How to Unlock Your Greatest Leadership Potential

For a leader to reach their greatest potential they will need to develop the “right” knowledge, skills, and abilities that are required for success and become adept at positioning themselves in the places of most opportunity. Awareness of the key elements that are needed from a leadership development perspective combined with an understanding of the environmental aspects that amplify career opportunities allows leaders to be thoughtful about their career development. Below are 5 critical factors for leaders to unlock their greatest potential.

1.     Meaningful Work

If a leader’s work is fulfilling because it contributes to their view of the greater good, draws on personal strengths, and gives them meaning they will be committed, enthusiastic, and focused even during the most trying of times. We have all witnessed the magic that can occur when a capable leader is in a role that aligns to their core meaning. Unfortunately, leaders can often find themselves in situations where their leadership role is disconnected from their purpose, making it difficult to lead with the passion, drive, and engagement needed to demonstrate their best self. 

Research from Wharton Business School shows that we experience up to three times higher levels of motivation, engagement and productivity when our work is centered on meaningful activities. Meaningful work acts as a magnet for maximizing a leader’s effort, intellect, emotional and social intelligence, which are necessary for one to achieve their full potential. Scientific studies show that making progress towards meaningful goals is one of the major causes of the brain to release a neurotransmitter called dopamine. This chemical is often called the “feel good” neurotransmitter because it provides feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.

There is no perfect job and leaders will have to do activities that aren’t fun or that they don’t like to do. The point here is that if you are not able to find a connection between your role and a meaningful future then you will struggle to reach your highest potential. More importantly, research conclusively shows that those who fail to find high meaning and engagement at work are three times less likely to have life satisfaction and happiness outside of work. This fact alone should make us all continually search for work situations that are meaningful and realistic.

The list below can help you assess if your leadership role is connected to a meaningful and realistic future:

• Has goals that allow you to lead within your value set
• Consistently creates opportunities for you to utilize your strengths
• Allows you to exhibit consistent levels of excellence
• You have a clear vision of desired outcomes
• Allows you to be emotionally committed
• Generates high energy and enthusiasm within you
• You feel great commitment to the organization, work group, and role

2.     A Manager That Actively Supports Your Career Growth

My favorite quote from the Gallup Organization is: “The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world-class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.” Companies spend countless dollars on nice facilities, fair and equitable pay, and state of the art technology but what is more important than all of these other factors combined is the employee’s relationship with their immediate manager.

There is only one way for managers to build relationship with their employees, and it is by investing their most precious resource—TIME. By time, I mean energy invested in asking questions and listening to understand an employee’s goals, motivations, strengths, and weaknesses. The insights gained from these conversations allows the manager to provide effective guidance, feedback, and coaching for enhancing their employees’ development and career growth. Having a manager that actively supports your career growth is critical to reaching your potential.

3.     A Senior Level Mentor

Effective management is important but there is another level of leadership support that is necessary to maximize your access to potential growth opportunities. Most managers face one or more of the following challenges with helping you to develop your career.

• Limited visibility makes them unaware of progression opportunities outside their units
• Performance pressures discourage them from exporting their best talent
• Competing priorities make it difficult for them to focus on exploring progression opportunities

These dynamics make it important for you to find a senior level mentor who can help advance your career in ways your manager may not be able to support. A mentor will be able to have a broader view of potential future opportunities, introduce you to their peers, and be an advocate for high-level development opportunities that are outside your managers scope of influence. Below are some of the improved career outcomes associated with having a mentor.

• Higher compensation
• Greater number of promotions
• Higher degree of career satisfaction and motivation

4.     Developing Emotional and Social Skills

Most employees are promoted into leadership positions because they have distinguished themselves from their peers by demonstrating advanced abilities in problem-solving and getting things done. This is one of the primary reasons why getting results and solving problems tend to be the most developed skill-sets for new leaders. We have all either witnessed or been directly impacted by the familiar story of the strong performer with great technical skills that gets promoted to a leadership position and struggles because they haven’t yet developed their ability to succeed with the relational aspects that are needed to effectively lead.

Developing social and emotional intelligence is critical for leaders because of widespread changes to the organizational environment which has fundamentally changed how leaders must perform. These shifts include:

• Colleagues, employees and stakeholders that work across multiple time zones, cultures, and customer segments
• Increase in matrixed reporting complicating roles, authorities and work flow
• An abundance of information that can complicate decision making
• Work that requires more collaboration from experts, stakeholders, and teams

Since most of what leaders get done is accomplished by motivating, guiding, and influencing others, developing these important emotional and social skills are required for reaching your leadership potential. There are many books, research papers, articles, and training to help leaders develop their emotional and social intelligence. Topics include self-awareness, emotional awareness and regulation, asking quality questions, crucial conversations just to name a few. Creating a foundational understanding of these concepts, frameworks, and best practices for demonstrating leveraging these resources is important but not enough. Practice and reflection are necessary for growth.

5.     A Practice of Reflection

Research shows that a regular practice of reflection increases a leader’s capacity to demonstrate emotional intelligence, social skills, and learning agility. To reach one’s full leadership potential they must have the discipline to look in the mirror and make changes to how they think and act when encountering new challenging situations where old habits are no longer sufficient.

A leader’s willingness to develop a reflective practice is an essential part of developing their abilities to achieve results, build strong relationships, and continuously learn. Research shows the outcomes of developing a regular habit of reflection provides the following benefits:

• An increase in self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and the capacity for emotional regulation and as a consequence the ability to inspire, influence and motivate others
• An enhanced ability to make decisions through good judgement
• A growth in the capacity to generate innovation through asking open questions and attending to the answers with an open mind

Understanding these 5 critical factors for unlocking your leadership potential allows leaders to make informed decisions about how to best develop their leadership skills and what situations will enable them to best grow as a leader.

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