Business Leaders: Shaping Visionary Leaders in the Modern Workplace

Leadership development starts from within, but an impactful relationship with your manager can accelerate your growth. While self-perception and innate confidence provide the foundation, your relationship with manager serves as a critical catalyst. Through mentorship, candid feedback, and strategic opportunities from your manager, you can amplify your inherent leadership abilities. It's the synergy between self-belief and external guidance that enables holistic leadership growth. An empowering relationship with manager complements your self-perception, together shaping you into an effective leader. Understanding the difference between leadership and management is key in this context: leadership is about setting direction and inspiring change, whereas management focuses more on executing plans and overseeing day-to-day operations. For more insights into effective business strategies, discover 'Operations Optimization: Your Guide to Streamlining Business Operations.'

Believing in yourself is what sets you apart as a true inspiration, someone who exudes confidence, leadership qualities, and serves as a shining example to others.

Respect is not handed to leaders on a silver platter; it is something they earn through their actions and character. Trust is not automatically bestowed upon leaders; it is something they build over time with the people they lead. In situations where someone simply inherits a position or is given a job without earning it, they may have a title but not the trust and respect that true leaders command. These two things are entirely different.

One of the greatest advantages of being an entrepreneur or running a small business is the ability to shape it around the people who contribute to its success. This entails nurturing the leader that your business needs and creating an environment that allows them to thrive.

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If you're seeking to cultivate leaders within your organization, it's important to consider how guiding the path to the desired outcome through a journey map is just as relevant within your company's culture as it is for generating leads in sales, showcasing thought leadership in action.

Here are some key points to keep in mind:

- Fulfillment: While measuring employee output and satisfaction is important, it's crucial to remember that employees are individuals with diverse qualities, talents, and skills. Fulfillment is a challenging aspect of employee engagement, and Kathleen Hogan, who has extensive experience at LinkedIn, shares valuable insights on the 5 P's of employee fulfillment, based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

- Self-awareness = Success: Encouraging self-awareness of strengths and weaknesses is vital for effective leadership development. Transparency, feedback, and mentoring strategies are key elements in fostering self-awareness and growth.

- Rapport: Building relationships and involving others is essential in mentorship and leadership. The reciprocal gift of the mentoring process, as explained by Andreas Von Der Heydt, Director of Talent Acquisition at Amazon, emphasizes the importance of shared vision and matching leaders with mentees.

- Let people learn from failures: Learning from failures is a crucial aspect of growth and leadership. Dharmesh Shah's inspiring story at Inbound2019 highlights the importance of accepting mistakes, continuous improvement, and leading by example.

- Leadership styles: The blog post also explores different leadership styles, such as hands-on deck leadership and authentic leadership, emphasizing the importance of supporting others, fostering a positive culture, and building trust within teams.

Remember, nurturing leaders within your organization requires careful consideration of these factors within your company's unique culture and context.

1. Fulfillment

While employee output and satisfaction are quantifiable, it is essential to remember that employees are, in fact, people who exhibit a vast array of contrasting human qualities, talent, and skills.

Employee fulfillment is a crucial aspect of determining employee engagement, and it can be quite challenging. So, how do you ensure that your employees feel fulfilled?

Some companies may question the need to provide additional value to their employees, arguing that they were aware of the job requirements and are already being compensated for their work. However, this perspective overlooks the fact that employees are individuals with a wide range of human qualities, talents, and skills.

Instead, it is important to recognize that fulfillment goes beyond simply meeting the basic requirements of the job. Kathleen Hogan, who has extensive experience with LinkedIn, offers valuable insights into employee fulfillment based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

According to Hogan, employee fulfillment can be summarized by the five P's: Payment, Perks, People, Pride, and Purpose. Payment refers to providing tangible compensation for an employee's skills and results. Perks, such as remote work options, can enhance job satisfaction and productivity. The importance of people is highlighted, as working with supportive and inspiring colleagues can make a significant difference. Pride comes from feeling a sense of belonging and wanting others to be a part of the same organization. Finally, purpose is crucial, and creating a culture of giving can help employees find meaning in their work.

While the specific position of each "P" may vary depending on your company's culture, vision, and purpose, the overall goal is to create an environment that fosters employee fulfillment.

