by Raghu Nandhan | Mar 17, 2022 | Staffing Partner, Talent Acquisition
Re-defining Leadership is Imperative
Leadership, in a business setting or in life, is an art that motivates a group of people to work collaboratively towards a specific goal or mission. In an organization, leadership can mean the management’s ability to help teams achieve their goals within the set deadlines, make faster decisions, cope with competitive challenges, and inspire all team players to work at their best.
In the traditional leadership styles, neither did the workers have a say nor could they ever imagine remote work modules. The managers used to take important business decisions without taking any major inputs from the workers.
However, it’s time for a positive change. Today, leadership has taken a new shape and form, wherein the opinions of every team member matter. With new philosophies like servant leadership, leaders are able to focus on the individual growth, development, and well-being of each employee.
Integral Aspects of Leadership Today
With numerous technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things, and advanced analytics, workplaces have undergone digital transformations. Today, leadership has grown more flexible, digitized, and highly adaptable. Leaders are developing a more serving attitude to cater to the individual needs of their team players, thus enhancing beer collaboration and interaction within the team.
In modern-day organizations, employees’ opinions are given utmost importance during the decision-making processes, to help them feel more motivated and appreciated. Human Resource professionals are continuously building employee engagement to develop healthy work cultures.
Today, leadership has grown more people-oriented and collaborative in nature, as opposed to the autocratic leadership styles that were prevalent a few years back. Companies have started realizing the ill-effects of such dominating leadership norms, in which the higher authorities used to pass orders to the subordinates for carrying out certain tasks.
To ensure the highest productivity, growth, and success, the modernized organizations of today need to have the following key aspects in their leadership styles –
- Maintain Transparency
- Learning Agility
- Promoting Effective Communication
- Practicing Integrity
- Expressing Gratitude
- Focusing on Individual Member’s Growth and Development
Even if you think you are a natural leader from birth, you need to cultivate your natural abilities and skills to convert them into high-quality leadership that would benefit the company. In fact, according to a study, only 10% of people are born leaders. The rest 20% only show some leadership qualities, which need to be polished to be eligible for leading an entire team.
How Leadership Can Bring Changes to an Organization?
The success of a company is directly proportional to the productivity and efficiency of its teams. And the success of any team depends on effective leadership and collective responsibility of its members. Therefore, it becomes necessary to manage everybody’s needs, strengths, and weaknesses tactfully.
Leadership helps team members to focus their attention on the important tasks at hand. It enables them to prioritize their work and accomplish them faster without missing a deadline. Effective leadership also focuses on streamlining the workflow of individual group members to maximize productivity and efficiency.
Leaders are also responsible for encouraging their team members to grow and develop on personal and professional levels. An ideal leadership lets every team player acquire new skills and knowledge, which is both exciting and encouraging. It will keep teams highly motivated and give them a good reason to come back the next day.
Additionally, modern-day organizations believe in maintaining healthy relationships among team members through effective communication and transparency. This is why organizing team outings and activities would foster personal growth, develop strong interpersonal relationships, and build trust among colleagues.
In short, leadership is all about fostering team spirit, productivity, trust among members, and the overall success of the company. To bring a positive change in the organization, we need to break the age-old management models and change our leadership styles for long-term success.
Tips to Build Successful Leaders for Your Organization
No matter whether it’s a team of 5 or 100, leadership is never easy. Without having the right knowledge and skills, it’s difficult to bring everyone on the same page, especially when different team players are divided into their opinions and perspectives.
So, to build successful leaders in your organization, the following tips should help –
- Maintain Integrity and Honesty
Ensure your leaders are practicing integrity and honesty at various levels. They need to be transparent and be able to influence their team members, developing a highly productive team and effective leaders. Integrity and honesty are essential leadership traits that help to create stronger bonds between leaders and their subordinates.
- Foster Self-Growth and Self-Development
Leaders should offer every employee the space to grow and acquire new skills, both at the personal and professional levels. They should be able to promote the values of self-awareness, self-worth, and self-confidence among team members to promote greater efficiency.
- Focus on Effective Communication
Communication is a major aspect of leadership, and team leaders should encourage effective interaction and engagement among team members for higher productivity. Right from coaching team members to let them have healthy communications with one another, leaders must be able to encourage everyone to work towards a common goal.
- Delegate Effectively
Leaders should be able to delegate the right tasks to the right employees based on their strengths and weaknesses. Needless to say, team leaders should have the ability to analyze the string and weak points of their team members.
