Effective Modern-Day Strategies For Leading a Successful Team

If you’ve been in a corporate environment for some time, you’ve probably come across the term “command and control.” This legacy leadership style resembled a rigid, hierarchical view of how workplaces should be structured, with employees receiving their “orders” from the powers above and keeping their heads down to make it happen.

Thankfully, today, this dictatorial form of leadership is becoming less and less common as more businesses recognize the importance of adopting more flexible (and effective) ways of guiding teams toward a common objective.

What is Transformative Leadership?

There seems to be a common misunderstanding among businesses today regarding how they define “leadership.” Most people think of company leadership as representing the individuals who assign tasks or manage the day-to-day. But this doesn’t set a leader apart from other employees.

The truth is that anyone can assign someone a task, and most managers don’t have extensive training to know how to accomplish this. The real differentiator of a leader is someone who knows how to “inspire” their employees to want to do more for the company and themselves.

This transformative leadership quality doesn’t come easily to most people since to be a great leader, you need to have a lot of courage and the willingness to take risks. Instead of relying on a “do as I say and not as I do” mentality when planning events or tackling projects, great leaders are constantly focused on leading by example , inspiring others around them, and helping everyone achieve the best that they can.

For businesses to continue to be successful today, they need to start redefining great leadership qualities and enforcing them across all of their management teams.

Effective Strategies for Modernizing Your Leadership Abilities

It’s important to remember that leadership teams should always want to improve their ability to inspire others. While there a naturally gifted people who have a knack for pushing themselves and others around them to achieve more, there are always ways to improve.

Below are some effective strategies you can apply to help modernize your leadership approach:

Make Your Teams Feel Empowered

Most people don’t appreciate someone looking over their every move when they’re completing a puzzle or playing a game. It’s no different in business.

While understandably, oversight and direction are important when leading a team of employees - especially when the company’s revenue is at stake - there needs to be a proper balance. The constant feeling of being micromanaged is often one of the main reasons why individuals seek employment elsewhere, and a great leader should know how to avoid this perception.

To do this effectively, it’s important to focus on helping your team feel empowered. When building your team up , you want to provide “support,” not “supervision.” This may require a certain level of trust between managers and their employees, but it’s an absolutely critical component of a healthy working relationship.?

Adopt a Collaborative Mindset

When you put a team of like-minded individuals in the same room at a company event or meeting, it’s only natural that some of them may want to try and make themselves stand out. And while there is nothing wrong with having a driven attitude, instilling the importance of collaboration with teams should be at the top of company leaders' minds.

Everyone’s voice should matter in an organization, regardless of their position. No one should feel secluded or overly extended the “that’s above your pay grade” comment. Modern teams need to have an equal share in setting goals, going after new opportunities, and even experiencing failures.?

When you create an environment where egos are set aside, and employees feel safe sharing their ideas and working together, great things will naturally happen for the business.

Embrace New Changes

Here’s the thing - most people say they’re fine with changes, but very few live up to their claims. The reality is, change is disruptive and often brings with it varying levels of stress - whether it’s defined as a “good” or “bad” adjustment.

If large company changes need to be rolled out, business leaders can often find themselves in a difficult situation with their employees. However, these changes can be much more palatable for individuals if the company culture is designed to embrace all changes as opportunities for personal and professional improvement.

Mastering change management in an organization of any size isn’t easy. However, one of the best ways you can inspire employees to accept or even look forward to new changes is by having a positive attitude that does the same.

Place Priority on Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion in the workplace aren’t just confined to ethical hiring practices. It’s something that should be showcased in everything that a company does - right down to how teams are managed.

When a business has a more diverse group of employees, there will no doubt be varying opinions or perspectives on how tasks should be completed or how things should be prioritized. Leaders should be ready and willing to leverage these unique life experiences whenever they can.

Rather than narrowly focusing on doing things the way they’ve always been done, use the diversity in your teams to inject fresh ideas or alternative approaches to meeting company objectives . This not only gives you the opportunity to keep your departments more efficient, but it also shows to all of your employees that you value them as people and the varying levels of experience they bring to the table.

Lead Your Team to Success

Being an effective leader isn’t something that everyone can do. However, by applying the strategies mentioned and always being open to improving your approach, you can continue to inspire your employees to extend their capabilities while achieving more for themselves and the business.

Author Bio: Cameron Magee, the owner of avad3 Event Production , is a passionate and dedicated professional who began his journey in event production as a curious 12-year-old at his childhood church. Today, he leads a team of hard-working production professionals, having built avad3 from his college dorm room into a national production company, committed to both client success and the well-being of his team.

This post first appeared on nancy-rubin.com