Which of the following is the best description of the new role of leaders in organizations?

Small Business Basics: Positive Leadership Roles

Small businesses with positive leadership roles are more likely to have effective management, rewarding cultures and productive teams.  Although some individuals have natural talent and excellent leadership skills, all business owners and managers can learn to become better leaders. In order to drive the success of your business, make sure you fulfill the following critical roles of a leader.

Provide a Vision

Providing a vision for the team is the single most important role of the small business owner.  Employees cannot be expected to participate in a common effort if they don’t know the goals of the business.  When team members understand the vision and goals, they are more focused and understand how their individual role helps to drive the success of the business.

Establish Effective Organizational Structure and Communication Protocols

Set up a clearly defined organizational structure which includes an organizational chart outlining the chain of command and protocols for effective communication.  Employees need to understand who they report to when they have questions or concerns.  To facilitate effective communication and efficiency, develop communication protocols.  It can be helpful to use multiple channels like email and teams chat groups to augment one-on-one communication and staff meeting interactions.  The type of communication method utilized should be appropriate for the content of the message.  Memos are fine to convey announcements and information on minor issues.  Face-to-face meetings are necessary to discuss important issues or convey information that is sensitive or may result in questions.

Be an Effective Role Model

Demonstrate the behavior desired from the rest of the team. Business owners that display outbursts of anger, make snap decisions with no regard to the potential outcome for the staff, demonstrate uncaring attitudes, show favoritism for some employees, withhold information from the staff, procrastinate on important decisions, tolerate lack of accountability, demonstrate inconsistencies in client service or fail to listen to their employees will not be as respected by the team and likely will not be as successful in achieving their business goals.

Inspire and Motivate

One definition of leadership is to “inspire, influence and guide others to participate in a common effort.”  Good leaders don’t just bark orders or hand out directives with no explanation.  Instead, they use effective communication and motivation techniques to facilitate action by their teams.  Leaders that inspire and motivate their teams solicit input from employees, keep team members informed, give timely and specific feedback regarding job performance, ensure training needs are met and hold employees accountable.

Delegate and Empower

Good leaders surround themselves with the right people in the right jobs.  This facilitates being able to lead rather than manage.  A small business owner can begin the process of effective delegation and empowerment with their management level team. As a leader, you can focus on the strategic vision of your business. When you’re able to delegate tasks to those who are best aligned to that specific skillset, you’re creating an environment conducive to learning and growth.

Effective Time Management

Part of being an effective leader includes time management.  If you spend most of your time fielding complaints and reacting to problems, this may be a sign that you are not delegating effectively or empowering team members.  Explore resources on time management and create action steps to improve. Some attributes of efficient time management include eliminating distractions, prioritizing tasks with a to-do list, holding effective meetings, including breaks to re-fuel your brain and body and outsourcing tasks that others can help with.

Small businesses require great leadership. As a small business owner, focus on these best practices to improve employee retention and drive long-term success. Set the right tone with your actions and lead by example – your business will be better for it.

• LEADING EFFECTIVELY ARTICLE

The best leaders consistently possess these 10 essential leadership qualities.

Leaders shape our nations, communities, and organizations.

We need good leaders to help guide us and make the essential large-scale decisions that keep the world moving.

Our society is usually quick to identify a bad leader, but how can you identify a good one? What would most people say makes a good leader?

The Characteristics & Qualities of a Good Leader

Based upon our decades of research, we’ve found that the best leaders consistently possess these 10 essential leadership qualities:

What Good Leadership Looks Like: 10 Essential Leadership Traits

1. Integrity
2. Delegation
3. Communication
4. Self-Awareness
5. Gratitude
6. Learning Agility
7. Influence
8. Empathy
9. Courage
10. Respect

Download a visual summary of these essential characteristics of a good leader in PDF format to keep this list at your fingertips as a reminder.

Integrity

The importance of integrity should be obvious. Though it may not necessarily be a metric in employee evaluations, integrity is an essential leadership trait for the individual and the organization. It’s especially important for top-level executives who are charting the organization’s course and making countless other significant decisions. Our research has found that integrity may actually be a potential blind spot for organizations, so make sure your organization reinforces the importance of honesty and integrity to leaders at various levels.

Delegation

Delegating is one of the core responsibilities of a leader, but it can be tricky to delegate effectively. The goal isn’t just to free yourself up — it’s also to enable your direct reports to grow, facilitate teamwork, provide autonomy, and lead to better decision-making. The best leaders build trust in the workplace and on their teams through effective delegation.

Communication

Effective leadership and effective communication are intertwined. The best leaders are skilled communicators who are able to communicate in a variety of ways, from transmitting information to inspiring others to coaching direct reports. And you must be able to listen to, and communicate with, a wide range of people across roles, geographies, social identities, and more. The quality and effectiveness of communication among leaders across your organization directly affects the success of your business strategy, too. Learn how effective communication and better conversations can actually improve your organizational culture.

Self-Awareness

While this is a more inwardly focused trait, self-awareness and humility are paramount for leadership. The better you understand yourself and recognize your own strengths and weaknesses, the more effective you can be as a leader. Do you know how other people view you or how you show up at work? Take the time to learn about the 4 aspects of self-awareness and how to strengthen each component.