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Katheleen Hogan, who has worked with LinkedIn for over 15 years by 2018, shares great insights on how the 5 P's of employee fulfillment is a pyramid of basic needs an employee has while at any company. Enhance your leadership and operational strategies with the valuable insights provided in 'Operations Optimization: Your Guide to Streamlining Business Operations.'

She based her theory on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Let's take a look at what Katheleen says:

1. Payment: The core that keeps your newest asset fulfilling their most basic, personal needs. The tangible compensation of their skills, executions, and results: their salary.
2. Perks: There is no hidden secret that we are a remote team, and we LOVE to work from different places. Remote work has come to stay long in the business. Around 66% of USA companies allow remote work and has proven that 45% of homeworkers report that they get more done from their houses!
3. People: If I can be honest, I enjoy the people I work with. Workdays can be thrilling and exciting, but from time to time, they can come as messy. Leaders surrounding and mentoring in different areas do make a difference. Attitudes and behaviors around messy days will always determine the importance of learning from mistakes.
4. Pride: It comes as a reaction of belongingness, where an employee feels like a part of something that they want everybody else to be a part of.
5. Purpose: We often have this existential crisis, where you wonder in front of the mirror if what you see is what everybody sees or just slightly different? Finding purpose is not an easy cake, but creating a culture of giving in your organization will make things easier.

Whether you agree or not which position each "P" takes, this gets settled by your corporate culture, purpose, and vision shared with your team.

2. Self-awareness = Success

Understanding and acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses may seem like a simple task, but it can be challenging to admit them. However, effective personal leadership development encourages individuals to be honest with themselves and others. While human resources strive to uncover the hidden traits and behaviors of potential candidates, it often takes a couple of weeks after hiring to truly get to know them.

Effective leadership will come as a proven growth of self-awareness in these three aspects:

• Transparency: While building relationships, it is essential to be precise. Everyones' development requires expectations, goals, strategy, and opportunities. When you bring honesty to the table, employees will do the same for you.
• Feedback: Feedback encourages healthy relationships, insights, and innovation. This open communication nurtures thought leaders and positive behaviors. For us at gardenpatch, having quarterly feedback round within the team has been terrifying yet inspiring to do better. Positive feedback from peers strengthens skills and polishes weaknesses.
• Mentoring Strategy: Similar to working with a sales funnel, leadership is a constant work of nurturing skills and competencies. While you take care of your potential clients while funneling efforts, a great leadership development program will encourage the leader your business need.
  
  

3. Rapport

Benjamin Franklin once said: "Tell me, and I forget, teach me, and I may remember, involve me, and I learn." While being a mentor is not a light responsibility, mentoring and mentorship requires the willingness to support others while being focused on the same shared vision.

Andreas Von Der Heydt. Director of talent acquisition at Amazon shares on this insightful post, the reciprocal gift of the mentoring process.

He explains how both mentor and mentee build a relationship if great leaders in which both have a shared vision.

According to Andreas and some other recent studies, there are four elements for a successful mentoring process:

Matching leaders.

Since building a relationship is essential, matching a mentee with a great leader is necessary.

When you think of leaders, did you go back to a male person you have in mind? Female leaders are a thing. WE are a thing.

A Harvard Business study shows that men most times recognized as leaders than women do, that but in fact, women are more effective in leadership roles than men. Before you get mad at me for this and start a war on who is best, it is vital to set aside gender and choose a great leader who is learning continuously, has leadership potential, meets your culture, and has excellent work-relationships.

Shared-goals.

Shared goals are the key to focussed efforts. Employee engagement has o do everything with this.

What is it your business needs? These are the goals we mentioned earlier: customer service, quality of work, quick execution, successful sales process. Setting the goals within your company will help clear the vision for your entire organization.

Shared-goals help through leadership to roll the ball (in the right way), so everyone can handle an amount of responsibility and a growth opportunity.

Great leaders need great mentors.

"Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could." — Steve Jobs

There is a wide range of leadership skills we can talk about considering the industry belongs to. Here at gardenpatch, we believe the below are the most important:

• Integrity
• Transparency
• Passion
• Purpose
• Enthusiasm

4. Let people learn.

During our visit to Inbound2019 a few years ago, we were delighted by many great speakers during the conference, but one that stood out to me and touched my heart was Dharmesh Shah's.

