What is Effective Leadership?

Leadership is working with others to get the kind of results you’re looking for. It’s about getting a group of people to commit to a new way of doing things in order to meet agreed upon objectives.

The leader or vision holder must be clear on their values, be able to communicate these values so that the people who are being led can identify with them or not. It’s about transparency, openness and clarity in communication.

In this sense the leader or vision holder has a degree of influence that can be used to enlist the support of others in working towards a common goal. Therefore, it’s really important for the leader to be clear on their values because this shapes and defines the way the group moves forward to meet the objectives of the common goal.

Effective leadership is therefore tied closely with understanding and having the ability to lead oneself. If you don’t know your values as a leader, how is it possible to lead other people? If you know your values, it becomes a lot easier to communicate your vision to others working towards a common goal because they have the opportunity to align with it or not.

The foundation of effective leadership coming from the new mindset perspective is built upon personal development. The greater extent to which you can develop and grow yourself on a personal level, the greater transformational influence you will have on the people being led, as well as the organization as a whole.

Effective leadership evolves and develops around who you are as an individual. A key component of this is the development of awareness. Awareness of who you are, what you’re trying to do, as well as an awareness of who others are in your team and the values and morals they inhabit.

Observational practices develop this awareness so as a leader, you are able to build the type of relationships that will take you to your goal. An example of an observational practice at a fundamental level may be to observe your behavior around your colleagues. By behavior I mean how do you interact in a group dynamic in varying situations, and what drives your behavior? What impulses or belief systems drive your behavior and do they serve the development of the group and the attainment of the goal?

What do you think and how do you feel in heated debates as opposed to when everyone is on the same page working effortlessly towards that common goal? Once you have identified any problem areas, you can then work with your team to iron out any discrepancies or disagreements with the way things are being done or on the way forward. If your team feels heard and understood they will trust you and respect you as a leader which will make the ironing out of these discrepancies part of the growth process.

I don’t believe that it is enough for present day leaders to merely lead by basing their decisions on analytics, fact or empirical reason. If leaders want to be more effective at a higher level, they will need to integrate emotion into the equation as well. Leaders will need to understand what it means to make decisions from emotional as well as cognitive frameworks.

If leaders are to become more effective, more successful and get the results they want then they will need to start shifting their understanding to what it means to lead from an integral perspective. An example would be working from spaces that include ones ‘I,’ ‘We’ and ‘It’ domains – how does your perception and behavior in these spaces affect your leadership? Or, what is it like to develop ideas around cognitive and emotional decision making?

I would say that as an effective leader, it would no longer be good enough to focus on one aspect of this equation. This leads us back to where we are on the developmental scale in terms of our own personal and psychological growth. Although we don’t have a blue print for what it means to lead from an integral perspective, we do know that it’s possible to work it out with the integral processes and frameworks in place to help us along the way.

We can use these models and frameworks as effective tools for personal and leadership development. One’s own development however is not separate from ones development as a leader. The more aligned you are with your identity, the greater clarity and sphere of influence you will have as a leader. 

This requires digging into who we are as human beings and where we are positioned on the developmental scale. Values, meaning, morals, and belief systems are engrained from a young age and we often allow these to shape our ideas as a leader which can limit not only our own growth but our team’s and organizations effectiveness and growth too.

As a leader if you are intent on using only cognitive frameworks or empirical reasoning to drive production and growth then you are only scratching the surface by way of depth, value and meaning – all qualities that enhance the ability of a leader.

So how do we bridge the gap for more effectiveness in this area? It was Foucault who said: “men and women have become objects of information, never subjects in communication.”

And this leads me to my next point on leadership: we learn best by communicating with each other through storytelling and conversation. How do leaders take the time to understand and know each other’s story, and is there not such a vast amount that we can take from such conversation?

Values, meaning and morals are not to be found at surface levels, so within a leadership context, we have to dig a little deeper to get at the fruit of these concepts, and authentic communication as well as conversation and storytelling enables us to do this very effectively.

In this day and age leaders and people are longing for genuine transformation. What enables this process? I would argue it’s talking to each other about our feelings, needs and values. Leaders have an important role to play in this regard because they are the ones who can initiate such conversations for greater meaning and growth in their organizations or communities.

People are also longing for a sense of autonomy. People don’t like to be told what to do. Rather, if they understand what’s needed of them, then they would respond favorably to work conditions that promote a sense of autonomy. People exceed in these conditions and produce the kind of results that meet objectives by taking responsibility for their actions. Leaders can be role models in this regard.

