How to Increase Your Presence as a Leader

The importance of leadership is now at an all time high. On one hand, we’ve faced more chaos and tumult in the last two years than some of us expected in our lifetimes. The global pandemic called for adaptation, new vision, clear sighted action, and new ways of thinking. That is to say -- it called for leadership. In addition, it’s clear that remote work is here to stay. Teams are now more commonly going to be working from home, connecting remotely, or coming to the office less frequently than before. Again, leadership is required at a whole new level.

Amidst all this, we have the reality that many businesses are losing employees left and right. Attrition rates are increasing, which may be a sign that leadership presence is lacking. One way to address this is to begin increasing your presence as a leader.

The Importance of Leadership

I believe that the importance of leadership is at an all time high right now. I also believe that good leaders respond to employee needs and feedback. (Sometimes feedback is directly given, sometimes you need to extrapolate it from trends, like lowered productivity, high attrition rates, or decreased morale.)

Good leaders are able to identify areas of weakness or struggle, and to then take action to bring about change and results. This can happen in many ways:

• Communicating with individuals or groups
• Getting buy-in from key stakeholders
• Changing current policies or procedures
• Shifting the organization's culture to be more impactful, engaging, collaborative, clear
• Reassessing the vision, purpose, and mission and ensuring they are clear to everyone
• Strategically hiring/firing to alleviate pressure and meet needs
• Respond to external factors that are creating stress for employees (like the pandemic)
• Address internal factors that are creating stress for employees (like unfair policies)

The morale, productivity, and general culture of your organization come back to its leadership. If something needs to change, the leader is instrumental in (and ultimately responsible to) make that happen.

What Would Happen in Your Business If….

• Imagine if you had more employee engagement.
• Imagine if you had a culture that was producing great results.?
• Imagine if your top talent stayed at your organization for the long term.

What would happen in your organization if those things were true? How amazing would that be??

The reality is, good leadership can be a pivotal part of making that happen. And increasing positive leadership presence is a key part of making that happen. The good news is, there is no such a thing as a natural born leader. That’s a good thing because it means that leadership can be taught.

Leadership, like any skill, can also be worked on every day. With better leadership, you're going to get better employee engagement, which means more productivity and profit, as well as more satisfaction within your role as a leader. There’s really no down side to improving your leadership skills!

Assess Yourself

The first thing that you need to do in order to start increasing your presence as a leader is to assess how you communicate and collaborate with other people. No matter how proficient you think you may be, this isn't the time to pat yourself on the back!

Instead, it's a time to understand who you are, what you currently do best, and where your skills might be lacking. Once you've assessed your current communication and collaboration work style it becomes easier to determine your goals as a leader, and to base those goals off of understanding your strengths and your weaknesses.

If you want to increase your presence as a leader, you need to set a goal around what you’re trying to achieve. Rather than assume you know what is needed, I suggest you create a goal after asking your colleagues what they think you need to do to develop as a leader. After all, leaning even more heavily into what you think of as your strengths may result in even more results that duplicate what you’re already getting. In reality, the next step of your leadership growth might be about unlearning or changing some of your current ways.

For that reason, feedback is often the easiest way to start getting truly better, even if you don’t love hearing it in the moment.

Tell Other People What You’re Doing

Your chances of reaching any goal increases significantly if you tell other people about it. A bit of public accountability can go a long way towards helping us stay committed to change, even when things get challenging.?

When you tell people around you, especially direct reports or colleagues closely connected to your position, it will help you stay accountable for the long run. It can also help to increase your relationships with these people, and to encourage them that change is coming.

For example, if you ask for feedback and learn that many employees are suffering from low morale because they’re constantly having to work late due to inefficiencies in the current system, as a leader you may create a goal identifying and eliminating the problem, and around recognizing and encouraging employees who are going above and beyond.

By simply communicating that you see the problem and that you are committed to fixing it, and by then sharing your goal with the team, you can increase morale, gain trust, and create personal accountability. (This is clearly a terrible path if your goal is to just hope it will all blow over. It’s only an approach worth taking if you’re serious about creating change!)

Seek Ongoing Feedback

The final step is to actively seek out and embrace feedback on how you're doing. This might be the hardest step, especially for a leader with an ego. However, it’s also one of the most important.

In order to create sustainable change that has the positive impact you desire, you need to be willing to hear from those who are being impacted by your actions and presence.

Make it your goal to check in with people on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and see how you're doing. Listen to their feedback and make adjustments from there. Communicate about what you’re doing, and how it’s working.

In the example above, for instance, you might know that you’ve scheduled a consultant to come in next month and provide systems upgrades that are designed to cut process times by 20%....but if your team doesn’t know that, from their perspective you aren’t keeping your word and nothing is changing. By letting them know that you’re taking action, and by remaining open to their feedback, you may see more success.

In this case, maybe you’ll receive feedback that your team is excited about that happening next month, but they honestly need more support from you now. Brainstorming a few short term solutions so alleviate the pressure until the consultation could help your employees feel seen and heard, and increase morale instead of allowing it to sink even lower.

Leadership Improvements Make an Impact

We all know that brainstorming solutions is great, but that without action nothing happens. And if nothing happens, then nothing ever changes.?

The reality is, leadership has to improve for your company to improve. The team will only go as far as the leader will take them, and everyone will make it a whole lot further with a leader that is willing to assess themselves, communicate with others, and seek regular feedback.

Interested in getting more tools to improve your leadership? Visit benniefowler1.com to learn more about leadership, performance, and how my team and I can help you improve right now.