10 Smart Leadership Solutions For Every Challenge
What does it take to be a world-class leader, no matter the challenge? Let’s take a look at 10 solutions leaders can implement before a crisis, or in the heat of the moment, to meet problems head-on.
1. Make Yourself Approachable
Maybe you’ve had people in your life where you could never be sure how they’d take bad news or what they’d think about an idea. The thing is, folks don’t want to work for people who are unpredictable or, worse, hostile in the face of a challenge. The best leaders are those who can laugh and learn from mistakes, and who welcome all ideas no matter where they come from.
2. Build the Right Team
You know what they say about hard times bringing people together? If you’re a leader and you’re looking to make your organization better-equipped to face challenges head-on, do you want all your people to have the same backgrounds, the same perspectives and the same experiences? Of course you don’t. When things get tough, you want a team that’s as diverse as possible, so when a problem needs solving, the potential solutions you have to work with are as varied as the people you’ve surrounded yourself with.
3. Be OK With Failure
You’ve heard it a thousand times, but leaders have to be unafraid to take risks. Got a hunch? Float it to your team. Does one of your specialists have a left-field idea that sounds like it could be pure magic? Try it out. You might fail, but think about what you’ll learn in the process.
4. Build a Culture Around Feedback
What some people call “feedback,” other people call “having a conversation.”
If organizations want to make themselves more capable — but also agile and resilient when it comes to meeting challenges — they need to build cultures that revolve around the ebb and flow of feedback. That means leaders need to be comfortable with delivering good-natured, but firm, constructive criticism when warranted. But it also means they need to be welcoming themselves when it comes to receiving a kind, but needed, callout.
5. Motivate Yourself
There’s no use pretending your employees are going to arrive ready and eager to solve problems and come up with new ideas if their leaders don’t seem overly motivated themselves.
As a leader, you got to where you are today because something about the work was important to you. If you need to rediscover that spark, motivate yourself, and inspire your team to bring their best, think about learning about a new part of your industry, attending a conference, picking up a related certification that interests you, or doing something else that will reignite the enterprising spirit you’re looking for and that you demand from others.
6. Be Transparent
We mentioned being approachable and personable, but that’s not the same thing as being transparent. Your team members need to know they have “skin in the game” and a role to play in something larger. The best way to make sure they feel that way is to be transparent with them about the company’s standing, deadlines, competitor activities, long-term planning, state of the industry and everything else they need to know to fully plug into their roles.
7. Renew Your Leadership Skills
You read a few books on leadership once, but it’s been a while. Lest we forget, leadership is a skill like any other — and it requires upkeep, just like all the rest. You can keep yourself mindful of what leadership is, and what it takes to succeed as a leader, by taking additional courses, continuing your reading or finding a mentor who’s been in the game even longer than you have.
8. Recognize Excellence
Lots of research over the years has driven home the fact that employee recognition is a low-cost but high-reward investment. There can be tons of reasons why your team might deserve recognition: milestones within the company, supplemental learning completed or the choice to step up or put in extra time when a co-worker or the company was in trouble.
Employees who worry their ideas won’t get recognized and valued — or, even worse, are concerned their leaders will take credit for them — are employees who are that much more likely to keep their idea under wraps next time around.
9. Have a Vision
After all the adapting to challenges, and maybe even some pivoting, there’s still a vision. To borrow a metaphor from boating, a leader’s vision is like an anchor. Whatever else comes your way, there’s a vision, there’s passion and there are values to steer the course back to the fundamentals and the reasons you became a leader here in the first place.
10. Know When to Take Your Hands off the Wheel
The goal of hiring people and putting together teams isn’t to pack the office or factory with tin soldiers. It’s because you needed people who could put their heads together without needing guidance at every step of the way.
We just told you every leader needs the vision to anchor and ground everything. But there are times to relent, too. Even in the heat of a crisis, you’ll recognize a moment where your team is all leaning in, probably literally, and churning through the hard work that leads to success, innovation and greatness.
No coaching or management required — just “synergy.” Or, as regular folks call it, “a little push, followed by teamwork.”
This article was written by William Craig from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.