People need more than to just pitch up at work, go through the motions and slog through a pile of work for company benefit while their needs and abilities get left by the wayside. People are now keen to get involved with their own personal development. Leaders have the ability to not only develop and grow themselves, but should have a vested interest in the growth and development of the people they’re working with.

They should be on the lookout to develop and groom future organization/business/community leaders as this interest in others is what makes leaders unique and purposeful. I think it’s important for leaders to have a purpose because this is often the aspect that enables others to follow one as a leader. Leaders need to have a passion and a desire to use their skills and talents to serve others for a greater means.

What types of things are you doing as a leader that will bring about relevant change for you, your team, your organization or community or even the world at large? In which areas are your working as a leader to make a difference, add relevant value, to nurture and grow talent through skills development, and how are you adding to your own sense of mastery and purpose?

If one is to become a new type of leader with the characteristics I’ve mentioned in this article thus far, then one needs the mindset of such a leader. In order to create a comparison between old and new, let’s first understand the characteristics of the traditional mindset type leadership.

The traditional mindset leadership may be good for compliance, but it hinders personal growth and development – keys that I’ve mentioned are important for the new type of leadership to flourish. In this sense, the traditional mindset leader often bases their decisions on scarcity or the perception of limit. Due to this fear-based perception, they often seek to control people, environments and systems or processes for the fear that they are not in control.

This type of leader will try to manipulate circumstances and thought process or emotions so as not to lose the original perception of being in control. This has been built on the idea of: if you’re not in control, then you will be perceived as weak or a failure in the eyes of your peers, work colleagues, superiors etc.

In this form of traditional leadership it’s more about the position one holds as a leader. This position stamp or title means something and therefore entitles you to certain qualities which other people must follow.

Humanity has become infatuated with titles and the built-in power associated with names like 'director' or 'chief executive.' These types of names and their associated qualities are very common place especially among big corporations.

The idea of graduating from university to join a corporate powerhouse so as to work ones way up the ladder to one day obtain a position of immense power and wealth associated with such a title sounds a little too familiar. Are leaders leading to the best of their abilities or are they kicking back in their fancy leather chairs admiring their sense of entitlement that comes with the territory?

How are these types of leaders motivating the people ‘under’ them? Leadership here is often based on the traditional carrot and stick analogy used for motivation. They offer you a reward – be it monetary or a higher position, to meet a certain target or challenge.

What does this do? It serves to narrow your focus and blunt your creativity. Another relevant problem with this traditional mindset leadership is that you lose sight of your values and lead merely under a value banner which is applicable to all who work at the company.

What would happen if leaders actually took the time to know and understand each other’s values and needs within the organization? Suddenly a whole new dynamic would begin to emerge, one built on creativity, passion, cooperation, engaging vision, meaning, growth and purpose all at the same time.

So what would this new mindset leadership look like?

Well the new mindset leadership is in no way built on the perception of limit. This just relaxes any need to ‘get’ and instead works on relevant ways to work together and create the future it would like to work towards.

It integrates previous levels of systems and structures for higher levels of development. What do I mean by this? I mean that it doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Depending on the organization or company structure, it understands and takes what was useful from the old structure and begins to build the new leadership structures by packing on the new muscle on to the skeleton of what worked previously.

In this sense the new mindset leadership begins with understanding the structures and systems of the present moment. By doing this it can then evaluate what’s working and what’s not working. It can keep whatever works and can transform what doesn’t work for that higher level of development.

But the process is not defined by control or limit. It is very fluid by nature and works cooperatively to find the most effective ways of doing things to work towards common goals and making a difference at the same time.

In this context the leader or vision holder works from a very relaxed and open state of mind with the people to drive whatever they’re looking to create into the future. There’s no longer a sense of limit that pervades decision making. 

There’s no longer a sense of right or wrong, just a sense of understanding and cooperation and fluidly evolving so if the context does change, the leader has the skillful means and maturity to be able to respond accordingly.

There is a sense of calmness and clarity in the new mindset leadership that does have some set of goals to work towards, but does not let frustration at the need to get to the goal define the process of working together to create whatever needs to be created.

Above this, the new mindset leadership has very deliberately worked to dissolve old limited patterns of thinking that have defined the logic and systems of previous leadership that no longer serve development but actually hinders that fluid style of leadership.

And then finally it understands the value in working with other people for their own development too. For the way that the new mindset leader shapes its own development is to a greater or lesser extent dependent upon the way that it can take this new mindset and teach it to or pass it on to future business or community leaders. Herein lies the key for the new mindset leader to be able to shape the future.