From Harish Jagtani’s Desk

If you are a good leader, you can hugely impact the success of your team, your company and yourself. To be an effective leader, you must first understand your strengths and weaknesses.

Successful leaders connect with their teams and keep an open communication line. They also encourage employee growth and development, and, at the same time, provide and receive feedback from everyone around.

Anyone can sit at an impressive desk and order around, but there is more to being an effective leader than doing just that. Good and effective leaders have a great impact on their team members they manage and their companies too. Employees who work under such leaders are happy, productive and connected to their organization. It also provides a ripple effect at the lower-most business line.

Here are some leadership strategies you can incorporate:

1. Engage in open communication

One of the most effective leadership elements is creating a straightforward and open communication line with your team members.

Your company and employees are a reflection of you. If you make ethical behavior as the most important value of your company, your team will follow that too. Experts say great leaders are good listeners too, and take time to understand and change their interactions or communication styles to adapt to situations and each team member’s preferences.

Showing active communication skills and transparency can build trust among your team and improve overall morale. And most of all, as a great leader, your communications should be genuine because, otherwise, it will show in the long run.

So, maintain a clear line of communication that inspires employees to respond easily. Also, keep your communication mode open and adjust according to each team member’s preference.

2. Encourage Growth

As an effective leader, you should set aside a small budget for the growth of employees. With ample options available to continue learning new skills or developing existing ones, you should encourage your employees to learn and infuse them into their work. In addition, you should invest emotionally too. Great leaders empower their employees to grow by giving them challenging opportunities and guiding them where and when required.

To inspire employees, you must encourage them to take up new challenges because employees like challenges and enjoy the satisfaction of overcoming them—be it a tough client or a hard situation. It would be better to let them take on such challenges.

As a leader, you should believe in your employees and offer them opportunities to grow. This would help you accomplish a lot more than you could ever imagine. So, delegate tasks as much as you can and encourage creativity. 

3. Connect with team members

A good leader requires mutual trust and understanding from his team members. And to get that, you have to connect with your team. Experts say that building a real, personal connection with your teammates is important for developing the trust necessary to build a culture of accountability and outstanding performance. With a great culture in place, your team can achieve a successful business, a cheerful team and a successful leader.

To build a connection with each of your team members, try to understand their interests, strengths, weaknesses and preferences. This will allow you to know their goals and motivations. Successful leaders encourage their teams to be free and add value as per their strengths. As a great leader, you should be able to recognize the strengths of each team member and allow them to be responsive and accountable. This will increase employee’s confidence and improve their performance.

4. Positive Attitude

As a leader, you may wish your team to operate smoothly at all times, but you are bound to run into occasional obstacles—it can be a minor issue or a major error. The way you handle a situation speaks volumes about your leadership skills.

The best way is to focus on the good under any circumstances. Try to look at the positive sides of an issue before trying to find out what is making it dissatisfying. If you look at the positive sides of a problem, you will see that people tend to react positively with each other too.

You will see that focusing on solutions can help teams maintain positive engagement. And a positive environment will help you to create a more engaged and productive workforce. So, by showing enthusiasm and confidence, you will have a good impact on the work environment.

Additionally, as an effective leader, you should know how to show others what is needed, rather than blaming at people or giving orders.