Gratitude

Being thankful can lead to higher self-esteem, reduced depression and anxiety, and better sleep. Gratitude can even make you a better leader. Yet few people regularly say “thank you” in work settings, even though most people say they’d be willing to work harder for an appreciative boss. The best leaders know how to show gratitude in the workplace.

Learning Agility

Learning agility is the ability to know what to do when you don’t know what to do. If you’re a “quick study” or are able to excel in unfamiliar circumstances, you might already be learning agile. But anybody can foster and increase learning agility through practice, experience, and effort. After all, great leaders are really great learners.

Influence

For some people, “influence” feels like a dirty word. But being able to convince people through the influencing tactics of logical, emotional, or cooperative appeals is an important trait of inspiring, effective leaders. Influence is quite different from manipulation, and it needs to be done authentically and transparently. It requires emotional intelligence and trust. Learn more about how effective influencing can be a game-changer.

Empathy

Empathy is correlated with job performance and is a critical part of emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness. If you show more inclusive leadership and empathetic behaviors toward your direct reports, our research shows you’re more likely to be viewed as a better performer by your boss. Plus, empathy and inclusion are imperatives for improving workplace conditions for those around you.

Courage

It can be hard to speak up at work, whether you want to voice a new idea, provide feedback to a direct report, or flag a concern for someone above you. That’s part of the reason courage is a key trait of good leaders. Rather than avoiding problems or allowing conflicts to fester, having courage enables leaders to step up and move things in the right direction. A workplace with high levels of psychological safety and strong conversational skills across the organization will foster a coaching culture that supports courage and truth-telling.

Respect

Treating people with respect on a daily basis is one of the most important things a leader can do. It will ease tensions and conflict, create trust, and improve effectiveness. Creating a culture of respect is about more than the absence of disrespect. Respectfulness can be shown in many different ways, but it often starts with simply being a good listener who truly seeks to understand the perspectives of others.

Develop the Qualities of a Good Leader

Download an action guide and summary of the characteristics of a good leader so you always have a visual reminder of this at your fingertips. 

Putting It All Together: What Good Leadership Looks Like

While successful leaders may exhibit these 10 leadership qualities to varying degrees, all good leaders leverage at least some of these characteristics.

Together, they make up the backbone of strong, effective, good leadership — across organizations, industries, and continents. Without these qualities, true leadership is impossible.

The Characteristics of a Good Leader Can Be Developed: 3 Core Beliefs

At the Center for Creative Leadership, we’ve been researching the qualities of a good leader and the role of leadership for over 5 decades. Here are some of our core beliefs about effective leadership.

Good Leaders Are Made, Not Born.

First, we believe that leaders are made, not born. Put another way, leadership is a skill that can be developed. Good leaders are molded through experience, continued study, and adaptation. So you can strengthen any of these 10 characteristics of a good leader, if you’re open to growth and you put in the time and effort toward self-improvement. Similarly, organizations can help their people hone these leadership qualities through intentionally using leadership experiences to fuel development.

Good Leadership Isn’t About Just One Individual.

It’s also essential to realize that leadership is a social process. It’s less about a strong or charismatic individual, and more about a group of people working collectively to achieve results together. If you demonstrate several of the characteristics of a good leader, but fail to grasp this key point, chances are you won’t get very far on your own. You may be well-liked and respected, but it will be challenging to accomplish team or organizational goals. We like to say that the outcomes of leadership are about creating direction, alignment, and commitment within a group.

Good Leadership Never Stops.

Also, leadership isn’t a destination, it’s a journey — it’s something that you’ll have to work at regularly throughout your career, regardless of what level you reach in your organization. Different teams, projects, and situations will provide different challenges and require different leadership competencies to succeed. So you will need to be able to continue to apply these leadership characteristics in different ways throughout your career. Just keep learning and growing, and you’ll be an agile learner with a long career.

How to Develop the Qualities of a Good Leader

Organizations can strengthen leadership qualities and foster deeper levels of engagement at work through providing a variety of on-the-job learning experiences, mentoring, and formal development opportunities. We have many award-winning leadership solutions and successful partnerships with clients around the world, and we’d be honored to work with your organization as well.

But individuals don’t have to wait to begin strengthening these characteristics of a good leader within themselves.

You can start today, and never miss a single one of our tips to be a good leader — just subscribe to our newsletters to get our research-based insights, webinars, and tips on leading effectively delivered straight to your inbox.

And if you decide you want to work proactively on developing your leadership characteristics and skills to become a better leader, here’s how to convince your boss to make an investment in you and your future.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Start building the qualities of a good leader In yourself and on your team. Download our action guide below, or explore  our flagship Leadership Development Program (LDP)®, the longest-running leadership development program of its kind in the world.

Download the Characteristics of a Good Leader Now

Keep these qualities of a good leader top of mind in the future: download our action guide summary of this article as a visual reminder of the leadership qualities to nurture in yourself, on your team, and at your organization in the future.

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Leading Effectively Staff

This article was written by our Leading Effectively staff, who analyze our decades of pioneering, expert research and experiences in the field to share content that will help leaders at every level. Subscribe to our emails to get the latest research-based leadership articles and insights sent straight to your inbox.

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