The following are the main attributes of an efficient business leader:
Good communication skills
Leaders should pose good communication skills, the skills will enable them pass information to their team members and receive feedback from the team. Teams are destined to perform certain tasks within the organization; the team leader has the role of ensuring the available resources have been organized in an optimal manner such that the attainment of corporate goals is fast, effective, and up to the required standard. Effective leader ensures that there is flow of information is in two way system, up-down and down-up; this ensures that the team members are given the chance to give their views regarding a certain phenomenon or decision being made by the organization.
Communication is important in an organization; there are different channels that can be used to pass information among staffs and to consumers of a company’s products. Efficient leaders have both listening and communication skills, they know how to convey information downwards to their subordinates and at the same time, they encourage employees to offer feedbacks or inputs on a certain issue. When leaders posses good communication skills, then they are able to create an environment that is favorable and creates motivation to human capital.
To have good communication, leaders should be in the forefront showing the subordinates in the way forwards as far as communication is concerned. Communication skills can be taught; it is an art that have similar attributes, which needs to be mastered and respected. Good business communications in relationships with either fellow staffs or customers is needed in order to prosper. Business success can be measured in terms of the practicability of business relationships that is directly proportional to the quality of communication. To facilitate innovation, efficiency and job satisfaction among staffs to the benefit of the company, leaders should devise appropriate methods of communications. Good communication leads to respect among the staffs and ensure that they would for the benefit of the company. Employees feel involved in the company’s processes and are willing to trade their intellectual property with the company
With good communication, leaders are able to conduct their main tasks within the team of leading, mentoring, coaching, counseling and training. In modern contemporary business environment, there is a growing demand for diversity training; companies sharpen the skill of their team through various training programs; diversity programs are aimed at shaping developing a better cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills, to have a double effect where the company benefit and employees are expected to benefits from such moves. To attain the above contemporary management needs, managers should be in the forefront enhancing effective communication strategies within their organization.
When a company has a pool of expertise, it increases the level of efficiency in production. Diversity training offers a chance to an organization to plan its training program to facilitate the development of a team. It goes further than normal training where it involves cultural diversity training, consideration of minority groups, gender factors and training on rights of employees. It aims at increasing respect for civil rights and inclusion of minority in a team. International human rights, discourages any discrimination in a working place when diversity training is adopted in a company, the management and junior appreciated the cultural diversity of different people and thus would not discriminate them.
Motivation
In team management, team leaders have the role of developing effective motivational strategies himself he should be a motivator. Depending with the team and the task that a team is undertaking, motivation may vary; an effective manager has the skills and the expertise to learn the environment surrounding him and probably come-up with the right approach to motivating the team. Motivation is the drive an individual has; it makes him persevere to attain set goals either in life or in an organization; it is a continuous process; attainment of one-goal leads to another need, the end is a beginning, no one factor of motivation can work all along, but a combination of different motivational system is required.
Effective leader should be able to read and understand the mood of the team as well as the dynamics that prevail, with the knowledge, and then he can be able to come up with such policies that facilitate motivation. One activity that must be endorsed in motivational management is effective communication in the team and the division of tasks; motivation is seen as the final products of all activities within the organization as well as the main gauge of how effective a leader is.
A motivation system/process is a combination of variable with the expected result as an increased enthusiasm and morale in once work. Leaders are mandated with this task; however, it spans more that human resources. The way an organization is structured, the kind of organization culture adopted, power distribution and employees relations are variable of motivations. Employees may be motivated by internal and external stimulus; when they are motivated; they get satisfied with their works and build a sense of loyalty to their employer. Satisfaction is the result of all human resources efforts to maintain their employees; when employees are satisfied, they are highly psyched and motivated, and they are less likely to change employees.
Motivation can be seen an altruistic approach to respecting human dignity, but more are the benefits that accrue to an organization. Research has shown that a well-motivated team leads to high employee productivity and an increased customer satisfaction. Job performance is considered as a function of motivation and ability;
Job performance = f (ability)*(motivation)
Ability can be facilitated through learning and experience; motivation is attained by putting into consideration all factors that can make employees enthusiastic and vigil in their works.
