A Simple Framework for Effective Leadership
By: Nicole Laidler
Leaders are pivotal in crafting a compelling vision, boosting productivity, and fostering innovation.
Successful leadership involves harmonizing the organization's goals with individual team members' aspirations.
Western Continuing Studies instructor Peter Sherriff has spent most of his career facilitating leadership training programs to help organizations identify and nurture high-potential talent. During that time, he worked with other adult educators to develop a stripped-down Leader-Manager Competency Framework to help current and future leaders stay on track.
A competency is an attribute or skill a leader needs to do his job effectively, Sherriff explains.
“Some organizations create a complex competency framework that nobody understands it. They say: in this leadership role, you are accountable for 10 to 20 things,” he says. “That sets the leader and the company up for challenges. Nobody can excel at that many things across the board.”
Sherriff’s approach boils the leadership framework down to four key competencies:
“If you keep it simple, people understand it and remember it too,” he notes. “When a manager gets up in the morning, they know their job is to be awesome at these four things.”
Sherriff cautions organizations against measuring leadership ability based on transformation and delivery alone. “Too often, we measure leaders by profit margin or market share.” Meeting economic benchmarks is important, he says, but if an organization experiences a high rate of staff turnover due to poor management, that profit may come at a high cost.
“We need to look at how leaders communicate and engage with others within the organization and how they lead change,” he says. “Measuring what you do and how you do it have to go hand in hand.”
As organizations navigate the post-pandemic world, the ability to connect with employees and provide clear direction and inspiration for the road ahead are leadership traits that could make all the difference.
In addition to focusing on the four components of his Leader-Manager Competency Framework, Sherriff offers this advice to anyone working in a leadership role: “Never stop learning.”