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In this article, Imogen Hall from Factorial looks at the top behaviours of leaders and how you can implement them in your daily work.
It’s well known that effective leaders are essential to business success. Leaders guide your business to success with every decision they make, not matter how small. But what exactly are the qualities of an effective leader? And more so, how do they behave in the workplace? In this article, we look at the top behaviours of leaders and how you can implement them in your daily work.
A good leader will guide, inspire, and support their team in achieving the business’s objectives. Effective leaders behave in ways that foster a positive organisational culture. They set the tone for how their team operates, delivers and grows through the following leadership skills and behaviours:
Practising Good Communication
Effective leaders will communicate clearly and consistently. They often practice active listening, which involves paying attention to both non-verbal cues and what is said, to ensure they understand the communication shared with them. They also invest time in providing positive and constructive feedback to ensure their team members feel both informed and heard.
Sharing Their Vision
Effective leaders think strategically and cultivate an inspiring, realistic vision of what they want their team to achieve. They utilise their communication skills to articulate and share that vision in a collaborative approach that ensures team members understand and support the goals, resulting in more motivated and engaged employees. By thinking ahead to anticipate any challenges, effective managers encourage employees to trust the senior leadership.
Using Their Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is a key behaviour of leaders. It involves bringing self-awareness and honesty to discussions, as well as being aware of how others are feeling (empathy) and what they might need in the moment (compassion). Effective leaders work with an understanding of their own emotions and those of others to help manage difficult situations, resulting in strong relationships that provide a solid framework for teams to deliver their objectives.
Taking Accountability and Making Decisions
An example of good leaders is taking accountability. Someone who is assertive and confident in their own abilities to make decisions. And if take accountability for their results whether bad or good. They lead by example by consulting as necessary, evaluating options, making fair and informed decisions promptly, and then taking responsibility for them by acknowledging mistakes and communicating what they have learnt as a result. This honest and open approach to leadership is often influential in inspiring team members to exceed expectations.
Supporting Others
Being able to bring a coaching mindset to their leadership is a key trait of effective leaders. Working with their team to create a collaborative approach, encouraging everyone to learn from each other and from any successes or mistakes they make, and providing consistent guidance are all ways effective leaders support the whole team in producing high-quality work. Many effective leaders also utilise contingent rewards, where staff receive compensation— financial or otherwise— for meeting specific requirements, thereby creating growth opportunities while motivating the team.
Problem-Solving Focus
An essential leadership behaviour is being able to problem-solve. Leaders who have a flexible mindset and can adapt quickly to new circumstances are what keep companies from sinking. They are able to remain calm and assess the situation to make the best informed decision possible. In addition, leaders who are quick to find solutions are mitigate any office hysteria and support their teams by delivering solutions in the face of challenging problems.
Exercising Organisational Skills
Being able to pay attention to detail, manage their own time well, and plan are all essential behaviours for effective leaders. Moreover, leaders need to know when to delegate, how to prioritise and focus their own work (+ their team) on the right areas to support business growth. Organisational skills are crucial behaviours to have as a leader.
Leaders who demonstrate these behaviours of effective leadership impact their organisations in the following ways:
There is a positive culture where individuals are respected, trusted and included to do their best work.
Employees are more engaged and, therefore, more motivated to go the extra mile and also to remain employed by the company.
Performance and productivity improve through clear goals, constructive feedback and recognition programmes.
Likewise, there is a greater drive for innovation and improvement that leads to better problem-solving and helps the company meet its objectives.
If you are focused on becoming an effective leader and want to demonstrate the behaviours of effective leaders that we listed earlier, the best way to do this is to think and reflect on how you act, communicate, and influence others in your workplace daily.
Being open to feedback and actively asking people to share their thoughts is a good starting point for your journey to developing leadership behaviours. The next step is to refine your communication style and ensure that you are actively listening to people, allowing you to respond calmly rather than react. Spending time reflecting on how you have responded to challenging situations and what you learn about yourself as a result is essential to developing your emotional intelligence.
When you combine these different approaches, you demonstrate respect, professionalism and integrity and, crucially, you model the standards you expect from others.
The following are three different examples of good leadership behaviours in action:
Receiving Constructive Feedback
A team member raises a concern with a specific aspect of a high-stakes project, which is on a tight deadline.
The effective leader listens to what is being said and starts to feel angry and defensive that there are questions at this stage in the game. They note how they are feeling and decide to acknowledge the feedback, telling the employee that they need some time to think about the issues raised. The leader then follows up with the team member a few hours later when they can address each of the concerns more calmly.
Dealing With Conflict
Two team members are in disagreement with each other and have become increasingly unprofessional in their interactions.
An effective leader demonstrates empathy and compassion by spending time with each team member to understand what is happening from their perspective, ensuring they have a complete understanding of the whole picture by seeking additional information as needed. They will create a solution that is fair and transparent, to which both parties can agree.
Taking Accountability
Delays in decision-making lead to the team missing a key project deadline.
Instead of blaming others for the mistake, the effective leader communicates to the whole team that errors have led to this outcome, openly takes responsibility for their role in the situation, and organises a review meeting where everyone can contribute to creating a team-wide understanding of what went wrong.
We’ve surveyed 1,000 managers across Europe to understand their daily struggles that hold them back from being effective leaders. Download our free report to learn how to save time and eliminate your manual work so you can focus on managing your team. Because we all know that being a leader is so much more than the title, it also requires core leadership behaviours including good communication and problem-solving abilities. Read our report to see our solutions that help managers achieve more with less.
Using a business management software like Factorial can provide leaders with essential support, enabling them to become more effective leaders. Human resources information systems offer the following functions:
Automation of many of the administrative tasks involved in managing people, such as approving leave, scheduling performance reviews and payroll. This frees up time for leaders to focus on their strategic work.
Built-in tools that support goal-setting and tracking, training and development, and the performance review process. This creates a culture of accountability, feedback and learning.
Access to real-time data providing insights into employee engagement, turnover and performance. This enables leaders to gain a deeper understanding of trends and issues within their workforce, allowing them to prioritise who and what receives their attention.
Provide communication channels and features that allow teams to celebrate their peers’ achievements. This creates a positive culture where teams feel connected and recognised.
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