Every employee has a certain level of expertise, skillset, and knowledge. Your company’s leaders need to figure out the hidden talents and potential of every team player to ensure effective delegation. To gain a better understanding of that, leaders need to be more interactive with their employees on a personal level.
- Learn Agility
Ideal leaders should be able to learn agility to know how to face certain challenges and unexpected situations without affecting business continuity. Agile leaders and teams can help an organization sustain itself in the long run.
Build more confident leaders who can come up with quick but effective solutions in times of crisis. This won’t happen overnight, though. You need to ensure everybody in your team is able to learn agility through experience, effort, and, above all, practice.
- Empathize With Your Employees
Leaders should be able to empathize with every team member, thus developing healthy relationships among leaders and followers. It’s not only a vital aspect of leadership, but it also acts as a driving force in creating better employee satisfaction and productivity.
Team leaders need to go on a personal level with the employees and understand their pleasure and pain points. Leaders should also be willing to help their employees cope with tough situations. On the contrary, they must also try to understand what makes the team players happy. Such empathic behaviors in leadership would definitely improve the work cultures and bring more success to the organization.
- Express Gratitude and Be Humble
As per the servant leadership philosophy, leaders should be humble enough to serve their team members and express their gratitude for being a constant support in challenging times. Besides, studies show that around 79% of employees would quit if they don’t receive the appreciation they deserve.
It’s imperative to stay humble and put aside your ego, no matter how much power you have. Being an ideal leader, you should be able to inspire your followers and that comes from humility, gratitude, and appreciation.
Closing Thoughts
Change is always difficult to adapt to, but it’s necessary for the better. Effective leadership is nothing but helping team players adapt to a new environment easier and faster to ensure business continuity.
It’s important to abandon the age-old management norms that weren’t really healthy for the work environment and embrace more constructive leadership styles, such as servant leadership. Pragna Solutions helps organizations redefine your organization’s leadership models in a positive manner to ramp up employee engagement and success in the upcoming years. With innovative staffing strategies backed with data, they have helped multiple global clients build leadership within the organization to drive organization success.
by Raghu Nandhan | Mar 8, 2022 | Company, Company Insights, Leadership Skills
The concept of servant leadership has evolved extensively over the years, as leaders have
started realizing that the servitude philosophy is more beneficial for the company’s growth and
success. Organizations are constantly analyzing and improving the relationships between the
leaders and their followers to develop more profitable leadership styles.
Even today, the concept of leadership reminds us of a pyramid structure in which the leader sits
at the top and passes orders to the subordinates, telling them what to do. However, it’s time to
change our practices and have a more people-first attitude. This is the only way we can actually
help others grow and build more such submissive leaders.
Role of Servant Leadership in the Organization
Servant leadership, as the name implies, is a management style that gives importance to the
personal as well as professional growth of the team. The theory focuses on the development
and well-being of each team member and puts their needs and preferences first. In the servant
leadership style, it’s the leader who serves the employees and not the other way round.
In this theory, the manager or the leader believes that unless each team member is able to grow
and feel fulfilled in their own personal and professional areas, we should not expect efficiency
and high-quality work from the team as a whole. To boost the company’s growth and success,
we need to focus on employee satisfaction and develop more collaborative and engaging work
cultures.
Servant leadership is necessary for every business as it creates a positive and healthy work
environment, wherein every employee feels fulfilled both professionally and personally. It further
helps to boost employee morale by ensuring that they feel valued and appreciated at all levels.
Such a healthy work culture creates more engagement and motivation in the workplace, which
are the key factors contributing to the organization’s prosperity.
Characteristics of an Ideal Servant Leader
Now that we know that servant leadership plays a crucial role in the organization, let’s have a
look at the characteristics of ideal servant leaders –
- They have an employee-first attitude and put the needs and pain points of the
employees first. - They share and distribute the power equally among team players, thus developing a
tighter and more collaborative team. - They are good listeners and let their team members speak up about their issues. This
creates a sense of belonging among the employees. - They give importance to the individual opinions of every team player, building a positive
work environment. - They practice awareness to understand the pleasure and pain points of their employees.
- They empathize with their personal or professional challenges and try to help them cope
with bad times. - They are able to define the short- and long-term goals and communicate them effectively
among the team to bring all the team members on the same page. - They practice stewardship to take the responsibility of guiding the team towards the right
path. They are responsible for building trust and upholding confidence among their team
players. - They care for their team members and pledge to protect their physical and mental health
and well-being.