There may be a slight confusion about leaders role as motivators and motivation processes practiced by human resources managers; the human resources managers have the role of developing such systems that should be followed within the organization, their task is to ensure that domestic and international human capital management requirements have been complied. On the ground, there are the team leaders whose their main task is to create such an environment that creates favorable working conditions that can facilitate the enjoyment of policies set out but HRM. Still when on the ground, they advise the HRM on the policies that can best be applied in their teams to enhance good performance and motivation (Forster, 2005).
Leaders are people within an organization mandated with the task of using the available resources, both physical and human, effectively for the attainment of corporate goals, objectives, mission, and vision. The decisions made by leaders determine the success of an organization; they have the role of mentoring and creating a learning environment to enhance the performance of their teams.
Creativity
In modern competitive business world, small, medium and large-scale businesses need to develop new processes, products, strategies and paradigms so as they can remain afloat and have a competitive advantage. Creativity is defined as a continuous process of selecting, developing and commercialization new commodities, processes, approaches and business models. To be an effective leader and stand out among others, there is need for managers to be innovative, inventive and be strategist; what make a business stand out is what it offers extra than its competitor or which of its processes are better to the competitor. Creativity is in both products and processes; every company requires strategies to face its competitions, leaders need to make timely and effective strategies to focus the company.
Leadership is an art of managing and developing strategies to be followed in an organization: it thus can be crafted, developed and natured; there is need to always have unique, different, and effective and standing out policies within the team, they are developed through creativity. Ones level of leadership is not the maximum that he can attain; it can be developed further. The success of an organization depends on the quality of leaders; managerial decisions are the driving force of an organization. It is worth noting that the decisions are not effective unless other people within the organizations support them; in line with training and developing leaders, their subordinates should also be considered for the similar programs.
There are varying situations and challenges that befall an organization, to come up with the best approach; it calls for massive creativity and use of information by leaders, the challenges may range from staff issues, resource management issues, competitor issues or policy change issues. Leaders should underhand and manage them effectively; they are handled in their unique way calling for creativity in the side of the leader.
Creativity should not be limited to processes and products but should also involve the creativity in work force combination and blending; eemployees have been recognized as people who have nurture the talent and grow the ideas of their manager to come up with the innovative ways and invent other ways of doing business. Leaders have the role of shaping and guiding an organization to its path to success; to grow effective leaders and keep improving their skills, an organization need to have a well-structured organization that offers an environment of support to junior managers. The structure of well-organized organization has leadership at different levels, from the chief executive officer who can be seen as the entire organizational leader to micro teams leaders.
There is no one single time that it can be augured that a manager’s potential has been fully exploited; always something extra that can be developed, at different levels of management, there should be policies of mentorship by the top manager or the higher office leader. One of the major roles of a manager is to mentor and develop human resources in his organization; they need to understand the potential that their company has and devise mechanisms to develop and tap intellectualism in the human resources. However, leaders also need to be mentored for an effective development, when they are mentoring, they get a chance to learn other skills and get different experiences that improve their management skill. To get the best from employees, managers have the role of creating new pathways of exploration and creating the room for talent utilization and realization.
Leaders have the role of developing orchestrate teams from groups in an organization; their decisions and the way they exercise their leadership power determines the success of the team. One major attribute that leads to success of a team is effective communication method; team leaders have the role of developing an effective communication strategy. When a company has effective team’s chances of attainment of the corporate goals are high. An orchestrate team has a high team spirit and adopts the policy of teamwork.
Power
Power within an organization is crucial in determining the direction, and organization different aspects in the organization; leaders at different level are given some authority that they can operate within for the good of their teams and the organization in general. Leaders and leaders are the custodians of power in an organization, which is derived from the structure, maintained in an organization, despite this, it does not mean that they have the right decisions all the time. Head leaders need the assistance of other line managers to have their power exercise felt effectively across the organization.
To have an effective distribution of power, leaders should involve their juniors to come up with an elaborate way of doing things. The main role that power plays in an organization can be felt in decision making; at the initial, a lot of support of the decision is required to ensure that the whole organization or the departments concerned have adopted it effectively; those people with influential power should use it for the good of the organization.
The power they have should be used in the right way for the good of the organization; leaders should uphold high levels of discipline and act ethically for the benefit of their organization and not for themselves. Although power is vested in leaders, it can be delegated to other team members as a way of developing their leadership skills. When empowering and delegation, it is important to consider some aspects, nature of work delegated the level of criticality of the work, the experience, the attitude and behavior as well as the reliability of subordinate.
