3 Ways To Elevate Your Leadership

Leadership comes with great responsibility. Every interaction, action, inaction, word, memo and comment creates a ripple effect on people and your organization. As leaders, we are constantly weaving the culture and future of our companies.

How can you elevate your leadership in a world of constant change and increasing competition? Below are three ideas to embrace if you aspire to take your leadership to new heights.

The Importance Of Evolution

I recently went to an event sponsored by the Lanson Champagne house, founded in 1760. This inspired me to look at three books (one from 1982, one from 1994 and one from 2001) to see how companies that are often considered “great,” “excellent” or “enduring” have evolved with time.

Without discounting the valuable content in these books, I compared the 50 companies that were mentioned with their performance today. Some remain strong, such as Walmart, Disney, Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and a few others. However, the list of companies that have since underperformed — or no longer exist — is much longer.

This analysis is a testament that we should never take our success for granted. No matter how great, excellent or enduring your organization might be today, it’s important to ask yourself how you’re reinventing yourself daily. How can you have the foresight and agility to act with courage? And ultimately, how will you create an enduring legacy that will outlast your tenure?

Evolution is important for not only leaders of organizations but also for every employee who aspires to continue making a positive contribution. In the book Principles, Author Ray Dalio sums it up simply: “Evolve, or die.”

Everything around us is in constant evolution, ranging from nature to technology to medicine to socio-economic conditions. However, evolution and continuous growth cannot be a straight line. Mistakes are a natural part of the evolutionary process. Embrace them, learn and move on. Dalio synthesizes this quite eloquently with a formula: “Pain + Reflection = Progress.” He encourages that we embrace pain, rather than avoid it, while being radically open-minded and transparent.

The Power Of Leading With Humility

On your path to evolution, no matter how fast or how far you go, always remember to remain a humble leader. Gandhi is known to have famously said, “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom.” It takes courage to lead, but it also takes humility to recognize our own weaknesses and to seek input and assistance from others, irrespective of the challenges we have in front of us.

Humility is about making others feel the power of their ideas and letting them radiate their strengths when they are in your presence. This means ignoring your title and status and engaging in constructive conversations that lead to ideas that evoke the power of your complementarity and experiences. Humility is also shifting your attention to the needs of your team. It is about creating optimal conditions to allow them to succeed, and letting them know that you believe in their ability to walk on the right path.

Once you embrace humility as a leader, the best gift you can give someone is the ability to help others solve their own problems. As leaders, providing a solution to a problem when asked for help is a lost opportunity to teach your team how to develop their own skills to manage similar problems in the future.

When others are stuck in finding a solution, guide them along the way by asking questions. Help them change their perspective and fuel their trust in themselves that they have the ability to find the solution. Through increased awareness of the problem, the person will begin to see the possible avenues to pursue and will have the self-confidence to create momentum in the right direction. The more you stand out of the way and provide others with an opportunity to learn, the more they will grow.

The Benefits Of Embracing A Partnership Approach 

When engaging in conversations with your team, it is important to reflect on whether you are approaching it from a parenting or partnership perspective. There are times when being directive, also considered as parenting behavior, makes sense. At other times, partnering behavior might be more appropriate and conducive to building stronger relationships.

Partnering emerges when two people commit to hold each other accountable for their impact on the results they wish to achieve together, all while growing the relationship. No matter what the challenge might be, partnerships are about two individuals coming together to co-create a better future through a constructive dialogue. It is about building on each person’s strengths and realizing that greater things can be achieved together, rather than alone.

What is important to note is that the partnership approach might cause you to think you lose your sense of control or your reputation. This, in turn, can make you feel vulnerable. Some leaders might feel more comfortable in a parenting mode, where they feel in control of the situation. However, I believe this is counter-productive, as it leads to employees embracing behaviors where they are unwilling to go the extra mile when things get difficult. As a result, you could fall into the parent/child behavior trap.

As a leader, it’s important to create the right conditions for success. These conditions encompass a variety of things. For example, you can develop tools, processes, a culture of psychological safety, a sense of control and collaborative mindsets to move everyone toward achieving common goals. When we look at our roles as leaders from this perspective, employees and organizations can thrive.

In conclusion, in order to take your leadership to new heights, embrace humility and a partnership approach in every interaction, while always looking at continuous evolution as a way to never take your success for granted. This will allow you to have a lasting positive impact on the people you lead and your company.

This article was originally published in Forbes in Jan 2020 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2020/01/22/3-ways-to-elevate-your-leadership/?utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8w6J5XR9trQVv8r-FlqobcYHVsdUT2myOpOfOrv0j0s9ZcnZ0o1HaKYWZ5ViHMUJNwui8o#6d0ef9432f30)