The Good Leadership Recipe
It’s easy to say that people are your most important asset, but sticking to that principle during a global pandemic is far harder. Now is the time to hold true to those values. The actions leaders take now will echo in their organisations for years to come.
Let’s start with a buzzword of the 2010s: Transformational Leadership. This management style relies on inspiring employees to perform beyond their perceived abilities and to become high-achievers. Although this definition could be attributed to any motivational speaker, the scientific literature on the concept has been accumulating for almost three decades. Overall, the research shows that investing in developing great leaders to foster harmonious team dynamics will pay off big time. If you’re looking for a good summary, this meta-analysis shows transformational leadership is positively related to performance at both team and organisation level (Wang et al., 2011).
Good Work and Leadership
Where motivational speakers often fall down is exactly how to develop transformational leaders, and what’s the point of the topic unless we can use it to create real change?
We believe that high-quality investment in this space will have a broad, long-term return for organisations and their people. Just look at the results of our survey of 250 employees on the four pillars of our Good Work concept: Self-Determined Motivation (Autonomy, Belonging, Competence) and Psychological Safety. When we explored the link between these themes and how much confidence people reported in their leaders during the lock-down, we found a moderately strong correlation (r = .50). It seems these experiences of work are all interconnected.
If you are interested in bringing good work to your organisation, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
The recipe for developing good leaders
We expect the direction of causality in the above graph to be two-way (i.e. leadership impacts motivation, but motivation also impacts perception of leadership), so our advice for leadership development covers all bases. As such, all of the below tips are intended to build motivation, which is essential for personal and organisational success.
Respond to your team’s need to belong
Going to your workplace or joining a Zoom meeting can be a tedious daily exercise if it is perceived as a chore. Avoiding this can be helped by making sure that your team is not just a bunch of people assembled and led by a manager. Creating meaningful social circles who work towards goals together will not only help your employees perform better but it will also satisfy their social needs.
Organising bi-weekly quiz and drinks nights or going out for lunch together are great examples on how you can bring a sense of connectedness to the workplace. Yes, we've heard this a million times, and you might have done this with your team sporadically. But group activities work if they are practiced on a regular basis, so the challenge lies in sticking to it, and that's where behavioural science can help. Commitment devices and defaults will help you get there: schedule the quizzes and lunches as a recurring event in your calendar and encourage everyone to attend.
If you want to find out more about belonging, we detailed it in this article.
Create a sense of autonomy
We keep going on about the importance of creating a connected team, but a good transformational leader will recognise that each and every individual in this group is valuable on their own and needs to develop personally as well.
There is a need to find the perfect level of motivation for every member of a team. People will complete the tasks you set them if you keep nagging them about it, but if they can attach a sense of meaning and growth to it, their sense of autonomy will be fulfilled. If you provide explanations for the why of the job your team has to do, not only will your life as a leader be easier but you will give a valuable source of motivation for your team as well.
Let your team express their competence
We are all familiar with the anxiety-inducing feeling of doing our best in school or at work and not receiving the acknowledgement we long for. Self-determination theory describes the need for competence as the feeling of affecting outcome through actions. In an organisational scenario, managers are responsible for providing the feedback for their employees.
Although inputs can be both positive and negative, strive for pinpointing and reassuring your team members’ strong points. These can arise both from individual tasks and general performance over time. Even if you are not satisfied with how a task was solved, aim to provide constructive criticism and reinforce actions when they start going in the desired direction.
Embrace honest and open discussions
The fourth, and final, part of the recipe relies on the concept of Psychological Safety, drawing together the previous steps. Amy Edmondson described psychologically safe organisational cultures where members seek and provide honest feedback, collaborate, take risks and voice their ideas and concerns.
Make sure that everyone can contribute to team meetings, respond to how your team perceives your leadership, and listen to everyone’s input. There is a vast amount of research out there showing that the diversity of ideas and opinions leads to the best project outcomes. Transformational leaders should pioneer and protect actions that create a psychologically safe environment.
The low-down
Transformational leadership skills are essential in uncertain times. Providing a role model who guides us to the end of the tunnel can increase wellbeing, motivation and result in the best possible performance that the current situation allows. Nonetheless, it’s essential to remember that we are not looking for a 3-day leadership programme which no one will remember after a week, but for long-term behaviour change.
Interpersonal contexts in organisations are diverse and variable. Although we can prescribe some preliminary steps, looking at the details is essential to create long lasting change. Accounting for employee attitudes, personalities and cultural characteristics can be of great help to design personalised interventions and create great leaders. Finally, we really should not forget that any leader can have good intentions, this is often not translated into actions.
This is where MoreThanNow can help. In fact, this article was inspired by a partnership to close the behaviour-intention gap and train effective transformational leaders at a large, global employer. If you are interested in cooking up the recipe for Good Leadership at your organisation as well, don’t hesitate to get in touch.