Transforming Managers into Leaders

In today’s rapidly changing conditions, you might be feeling the need to transform the transactional approach of your managers to a more holistic approach befitting true leaders. This will necessitate creating a shared purpose and meaning on all levels viz. individual contributors, managers, and the team.

This article explores how we can transform the culture to create more leaders instead of managers.

The word ‘manager’ would mean doing various tasks such as managing budgets, assigning tasks, creating reports, maintaining data, etc. Whereas being a successful leader is about much more than just managing everyday transactions. The real essence of a ‘leader’ is in building, coaching, and motivating a team of individual performers. It’s about setting clear and relevant goals, monitoring team performance, providing feedback, and coaching the team members to give their very best.

Even though both the manager and leader roles require some common functional skills, the leader needs additional skills in communication effectiveness, strategy, team building, and workforce development.

The key aspect to evaluate for choosing managers to evolve into leaders is to figure out who possesses the potential to transcend beyond their current transactional responsibilities. Especially those who can cultivate the soft skills necessary to operate as a leader. Let’s list down the key traits of an effective leader:

Strategic planning

Strategic planning is the ability to clarify where you want your team to be in the future. Leaders partner with their teams to define clear and measurable goals. They help their team members develop an actionable plan for achieving the objectives. While focusing on the bigger picture and long-term vision of the organization, a great leader is willing to actively listen to the team members’ inputs and sense the situational dynamics. They have the cognitive agility to adapt to the changing macroeconomic trends. He/She is willing to let go of flawed approaches and devise new methods to become effective as a leader. Furthermore, a leader needs to assess their natural style of leadership and fine-tune it as per the objectives and intended results.

Accountability for results

An effective leader holds their team members accountable for achieving the results. They nudge the team to shift the fixed mindset of average performance and stretch their capacity to achieve super performance. Unshackling limiting beliefs and liberating people to perform are the key traits of great leadership. A strong leadership value-add is to enable resilience in the team for facing adverse situations and exhibiting the tenacity to achieve the objectives. Such a leader focuses on removing those belief blockers that manifest in negative behaviors such as blaming, complaining, excuse-making, etc. They provide timely feedback, encourage the team to adapt their methods, ?and orient them towards workability.

Empowerment

Leaders understand the importance of autonomy and give their team the freedom to try new approaches. It can seem simple and quick to take over the meeting and direct the team to perform specified steps to fix the issues. Instead, transformational leaders allow their team members to work on the problems themselves. Rather than prescribing a single way to fix an issue, they ask introspective questions and facilitate deeper thinking to expand the team member’s bandwidth for overcoming the issues/ challenges.

Team Engagement

A leader who can effectively engage their team members during 1-on-1 and group meetings and provide feedback on time is most sought after by their team. Such a leader inspires and ensures that everyone is working towards a common goal. Transformational leaders invest their time in fostering a positive work environment to build trust within their teams. They connect their long-term vision with the individual goals of their team members, thus ensuring alignment.

The leader actively seeks feedback from upper management as well as their team members on how they’re doing in engaging their team. They process these inputs and refine their approach and leadership style. High-touch leaders tailor messages, refine the format, and fine-tune their behavioral style to match the situation to achieve the intended outcomes.

Digital savvy

A forward-thinking leader leverages technology as a strategic empowerment tool to elevate the team’s performance. He/She improves the team member’s use of tech apps and modern digital techniques to foster a more data-powered and insightful working environment. They harness technology to personalize communications to better influence changes in the team’s behavior. Data and analytics allow savvy business leaders to address bottlenecks, pinpoint opportunities, and refine the process.

Coaching

Great leaders invest their time and resources in developing their team members to manifest their full potential. Instead of ‘command and control’, they focus on guiding and inspiring them to give their best.

These leaders understand the best practices of performance management viz. creating clear expectations, providing consistent feedback, and addressing the performance blockers in real time. These best practices not only yield a higher performance but also create a winning culture that attracts other great performers to want to be a part of this team. Thus, it substantially increases the organization’s ability to attract and retain top talent.

All high-performing organizations make extensive use of role-playing as a coaching technique. This role-play practice has proven effective in helping teams improve assertiveness, decision-making, influencing, navigating difficult conversations, etc.

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Developing tomorrow-minded leadership skills requires continuous inner growth by the manager coupled with the elegance to motivate the team for persistent progress! This transformation is an ongoing journey of continual adaptation and improvement. It will lead to an increase in team engagement, individual capacity, and growth for the entire organization.