Becoming a Good Leader - Part 1: Leadership Presence

Great leaders are hard to find, and when you think about some of the attributes that are necessary for a leader to be just "good", it is somewhat easy to understand why.

In one of the most popular books on leadership, “Good to Great”, the author, Jim Collins, discusses ways leaders should think and things they should do in order to reach a level of greatness that will generate success for the leader, her team, and her organization. However, when you break leadership down into small digestible chunks, two things stand out, 1) A leader’s presence and 2) How a leader handles challenges.

Part 1 of this article, Leadership Presence, discusses three ways to help a leader create a presence that will foster an environment of collaboration and engagement to which a team will respond with enthusiasm and respect: Be Consistent, Understand the Responsibilities of a leader, Relate and Communicate.

1.     Be Consistent:

As a leader, all eyes are always on you. It is important to be consistent with your actions and your message. In most organizations, there is constant change, and challenges are inevitable. How a leader adapts to that change and to those challenges will influence her team and will help mold her team’s attitude about how to deal with the organization’s evolution.  Although this evolution may sometimes be somewhat chaotic and unpleasant, consistent leadership that projects honesty, fairness and positivity throughout the journey is crucial to obtaining successful results. 

On the opposite end of this spectrum, inconsistency will very quickly lead to toxicity in the work environment, which will foster low morale and will hinder the organizations success. Inconsistency can come in many forms, but typically, an inconsistent leader will have different answers for the same question, depending on who is asking the question, or she will exude varying attitudes on a daily basis, leaving employees uncomfortable about approaching her for anything.  

2.  Understand the responsibilities of a leader:

As we have heard many times, leading is not an exact science. To begin to develop habits that are crucial to becoming a good leader, there are some general rules of thumb to follow:

?     Encourage – encouraging your team to grow professionally and personally will show them that you are part of the team and that you truly care about helping them succeed. You should be their biggest fan.

?     Empower – Your employees are talented, that is why you hired them. Do not be afraid to enable them with the authority to make decisions, develop plans and even execute those plans. This tells your team that you have trust in their capabilities and that you have an investment in their success.

?     Guide – Most organizations have many moving parts and it is easy for employees to become distracted. Helping your team navigate the “crazy” by guiding them in the proper direction and keeping them on track is essential to the success of the organization.

?     Develop your employees’ skills – You hire people to do a job based on what they have proven their capabilities to be. This does not mean they will not need to acquire additional skills to carry out every task or complete every project. Part of the reward of a job for many employees is being able to learn new skills at and for that job. 

?     Lead with vision – Know where the organization is going. Visualize the “light at the end of the tunnel” and communicate that vision to your team. This allows everyone to get on the same page and have the same goal.

?     Be strategic – Have a plan and make sure that plan is, well…planned. One of the most detrimental factors of good leadership is not being strategic about the direction of the organization. Create goals, but develop a strategy to reach those goals. A good strategy should have measurable outcomes and steps that lead to those outcomes so that the team will know when they are where they should be in the scheme of things.

?     Resolve conflict – Conflict resolution is uncomfortable for everyone. Nevertheless, when conflict arises, it is critical to resolve it quickly, least you risk damaging professional relationships as well as morale amongst the team.

3.     Relate and Communicate

Two of the most important skills in leadership is relating and communicating. Developing healthy professional relationships requires healthy communication. This starts with listening to your team and showing them that you can relate to them and that you understand them. Listening requires some level of passivity in a conversation, but it is a good level of passivity. Instead of trying to offer solutions throughout the conversation, just listen. It is even okay to ask what they would like to see happen since sometimes the person just needs to vent; there may not even be a need for a solution. On the opposite side of that, however, listening to understand will help you discern when there is a need for a solution. Here are some tips on relating and communicating:

?     Listen to understand

?     Ask questions

?     Allow time to talk, don’t rush the conversation

?     Be approachable

?     Be respectful of other’s views

?     Focus your attention and remove distractions

?     Be transparent

?     Be clear/concise

?     Learn your listening style and improve on it

Always remember, true leaders do not always have to be in the spotlight. Some of the most successful leaders stand behind and give accolades to her team. She most often do not take the credit or even make herself known. 

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Kimberly Hubbard currently serves as an instructional dean for one of the largest community colleges in Texas, with oversight of IT and Visual Communications programs. She also serves as a professor of IT. With over 20 years of experience in both the private and public sector, her area of expertise is in the field of information technology and information security. She has held a variety of managerial and administration positions in IT operations, IT training, IT resource management, business management and Department Chair.  Dean Hubbard also owned her own business, Hubbard Group and Associates, which specialized in IT recruiting, training and systems administration. She holds a BS in Physics from LSU-Shreveport, an MBA and an MS in Information Systems and Security from Our Lady of the Lake University.