How to Succeed As A Leader [4 Leadership Lessons]

I recently heard Candace McGraw, CEO of the Cincinnati-Kentucky International Airport, speak at a Business Networking event. As she referenced her career growth and achievements, four competencies stood out for me as contributing to her success as a leader:

1) Think Critically

The Conference BoardMs. McGraw shared that her ability to look at an issue in several ways, otherwise called analytical thinking, has created opportunities for success at every stage of her career. The Conference Board, a non-profit, independent organization that conducts research on business and leadership issues, identifies Master Strategist as an important leadership competency in the 21st Century. Today’s business with uncharted territories, unclear expectations, fickle customer needs and increased technological advances demands greater cognitive complexity. This requires superior strategic thinking combined with an ability to make high-quality decisions in a shorter time to stay competitive.

What can you personally do daily to strengthen your skills in analysis and critical thinking?

  • Respectfully, ask your colleagues what is possible and achievable; ask people about one problem they would like to solve, ask individuals and teams to engage in “why not?” scenarios.
  • Purposefully, invite solicited and unsolicited feedback from all parts of your organization –pick a mistake and showcase learning, resiliency and potential growth from that experience.
  • Tactically, identify future trends that will shape your business and dedicate time NOW to discuss and create innovative ideas that will stop the future pain.

2) Find and Mentor “Right-Fit” Talent

In her message, Ms. McGraw applauded her team and shared stories about how leading with an exceptionally talented team has paid off for her. The Conference Board identifies Talent Identifier as another leadership prerequisite to staying ahead of the game today. The workforce today is techno-savvy, globally connected, geographically dispersed and culturally diverse. Albert Einstein once said:

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

This statement is true for people development too. Ignoring employee personal and professional development can come at a high and almost irreversible cost to a company. With training dollars and time at a premium in organizations, what questions must be asked to ensure that each employee is aggressively innovating, executing results beyond their functional areas and increasing market share?

What can you personally do daily to identify and empower your talented people?

  • How is personal and professional growth defined, understood and aligned (by you and your team) to your organizational mission and future needs?  Describe one of your talent development efforts with lowest cost and maximum impact.
  • What skills, individual or team might be invisible to your eye? Would you be able to identify why a certain project completed itself with little supervision from you?
  • What talent matrix might be useful for you to identify the current state of talent and flexibility in defining roles for maximum and sustainable business impact?

3) Embrace Change

The ability to embrace change has helped Ms. McGraw, “pick up and soldier on.” A third leadership competency, Change Manager on the Conference Board list suggests accountability, while calling for transparency in the face of uncertainty and  commanding high performance in the midst of disruption. Even the most resilient person balks in face of change because even a very small shift in routine is ALWAYS chaotic and unsettling. Ignoring the reality of how poorly prepared people can be when faced with change suggests that leadership must stay a step ahead, make this leap at a larger scale and build a culture of resiliency that permeates the very fabric of organizational cloth.

What can you personally do to build and strengthen resiliency and adaptability?

  • What structures help employees create robust and highly collaborative networks based on trust, common purpose and accountability?
  • If an outsider were to describe your employees, how would they do so?  Would they say that the majority of your employees are curious learners, have a sense of humor, are realistically optimistic, possess high self-awareness and are willing to ask and receive help easily?
  • How is risk taking, if at all, rewarded? And, how are mistakes handled?

4) Build Relationships

It wasn’t a surprise to hear Ms. McGraw talk about being a Relationship Builder, the fourth competency that completes the the Conference Board list. Clearly what use is a leader’s vision when there is no buy-in? As human beings, we crave for both, an emotional connection and a rational explanation for why we must give our best talent and commitment to a cause. That decision to lead and follow very often comes from shared conversations and countless hours of listening carefully to build trust and accountability within relationships. Unless leadership can define and gather shared aspirations, the best that can happen is business as usual, not extraordinary transformation by people unleashing in full force their collective potential.

What can you personally do to build and strengthen your relationships?

  • What have you done recently to reach out and connect in a caring, compassionate way? Why must it matter to you?
  • How does your work environment shape and reinforce everyone’s contributions in a way that each person is noticed and appreciated? What formal and informal ways are used to recognize and applaud others?
  • What behaviors show that you lead with clear and uncompromising clarity, communicate powerful expectations with defined metrics and display trustworthiness in every interaction?