Delegation calls for the mentorship character of the leader to come out and take control, the results from a delegation and an empowerment exercise should be measurable. When a team has an effective delegation, mentorship and empowerment strategy, the behavior that the team adopts include good communication within the group, high cohesion and positive attitude within the group as well as having a group spirit. Delegation and empowerments are leadership motivational approaches that lead to a team with positive behavior towards the success of the team.
Vision
Leaders have the role of developing their organization’s operating strategies, mission, vision, and corporate objectives; other than developing them, they should be visionary themselves such that they can lead their organization to a destiny of success and achievements. Management and human resources are guided by their organizations Mission, vision and objectives; their attainment leads to satisfied stakeholders. An effective leader should not only understand what he is going through in the organization but should also have an understanding of the future pathway and the direction that the firm will take.
Leadership is a continuum process, leaders have the role of leading their teams to great heights, they should be seeing the future and have the strategies to move there. Leadership theories embraces contingency, which argues that behavior of leaders varies along continuum, the behavior should be seen to evolve for the good of the company. It states that participatory and involvement in decision making of an individual increase as one deviates from autocratic extremes. Four leaderships styles attributed to this model includes autocratic, consultative, persuasive and democratic; whichever the style that a leader adopts, it should be seen to be developing and adding value to the company.
To have a clear vision of the future, leaders have the role using the available information to predict what the future will look like then come-up with such programs that can mitigate any threat or loss in the future at the same time as they take advantage of opportunities and chances brought about by future market situations. Organizations are thought to follow an ongoing concept, this is to mean that they are expected to be in operation at least in the near future; leaders should thus have such policies and approaches or strategies that can drive their organizations to the stated destination. This calls for a visionary leader who has a clear mind on the set and direction that the firm is likely to move.
When the leader has vision, then he will be leading an organization that has a destined place, they have the stakeholders at heart where they feel their needs have been looked into by the company. It is important to note that leaders are given the role of managing an organization through the agency relationship, they are thus accountable to shareholders and other stakeholders, for effectiveness and ensuring that the shareholders are satisfied, leaders should have a vision for their company.
Visionary leaders are a source of motivation to their human resources, working force feel comfortable and willing to work when they know they have a good future with the organization. they will be motivated to come up with such policies that can drive the organization further and the net effect is a company with a common destiny and whose employees are working to the destiny. Vision is the driver of creativity, innovation and inventions, the their leadership attributes comes into play as managers look for a better way to reach their destiny, thus it is the vision that set the pace in an organization. An organization without a visionary leader is likely to be doomed.
How leaders should develop good communication within their organization
The importance of good communication in teams cannot be over emphasized; leaders have the role of taking such appropriate measures to ensure that their organizations have effective communication strategies and employees understand and make use of the systems for the good of the organization. When developing good communication system, the following are the areas that need to be looked into:
- Analyze the current situation and ensure that barriers to communication have been well established. When looking for the barriers, there are different ways of approaching it, which should include the human resources views and contributions. Leaders should look into how decisions are made, the accessibility of information, utility of information from credible sources, and the prevailing structures of communication.
- After realizing where weakness to effective communication are, the next important step is brain storming the root cause of the barriers, the root causes can open a door of opportunities and give room to the best approach to be utilized. Some of the common barriers to effective communication include organizational culture, leadership attitudes/styles, and the systems put in place.
- The above two stages are aimed at understanding why there is a communication breakdown, they will then offer the management a chance to address the areas that have been brought about
- Enacting policies that can facilitate good communication and sharing of information; although good communication can be needs some set of physical resources like telephones, mails, the internet and intranet among others, the main area that should be addressed is the culture and attitude that the people in the organization have. To change people’s perception the leaders has the role of building team once again with the objective of having good communication in mind.
To change people attitudes, perceptions and improve their communication skills, managers should embark on creating an environment of positive organizational culture, there should be a move from servant-lord relationship among staffs and management to that of leader-and team member one. There are policies that can enhance this, the first one should be training program that teach the leaders and their subordinate on the need to have good communication among them, they may be trained at different times but the focus should be to show them the need for a good communication between them.
After ensuring that everyone has gotten the need for good communication, then leaders should allocate the employees duties that may need them to work together and consult together. They should offer some challenging tasks that should be solved after discussion and consultation. When this has been attained, the people are starting to open u. with time, the management should be having some team building activities as they will improve the interaction and need to communicate with each other; managers and subordinate staffs should support the program.
