Leadership is the number one influencing factor for business success, according to Bain & Company’s annual report in 2021.
This comes as no surprise, since with effective leadership comes economic growth, but it can achieve much more than this. A strong culture is often derived from strong leadership, where the tone of the business is set from the core.
An effective leadership style can empower the workforce, ensuring that they feel motivated, supported, and inspired. They can drive a business to success, creating a workplace that thrives on clear direction.
Of course, an organised working environment runs smoothly and confidently, and with clear processes in motion with a streamlined communication system, a business is destined for success.
Below are outlined the key positives of having a strong leadership style in place at your business, with how it can affect your internal processes, as well as external.
What do we mean by leadership?
Leadership describes how an individual or group influences, and of course leads, an organisation. It is not confined to just one method, with various components that all contribute to a strong, authoritative yet approachable leadership style.
A significant factor in your leadership style is how it shapes your working culture, a fundamental component to the success of your business.
Your culture can be affected by various factors, and every business climate is different. However, your culture will arguably be much more positive, inviting and nurturing if your workforce is encouraged to work together, learning from and supporting each other.
An effective leadership style is made up of different variants, all impacting the business environment and the success of your company.
With your leadership style, you can implement the following into your culture, your business, and your output:
A clear vision and high levels of motivation
It is vital that a workforce has the same goals and vision in mind, with a common objective in place. This is driven by effective leadership, whereby your employees have a clear understanding of the business’ values and the direction that the business intends to take.
This can motivate and inspire your workforce, ensuring they feel engaged and driven and creating a proactive working environment. If, as a leader, you showed lack-lustre efforts with your work, along with little care for the work of your staff, then motivation is not likely to follow suit.
Instead, instil passion in your employees, motivating them to provide the best output they can, working together to achieve the same goal.
So, if you want to encourage your workforce through boosting their confidence and morale, a strong leadership style is key, and leading by example is an important factor in this.
Effortless communication, leading to conflict resolution
If your leadership style ensures open, honest, and active communication, the culture you can create will be positive, where transparency, trust and open dialogue is nurtured. This can create a much more understanding environment, where teams cooperate with each other.
Effective leadership often entails listening to your employees, ensuring they feel heard when putting across any issues. A strong leader will also provide feedback to their team, demonstrating actionable responses whilst also investing in the development of their employees.
With professional work environments sometimes comes conflict, and a leader needs to be prepared to resolve any such issues. This means being fair, unbiased and understanding is vital, whilst acting sooner rather than later so as to not let problems fester and worsen over time.
However, without being approachable, it is unlikely that these problems will arise to your attention, and without actively immersing yourself into your culture, you risk losing sight of your teams and their wellbeing.
Making those all-important decisions
With working in fast-paced businesses comes the necessity to make decisions quickly and easily, but often, these are not light decisions.
A strong leader will consider different perspectives, research alternatives, and look into the potential outcomes of all decisions. A leader has to understand that their decisions affect other people, so carrying the weight of your employees’ wellbeing is a key part of strong leadership skills.
Another way leaders connect with their employees is through involving them in decision-making where possible, seeking input from them and encouraging their opinions. This, again, allows your staff to feel listened to and involved, whilst still maintaining your position as an authoritative figure.
Trust your employees
It is vital to remember that business owners can sometimes be limiting to their own business operations, resulting in leader’s bottleneck syndrome. By being too involved in every step of the process, they can slow things down, prevent a streamlined system from naturally flowing, and reduce confidence in employees.
Instead, trust your employees, and ensure your team is made up of varied skillsets and strengths – then, collaboration may occur naturally, and you can learn from your employees, too.
Remove barriers, so that your workforce can progress and develop their skills, because with glass ceilings in the workplace comes the potential for a negative culture drowning in low levels of motivation and poor employee wellbeing.
Therefore, embrace a leadership style that is trusting and open-minded, crafting a culture that allows your employees to grow.
Adapting to the turbulent business environment and encouraging innovation
When driving the success of a business, a leader must feel comfortable with the changing nature of the business environment, adapting to developing technologies, diversifying working styles and preferences, and making organisational transformations.
A business should expect failure if it refuses to develop, whereas leaders who embrace innovation are often much more successful. They can drive this from within the company, too, encouraging creativity and continuous improvement in the company culture – again, a culture that supports, nurtures and trusts its employees.
Along with developing technologies has come the worry that many face, which is that technology could soon take over our current working style.
With the increasing developments to AI and tools such as Chat GPT, job security is taking a hit, instilling a fear that a human workforce can be replaced. If employees don’t feel safe in their roles, this can have a massive impact on their morale, productivity and confidence.
Through your leadership style, you can implement strong feelings of reassurance. Enforce the notion that your workforce is invaluable, especially with skills and tasks that require human initiative and emotional responses.
Therefore, a strong leader always looks ahead, anticipating future trends and guiding their employees through any changes to their work. Adjusting to new styles of business and new trends can be difficult, which is why, as a leader, you must be there to support and act as a reassuring aid, particularly when these changes come in the form of threatening technology.
Strong leadership comes with beneficial results
Through perfecting your leadership style, you can foster an environment that encourages loyalty. When employees leave, it can of course be very costly, and without a culture that nurtures their progression within the business, you cannot expect them to stay.
With a healthy business that is strong from the core, the internal culture will enhance the value of the business, making it more attractive to both employees and clients.
For future employees, you can paint your business as an attractive place to work, where staff wellbeing and progression are prioritised.
For future clients, your business is seen to invest in its assets, with an environment that embraces learning and improving, which will only have positive results for output.
So, the power of strong leadership is invaluable, because a successful business is built up of having a powerful, collaborative team, and effective leadership is pertinent to this.
Investing time into your culture is never wasted time, and fostering a supportive environment will have great results for your overall operations.
Looking for the help of business experts to support and drive your business to success?
At Champions, we can help your business to achieve high levels of success through supporting your internal processes to create an organised working culture.
With areas of expertise in digital, creative, strategy, communications, events, and talent, Champions is the marketing consultant for any enquiry, supporting your whole business with our holistic deliverables.
If you would like to discuss our services, get in touch, and our team will be on hand to help.