7 ways to power up your leadership

Becoming a great leader is a constantly evolving journey that never ends. Those who are committed to honing their leadership practice typically spend considerable amounts of time learning about leadership, developing their leadership skills and reflecting on where they can improve.

As a result of the Great Resignation, leaders are arguably under greater pressure than ever before to lead in ways that enable their organizations to attract and retain the very best talent. Here are seven suggestions for how they can do just that:

1. Focus on what matters

As our brain’s main purpose is to keep us alive, it instinctively pushes us to what helps our survival, and draws us away from potential dangers, says Dr Audrey Tang, psychologist, wellness expert, and author of The Leader’s Guide to Mindfulness and The Leader’s Guide to Resilience. She points out that our brain is still catching up with technology, which means we can easily become distracted by social media notifications that excite our reward center and hinder our ability to focus.

“Realign with your ability to focus,” Tang advises. “Today, when you have a conversation, truly focus on the person you’re talking to and that interaction. The notifications will wait because you’ll get around to them. But you will connect, learn and grow so much more in that moment, and this will enhance your relationships and model good practice to others.”

2. Be authentic

“To power up your leadership, be human, be real,” says Uche Ezichi, an executive coach, international speaker and author of Count the Cost: The 5 Unspoken Rules of Sustainable Success.

“Being real is beyond the authenticity message of being yourself. It is being vulnerable. The fastest way to connect is through shared experiences and pain. Real leaders build trust quickly by sharing themselves.”

Ezichi believes that being real also means being “fun, fair and firm”. “Work is challenging, and real leaders ensure that fun and play are involved throughout the day,” he argues. “Be fair and inclusive to everyone, and watch out for your tendency to play favourites with some people. Firm means having boundaries around clear goals, milestones and realistic deadlines.”

3. Create psychological safety

Creating a psychologically safe environment is one of the most important things leaders can do to improve talent recruitment and retention within their organizations, according to Andrew Thornton, an entrepreneur, speaker and co-author of Putting the Heart Back into Business. “Through coaching and training you can create a culture where it is safe for people to fully be themselves,” he says. “By making time and space to really listen, you can trust people to make decisions without approval, appreciate them at every stage, encourage them to make mistakes and understand why they behave like they do.”

4. Empower your teams to find their superpowers

“Powering up your leadership means empowering your teams to find their superpowers,” says Kate Griggs, founder and CEO of charity Made By Dyslexia and author of This is Dyslexia. “When teams truly lean into their strengths and delegate their weaknesses, amazing things happen.”

Griggs herself is dyslexic and she suggests that dyslexia is a superpower that people can tap into. “When you are dyslexic you are very good at certain things, and very bad at others,” she says. “That puts us at an advantage because, from a young age, we have likely discovered our dyslexic thinking skills and practiced them lots – making us experts at them. We will also have discovered our dyslexic challenges and avoided them as much as possible – making us master delegators. For us, it is an absolute necessity to lean into our superpowers and delegate our challenges. This is one of the many leadership lessons everyone can learn from dyslexics.”

5. Make space to think

“One of the most important functions of a leader is to think, and to plan the direction, structure and culture of the organization,” says Neil Jurd OBE author of The Leadership Book and founder of skills platform LeaderConnect. “But, ironically, organizational culture often prevents this – filling our days with meetings and leaving us too busy to use our brains. This high activity rate makes you less intelligent and less productive; work is approached mindlessly as you confuse being present with being effective.”

6. Get to know your team

“For today’s leaders, one style definitely does not fit all,” explains Helen May, founder of diversity and inclusion consultancy Belonging@Work and author of Everyone Included: How to improve belonging, diversity and inclusion in your team. “In a world of hybrid working, belonging and wellbeing are critical priorities, so leadership must become identity-centred. That means getting to know each team member individually, recognizing their individual needs and becoming a facilitator who supports unique talents.”

7. Keep evolving

“Most leadership advice is derived from leaders in large, relatively stable companies,” says Joe O’Mahoney, professor of consulting at Cardiff University and author of Growth: how to build a consultancy in the digital age. “Most directors exist in small companies, however. For these small companies, growth requires leadership styles that evolve to suit the business stage.”

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