What makes a good leader?

An effective leader will have a host of soft skills and more than likely some level of charisma. However, what really sets them apart is the ability to listen and use this information to promote beneficial change. Now, of course, skills are required to capitalise on potential insights, but these are more common and, in general, easier to supplement. Yet, I have found that leaders who are unwilling to truly hear complaints, take on feedback, and respond to the needs of their followers quickly lose respect and influence.

Identify the key issues

Leaders can get easily stuck looking at things from a top-down approach and thinking about the bigger picture. This means what often captures their attention might be things like a rise in complaints, a drop in sales or decreasing profit. The challenge is then to look at the underlying issues that have led to these outcomes which affect the bottom line. A key step in this process is to engage with staff to investigate their experiences in the business. In retail space have they noticed a decrease in foot traffic, or have comments mean made about the prices or a lack of variety in store. All of these could impact sales but realistically a decrease in foot traffic is not going to be solved by simply dropping prices as it might have to do with store location.

In my own experience in an educational setting, I have seen this playout in relation to an overall school problem with behaviour. This was impacting on the external reputation which had contributed to dropping enrollments as well as a high number of student suspensions. In dealing with this problem school leaders identified the need for a refinement of behaviour management process which was communicated to staff. Despite this the problems continued with extremely limited if any real change experienced in the classroom. At this point school leaders should have started engaging with staff to understand why the new process wasn’t having an impact. As the continued behaviour problems suggested that it was not necessarily the behaviour management process that needed work. Instead, leaders continually referred staff back to this without any further investigation. However, investigation quickly uncovered two key issues that were contributing to problems. Firstly, a lack of consistent follow-through from middle and upper management for similar levels of behaviour and secondly a lack of staff training in implementing the process in a classroom. In this instance a lack of action led not only to continuing behaviour issues but also an increase in staff dissatisfaction.

A leader needs to consult

Beyond identifying problems within the workplace effective leaders will use consultation processes to build buy in within the organisation and avoid future problems with implementation. A good consultation begins with a clearly defined and developed solution or innovative. It is pointless bringing something in the initial stages of planning to a large group of staff for feedback and advice. This is because if the details are undefined, it is therefore impossible for staff to envisage how the implementation might affect them, contribute to change, or create recent problems. In this instance staff will probably either agree with the idea in principle or simply question the lack of detail. As a result, leaders are failing to get effective feedback on improving the original idea and without further consultation are likely to have a lack of support from staff or an ineffective rollout. Both instances could easily be avoided through a better understanding of the purpose of consultation.

Once the idea is developing into a process that could potentially be implemented is the right time to really start taking things to a large group of staff beyond a working party. If this is done properly staff can visualise the implementation of the proposal, making their positive feedback more meaningful and representative of agreement while also being able to predict potential problems. This might highlight gaps or implications that the working party failed to consider or even areas of deficiency in staff knowledge that need to be addressed before implementation. Regardless of the feedback the key to effective consultation is demonstrating a willingness to make changes and act on the information learned from staff. This is more than taking notes in a meeting but involves reworking parts of the proposal to address the potential issues before returning to staff with a final product.

The key pitfalls of a poor consultation process are often an unwillingness to really listen and change the proposal. This can be either due to a stubbornness within leaders to maintain their vision or idea but also perceived pressure to get a solution together quickly. In an educational setting where we are constantly battling time limits there is a desire to get things in place. As a result, there can often be the philosophy that it just needs to be done rather than properly developed to ensure success. Consultation is one of the things that make way either being forgotten completely or included so late that no feedback could be implemented. In some instances, I have seen new policies and processes announced to students before any discussion with staff, which simply just boggles the mind. The result of this approach is the innovation quickly falls apart due to lack of staff support or a predictable problem which may have arisen from proper consultation. This means that an attempt to take a short cut to get things done is ineffective therefore creates a need to rethink rather than moving on.

It seems simple

The need to consult and listen to staff seems like an obvious skill for an effective leader but unfortunately doesn’t seem too common. This is because a lot of people that reach leadership positions are of course confident in their own abilities and knowledge, potentially making them unwilling to listen. Additionally, depending on their own career trajectory there can easily be disconnect between various levels of an organisation which means that they might not value staff input. Regardless, a leader that finds a means to listen to staff directly, through surveys or through a formal consultation process will achieve better results.

Read more about experiences in the education workplace