. This type of leadership understands that it’s about the team, not them.
Empathy
Leaders who display low emotional intelligence can cause many difficulties for their team and the organization. Lack of empathy erodes trust by hindering communication and inaccurately perceiving how others are feeling.
Empathetic leaders have a high degree of emotional intelligence (EQ). They know how to manage their emotions and feel confident maneuvering through challenging staff situations. Emotional intelligence requires leaders to be aware of their feelings and create the mental space needed to respond with caring intention rather than reacting to a situation without thinking. By practicing empathy, the leader can reduce their unconscious bias and see the issue from the employee’s point of view. Training managers to embrace and practice the core elements of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management will develop your organization’s compassionate and empathetic leaders to thrive.
Delegation
Managers must have the skills and mindset to delegate effectively. Even though managers’ work scope is ever-expanding, delegating even the most minor tasks seems risky for many leaders. Give your managers the tools for effective delegation by providing training on the topics of setting expectations, decision-making, prioritizing, and time management. Effective managers talk with their team about their priorities. They seek out feedback from their team and direct reports. It’s not uncommon for teams to experience a disconnect between the organization’s priorities and the experience of the individual contributor. By creating an environment that fosters and encourages frequent open dialogue, managers can mitigate any questions or confusion from the team.
Leaders have to manage their team effectively without falling into micromanaging. Our guidance on effective delegation recommends managers explain the context of assignments (the why) instead of providing instructions on how the task is to be completed. Like any new skill, delegation takes practice to become proficient. To support this new behavior better, offer implementation coaching to facilitate faster and more effective adoption.
Communication
Be present. Open door policies only work if managers are visible and accessible. Remote work hybrid teams have added a layer of complexity for managers. So, it’s essential to train managers to understand and use multiple communication channels. Encourage them to provide affirming or adjusting feedback to their direct reports frequently. Additionally, organizations with virtual or hybrid teams should invest in training that improves virtual communication. One of the best methods for managers to inspire loyalty from their teams during change is to be transparent by being active on group chat platforms and providing regular real-time updates.
Active Listening
Though this skill is essential, it’s strongly connected to communication. Effective communication cannot happen without listening. For that reason, we’ll explore this ½ trait for this post. Active listening is vital for managers to master because it allows their direct reports to feel valued by having their voices heard. Managers can significantly reduce ambiguity and misunderstandings by developing their summarizing and paraphrasing skills. Also, training on understanding and interpreting body language can evolve a manager’s skills from listening to respond to listening to understand. These traits take time to develop proficiency, so building in practice opportunities and support will help managers become active listeners more quickly.