So, if you are willing to follow effective servant leadership practices in your organization, make
sure to –
- Be an example of a great leader and humble human being first.
- Encourage employee engagement and collaboration to build a healthier work culture.
- Show your team members their importance and the vital role they have in their particular
job. - Take care of the personal and professional challenges of your team members by
allowing them to voice their concerns individually. - Encourage the personal and professional growth and development of your team players.
- Ask for feedback from your employees about how they feel at the workplace, and
whether they have any suggestions for creating better work cultures. - Help them contribute and share their own opinions without hesitating. Show them that
their opinions are valuable to the organization. - Make your employees feel that you are always there for them.
Benefits of Efficient Servant Leadership
Here’s why every organization needs to practice an efficient servant leadership theory.
Boosts the Self-Confidence and Motivation Among Employees
According to studies, 47% of Americans feel that they are doing a particular job for the sole
purpose of earning a living. It’s sad how a vast majority of the country’s citizens feel unfulfilled or
unsatisfied in their current positions.
This is where the role of servant leadership comes into play. As mentioned earlier, a servant
leader helps employees to focus on their self-growth and self-development by acquiring new
skills and knowledge. As opposed to carrying out the same old monotonous tasks every day at
work, developing additional skill sets will help them take up more responsibilities and work on
more interesting projects.
It will not only enhance their self-confidence and motivation but also boost the overall efficiency
and productivity of the teams. The very thought of trying and learning something new at the
workplace is exciting for them, which will encourage them to accomplish their tasks faster and
more efficiently.
Increases the Growth and Productivity of the Organization
With a serving attitude, leaders can help their team members feel more respected and valued. It
will further boost their willingness to give back to their caring leaders with high-quality work, thus
enhancing the productivity of the organization as a whole.
The best thing about servant leadership is it doesn’t support micromanagement policies, as they
tend to bring down the morale and confidence of the employees and create trust issues
between the employees and their leaders. Servant leaders help their group members to learn
flexibly and have the freedom to explore new things.
If employees aren’t given the required flexibility to acquire new knowledge and skill set, they
won’t be able to provide valuable inputs or explore better ways of accomplishing a certain task.
This, in turn, will give them the confidence and freedom to solve challenges on their own without
having to depend on their leaders every time, thus saving time and effort.
Enhances Employee Loyalty
Since servant leadership, unlike the traditional management styles, enables employees to feel
more engaged and motivated in their work, they feel more confident in making better decisions.
This develops among the teams a strong sense of personal and professional fulfillment, as
every member’s efforts are appreciated and recognized.
Since the servant leadership theory focuses on putting the needs and accomplishments of the
employees first, it encourages them to work collaboratively towards achieving a particular goal.
Further, it develops employee engagement and loyalty, which can escalate the organization's
success. Besides, loyalty among the team players also increases the organization’s employee
retention rates and brings in more talented people on board, thus developing a healthier and
more cohesive work culture.
Creates More Agile Organizations
An agile organization includes a comprehensive and condensed network of highly-empowered
teams, working collaboratively with high standards of expertise, accountability, collaboration,
and transparency. To be able to create such an agile team, leaders need to ensure that their
employees are able to work in a positive, highly-motivated, and stable environment.
To create more agile teams, servant leaders work towards building authority and credibility
among team players through positive influence rather than through hierarchical powers. They
facilitate efficient communication and team engagement among the workers and coach them to
work together towards a particular goal. By creating better employees and expertise, servant
leaders are able to boost an agile transformation for the organization.
Final Thoughts
Servant Leadership plays a significant role in the growth and development of every team
member, as well as the organization as a whole. With an employee-first and serving attitude,
ideal servant leaders are able to put aside their own needs and egos for the welfare of their
teams. It’s time to chain down the age-old dominating management styles and adopt a more
serving attitude for the growth and welfare of the organization and its employees.
Pragna Solutions is a reliable staffing consultant that has helped organizations strategize and
develop servant leadership. With innovative data driven insights and human expertise, we can
help you overcome any challenges in your business to help you maximize business productivity.
To know more about our wide range of consulting and outsourcing services, you may visit our
website.
Pragna Solutions has been an active recruiter over the past many years. There has been increased remote job posting since 2019. Not only the employees but the employers are welcoming remote work culture as well.
