If you start researching you can see that most companies have leaders that have strong operational that are needed to maintain perfect organization and productivity in each team. Which of course is crucial when running a business.
The lack of employees with know-how, experience, and confidence can bring down your business and cause problems that can not be fixed in time. In some cases, this means total anarchy in the company, missing respect, and managerial hierarchy – mostly seen in the companies or startups where the lean organizational structure is practiced.
But it does not matter if you are a new small business owner or a startup founder. Having a strong leadership and management in the company is the key to running a successful business.
According to a research done in 2015 among 6,000 senior executives analyzed only 8 percent of them turned out to be strategic leaders or those effective at leading transformations. But what it takes to be a strategic leader to run a company in good times and bad times through different transformations? Here are several tips that you can practice to become a successful strategic leader:
- Distribute responsibility – one of the things you can do regarding the distribution of responsibilities is to know your own current and future role and responsibilities of the company after which to identify each employee’s duties and level of responsibilities. That way you will have a clear structure of roles and responsibilities in the company as well as you can be informed of the potential each employee has as well as be ready for possible restructure if needed
- Be honest and open when sharing information – employees prefer honesty instead of internal PR and missing out of important company information that is considering their work position and future in the company. So being open is hones can build strong loyalty towards you and the company
- Have several ways for raising and testing ideas – from brainstorming to A/B testing, from encouraging one to one meetings with team members to open discussions, there are multiple ways to bring out ideas within the team and boost team work and team spirit.
- Create a safe environment for failure – most people have fear of failing which can lead to demotivation, lack of contributing to team work and fear of losing their job. That is why it is crucial to use methods like test-driven development, eliminate the blame game points and reward some failure moments, divide failures into: preventable, complexity-related, and intelligent mistakes and deal with them with a different approach, and create best practices for safety and risk management to avoid unavoidable failures in complex systems.
- Give access to another strategist – diversity and different point of view can always be beneficial for the company, especially when it comes to strategies from different industries or teams that can see things objectively and share ideas for improvement.
- Provide opportunities for experience-based learning – real-life experience has often shown that working in outside environment can boost learning, brainstorming, developing new ideas and boosting team work. Having that combined with opportunities like month climbing, cycling, fun games, swimming etc can give surpassing results among the team
- Hire for transformation – not just to fill in someone else’s spot. If your company is growing and developing, then hiring new competencies is an important requirement for seeking executive talent from outside your organization.
- Bring your whole self to work – embrace the fact that you can be vulnerable. Too often we avoid difficulties, challenges, and conflicts with others because we’re afraid of the consequences of speaking up. But, if we engage in those kinds of conversations, we can increase our ability to resolve conflicts and create deeper connections.
- Find time to reflect – period for you to create a good time-management schedule, self-retrospective, and organization as well as one-thing-at-a-time focus
- Let the leadership development be your ongoing practice – don’t push yourself to bring results in a short period of time. Unleashing leadership potential in all employees will help you develop your leadership skills as well, boosting team spirit and helping company growth.