Master Strategist. Talent Identifier. Change Manager. Relationship Builder. What do you think? How have you seen these traits help you make connections, between your past successes, present challenges and future opportunities?

I’d like to hear your stories!

Sunitha Narayanan

Sunitha Narayanan is a certified career coach with a passion for connecting people and their talents to life and work opportunities. She is a co-active coach, empowering her clients to believe in their dreams, set actionable goals and actively create joy in their work lives. She is with OI Partners Promark Company, a firm that offers executive coaching, leadership development and outplacement services. Learn about her interests by visiting her LinkedIn profile.

Filed Under: Networking, Recruitment Tagged With: , , ,

What Social Media Teaches Us About Leadership

social media leadership

I am really struck at the moment with how frequently leadership is cried out for in the media. According to the media, we are looking for leaders in our political worlds (now there’s a vain hope!), in our economic world (wherever that is!) and in our banking and fiscal management world (God help us all!). What really makes me curious is – what do we mean by this call for leadership?

What are we looking for in our leaders?

What do we actually want our leaders to do?

Because of the nature of my work I spend a lot of time around leaders in business so it is a subject that fascinates me.

Working with management teams in a wide variety of industries it does intrigue me that the perception of what good leadership looks like varies greatly.

For some, it is the General Patton style with all the charisma, rhetoric and powerful personality that goes with it.

For others it is the Mother Teresa approach, who leads by example and who she is. But, hey, the two are pretty different!

So, what has this got to do with social media?

Well, while this thought process was creeping around my brain, I was studying quite a bit about social media and the key elements in building a profile in that world.

Distilling quite a bit from various experts the general consensus is that the key ingredients are:

  • Build relationships
  • Share selflessly
  • Listen to the conversation
  • Engage with your audience.

In truth you can encapsulate it all in “building relationships”.

You can only build long lasting relationships if you do share selflessly, are a good listener and you continuously engage!

That was when I had my Eureka moment about the connection between leadership and social media, and how we must apply the same principles in both areas of our world.

You see leadership is not about the rhetoric, the eloquent speeches that can be quoted endlessly, the cries to battle that bring tears to the eyes or the charismatic personality.

When we cry out for leadership we are looking for someone that we can trust, someone that we can have a relationship with, someone who will listen to us and someone I believe is looking out for me.

So, what does this mean for me, for you, for all of us in our leadership roles?

It matters not whether we lead one person, 100 or 10,000 – the principle is exactly the same.

We must build relationships, share selflessly, listen to the conversation and engage with our audience.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well it isn’t and it takes time, effort and consistency.

When I was being trained as a manager was much time spent on how to build real relationships? Not at all! It was all about setting objectives and measuring results – that was the order of the day. Sadly, it still is in many quarters.

That is not enough anymore. The people we lead are not just machines who churn out completed objectives – they are people with lives, dreams, aspirations, and problems!

If we are to lead these people we must understand all there is about them? How much time have we spent building that knowledge?

That’s right, building relationships!

We must turn the tables and not look at what they are delivering – we must look at what we are delivering to them. How are we serving them? How much time are we giving to them to help them succeed?

That’s right – sharing selflessly!

How much time are we spending listening to the conversation about our business? Do we listen to our people? Do we listen to our customers? Do we listen to our competitors (or maybe just eavesdrop!)?

That’s right – really listening to what they are saying!

Do we lead from a distance because we were taught all those years ago that “you must keep your distance, or there will be no respect” (God, what rubbish is that!)? Or are we there in the middle of what is happening and fully involved in everything that is going on?

That’s right – fully engaged!

So, my wandering into the study of social media certainly helps to clarify my thinking of what I mean by leadership and when I cry out for it, what exactly I am looking for.

So, when you cry out for leadership, what are you looking for?

John Murphy

John Murphy is founder of JohnMurphyInternational, a specialist online coaching business. John specializes in advising and mentoring entrepreneurs and senior executives on how to build their business and be effective as a leader and manager

Filed Under: Career Management Tagged With: ,