The role of leadership isn’t to boss employees or demand action. While disciplinary actions are sometimes needed, an effective leader communicates well and empowers team members with the tools and strategies to succeed.
As communication is crucial between your organization’s leaders and members, finding the right balance for leaders between dual-roles of friend and boss can be a challenge but vital to your organization and its members’ wellbeing.
Effective leadership is one that is built on a foundation of trust. The team member trusts their leadership team to provide the best opportunity for short and long-term success and advancement opportunities. Additionally, the faith shown upward is built on a belief that the leadership has the team member’s best interest as central to the organization.
It’s been said that employees “don’t quit a job but quit the boss.” The sign of ineffective leadership is an organization that has high turnover and low job satisfaction.
Often these are symptoms of inferior lines of communication within the organization. As leaders, you must first have open communication lines that share its ethos, purpose, and mission and how each contribution is valued.
By creating a system that establishes values, methods, and strategies for each member’s success, you’re crafting organizational success strategies. I’ve written before about the need leaders have to understand their employees’ realities and tools for their success to show care for the individuals.
Said in a different (and better way) by Maya Angelou, “people won’t remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”
Establish Systems of Support for Team Members
Every organization thrives or fails by the product offerings but, more importantly, by its culture.
The challenge then is for leadership to create a system within the organization for individuals to thrive in their roles, encourage teamwork between different aspects of the organization, empower individual members’ expertise, and promote creative solutions to challenges.
A secondary challenge is recognizing members as individuals, meaning recognizing they all have different motivations and challenges away from the workplace.
Establish a support network through your Human Resources department is an anesthetic way of approaching team members’ support, but offering a friendly ear may be the right initial way to get in touch with your team. Again, people won’t remember what you said, instead of how you made them feel.
Offering Personnel with Personal Resources
From financial worries to personal issues, offering a system that supports your employees is the best way to create a culture within your organization that shows your commitment toward the individual. Nobody likes to think of themselves as replaceable and expendable.
Whether it’s personal finances and concerns about bankruptcy or an employee may be dealing with their marriage struggles, offering support such as allowing more personal days is an excellent way to help your employees feel appreciated.
Another strategy is to offer resources like family law referrals, and medical references is a nice gesture.
Just be sure not to get too involved and cross some ethical or legal boundaries in the process. If employees are struggling in their personal lives, it will affect productivity at work, so having a resource available is an excellent tool to have in your organization.
The last thing you want is a distracted employee spending all their downtime at work going down the rabbit hole of researching family law lawyer marketing ads.
Providing them with a reference or recommended service helps them refocus their work time into productivity and shows the individual that they care about their overall wellbeing.
Influential Leaders Communicate WIth and Care About the Individual
As leaders, the obligation is to establish a culture where individuals are valued and recognized while systems are in place to empower, reward, and encourage performance. Having strategies for individuals to thrive in their roles and offer them resources to succeed away from their job is an excellent way to institute and nurture an environment.
A thriving ecosystem recognizes that all involved depend on each other while also recognizing the individual for who they are, both as a member and a complicated person. Effective leadership will communicate to both of these dualities within their company and offer support that fosters success for members in both aspects.