Another very important management method that can improve communication is management by walking around; when using this method, management seek to interact with their staffs and know what are the issues they are facing; with time he gets to realize how they can improve the communication. Other than in office relationships, leaders should engage in social activities that face their human resources, for example supporting in weddings, bereavements and sports, this breaks tension and improves communication.
How to develop Motivation in teams
To develop motivation in team is one of the challenging functions that a manager has to do; motivation is the result of other team management’s approaches and policies implemented in the company, it is not limited to the team but has an influence from the overall business or organization. To garner more than self-interest to succeed in human workforce, organizations should develop appropriate policies of motivation, they start by respecting of human resources labor and human rights. Leaders should ensure that the rights of their human resources have been respected when referring to rights; it involves international and domestic labor rights, as well in-house organizational right.
HRM have a critical in ensuring that the staffs rights have been respected and adhered to, the rights include the right of equality, duty reporting time compensation, trainings, mentorship and other human resources policies for facilitating delivery of appropriate results. With a human capital with the right attitude and approach to work, then team leaders comes into play. They need to understand the personalities of their team members, their skills, their motivators as well as what can trigger high performance in them.
With the diverse team that human resources have looked into their issues, leaders should aim at blending the skills and personalities to create an effective successful team. The leaders should start with having clear and effective communication systems that can facilitate sharing of ideas and information, the environment should be relaxed enough to facilitate the sharing of all members and the development of a sense of belonging and accountability.
Leaders should liaise with the human resources management to enhance a learning experience; employees from organizations that have good learning experiences are highly motivated and they have the will to develop themselves through learning process. Leaders in collaboration of human resources has the role of creating numerous training programs as demanded by the organization; team leaders has the role of advising the human resources on the trainings they will facilitate, this will enhance the growth of learning spirit in the organization. To have an environment favorable for learning, leaders must create a positive organizational culture that rewards success and efforts of an employee.
When employees have invented or innovated something, the management should recognize them; this will motivate them learn more and innovate others. Within teams, it is area that employees learn a lot amongst and from each other, leaders have the role of developing an orchestrate team that embraces team spirit. This will enhance knowledge and experience sharing that leads to learning of new traits and tactics by employees. The leader should be delegating duties and power effectively to create an urge in his team members to learn and improve their skills.
An effective leader who have motivational policies enacted well is seen as a team member by other staffs and they respect him not fear; incase of any issue, they feel comfortable to ask and contribute to debates and decision making, the end result is an organization with an improved production driven by staffs contribution.
How leaders should nature Vision
Vision and mission guide leaders, they have the task of propagating their organization to certain direction that when well gone, an organization can attain its corporate goals and objectives. The initial stage that leaders role in creating a vision for a company is seen is when they are looking for the way forward for their organization; generally an organization has a task or objective that it looks forward at meeting, it is the vision of the organization. To have a vision, managers can use the following approach:
Understand the company’s philosophy
Leaders should start by understanding the philosophy of their organization; by philosophy we mean that understanding what the organization has promised the stakeholders, what policies are there and the idea that the founders of the business hand.
With the ideas, which may be in the form of a historical analysis or corporate structure, the manager should bend back and see the attainment and misfortunes that the business has had in the past. Past failures should be on focus to facilitate managers know the areas that they need not to venture into as it had injured the organization in the past.
Current business analysis
The direction and the focus that a business has currently should be the next area of concern to managers; they should understand what is going on in the organization, the policies enacted, the strategies and the successes that the business is currently having. On the other hand, the leader should look into the shortcomings facing the organization currently. The leader should not limit himself with his or her organization alone but should consider what other organizations; especially those in the same line of business are going through.
Research and development
The stage managers need to use information collected on different sectors; information is used to forecast what the organization can attain in the future as well as predicting the future with a certain level of precision. Although the future is always unknown, when appropriate use of information collection, analysis, interpolation and forecasting is used, then manager can predict the future with a level of precision.
When the direction and the intended destiny have been attained, then the leaders are able to come up with the best approach and have vision for the future. Leaders should not keep the vision to them, they should share it with other leaders when taking care that the information does not fall in the hand of competitors. Other leaders and top management can have improvements and inputs in the system to make the vision clearer and better (Forster, 2005).
References
Forster, N. (2005). Maximum performance: a practical guide to leading and managing people at work. Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing.