Leadership Clarity
Once upon a time, a management professor always stressed to his students that one responsibility of a leader was to control. The implication was that leaders solved every problem, wore every hat, and stayed deeply involved in all aspects of their business or department. In today’s complex and ever-changing world, however, that’s a prescription for merely working harder and facing burnout.
It’s time to look at a new approach that enables sustainable growth and allows organizations and their leaders to move forward with focus and purpose. That approach is leadership clarity.
Leadership clarity provides a competitive advantage. It’s about doing what matters most, building leaders at every level, and supporting people versus exhausting them. Members of Bizwomen Leadership Council consider the following as imperatives to leading with clarity.
Create more leaders. By empowering your team with leadership skills of their own, you develop leadership capacity and increase empathy, autonomy and accountability, all while reducing burnout and turnover and increasing employee engagement.
This starts by being a positive role model to your team and living the organization’s values. Provide your opportunities to be exposed to other parts of the organization and encourage them to be curious and decisive.
Letting go. In other words, intentional delegation of those tasks that drain you. Delegation is often viewed as one of the most important management skills. Letting go, especially of those things you enjoy doing, may be hard but it not only frees up your time for other duties, it also spreads the knowledge across the organization.
Delegation is also a way of developing team members by allowing them to experience something new. Handing work off to others supports creating new leaders while giving you a renewed focus.
Develop an enterprise focus. To have greater influence as a leader requires the ability to see with a wide-angle lens to gain an understanding of the needs of the broader organization.
Developing strong, collaborative relationships with peers across the organization is so important because no one department or business unit stands alone. Leaders can no longer assume their technical skills in one functional area will ensure success.
Simplification. Gaining an understanding of how work is accomplished, streamlining processes and eliminating low- or no-value tasks enables teams to be focused, efficient and aligned.
Too often tasks continue being performed without a clear understanding of why. Have team members analyze each task by asking: 1) If it’s not performed, what effect will it have? 2) How many people or projects will it affect? 3) Are other tasks dependent on it? 4) Does it add value? Eliminating unnecessary tasks helps prepare for the final leadership clarity imperative.
Scale for growth. Working toward new goals and initiatives can be exciting and draining at the same time. Allow team members to be a part of it by allocating time for them to devote to these initiatives without expecting them to stack it on top of their normal daily duties.
The common theme of leadership clarity is that it creates capacity for an organization, not more work and not more control. It’s not doing everything. Rather it’s doing the right things. Leadership clarity is intentional and allows organizations and leaders to grow without sacrificing people along the way.