While I felt I could relate a lot to his personality, he earned my full respect with his humble approach to his fears, and desires, and how he was scared of so much and how far he overcame adversity and has helped Hubspot get to where they are today.

Often being bold means accepting you did wrong, and you get to be better. Then failing again, and realizing that there is still room for improvement, and then again, learning that you are a work in progress, as is your team and even your business, the company you work with, your role, and your leadership.

The best way to earn respect, earn trust, and earn the right to lead others is to lead not by word but by example. When I know you genuinely believe what you say -- because your actions support what you say -- then I trust you. Then I respect you. Then I follow you.

While each company evolves and has its processes, teams, roles, style, organization, culture, and administration overall, here are a few leadership styles I wanted you to consider through your leadership development process:

Hands-on deck leadership.

While execution and actions are what "move the needle" as we call it at gardenpatch, many times, as a leader, you work your ways to support others to accomplish their work. Shared visions are not a title, they are a group of people executing and using their leadership traits to ensure a job is well-done, completed, and somehow rewarding.

Go there and get dirty, go there and be one with the team, get there, and provide solutions.

Authentic Leadership.

Growing your culture means more than just establishing specific policies and creating rules. It goes from the tools, tasks, and how the intangible sense of collaboration, openness, and trust feels even during meetings.

While you expect your leadership team, business, or specific roles to checkmark the task list, how do you do to transmit the sense of urgency, priority, integrity, execution, and vision to them? Great leaders make great mentors.

Your company's culture should be an extension of the leadership you've nurtured in your team.

Planned Leadership.

While many companies focus on the present, you may need to be one step ahead of your plan. On the global trends of the 2019 report, they show that 99% of the surveyed companies are taking action to prepare for future work. While the often gaps in HR and talent acquisition are constant and hardly filled, but an integrated people anchored in the organization can close those gaps and help relieve the distance.

Shifting positions to fill these gaps is a path of experimenting with new technologies, betting on different leadership styles, and the potential to develop a higher return by growing strategic competencies and specialized skills.

Rewarding leadership.

While people share your efforts, appreciate their salary, and probably the benefits and flexibility in your business, rewards are often an appreciation manner more rewarding than a tangible gift.

Leaders and leadership have this in common; they praise the ones who deserve recognition. Chances are you needed everyone's support to pull it off together, point out what they did great and the areas of improvement, as their leadership grows, their sense of responsibility, accountability, and confidence arises.

Rewards can be differentiated with an equal gratification among your team and performers, reward when it's needed, provide feedback as you see fit.

Trustful Leadership.

Before hiring, you saw something in the candidate, an exceptional leadership potential, a great executor, a highly responsible being, or an innovative, creative mind. Human resources hired them probably without actually ensuring what you see, hear, and seem was the truth.

Attracting talent requires an emphasis on human values, vigilance on pay equity, diversity and inclusion, careful listening to employee needs and a leadership development program. The laws of attraction are a real theory that we can extend to the workplace, you attract the people you want to work with. If you're going to trust your team, their actions, their work, and their flexibility come with action and reaction.

Although you may shift or exchange a few items from this piece of advice, remember, all great leaders have something in common: Purpose, goals, and love for others. Do your best to keep nurturing the leader your business needs.

Conclusion

Effective leadership requires a proven growth of self-awareness in various aspects. Transparency, feedback, mentoring strategies, and building rapport are all crucial elements that contribute to successful leadership development.

Transparency is essential in building relationships and setting clear expectations and goals for everyone involved. When leaders bring honesty to the table, it encourages employees to do the same, fostering trust and open communication.

Feedback is another key component of effective leadership. By providing regular feedback, leaders can nurture positive behaviors and encourage innovation within their team. Positive feedback from peers can strengthen skills and help individuals polish their weaknesses.

Mentoring strategies are also vital in leadership development. Just like working with a sales funnel, leadership coaching requires constant nurturing of skills and competencies. A great leadership development program will focus on cultivating the leader your business needs and ensuring that they have the necessary support and guidance to succeed.

Lastly, building rapport is crucial in mentoring and mentorship. By involving others and sharing a common vision, leaders can inspire and support their team members. Matching leaders with mentees who share similar goals and values is essential in building strong relationships and fostering growth.

In addition to these aspects, it is important for leaders to lead by example and let others learn from their experiences. Being open to growth, accepting mistakes, and continuously improving is key to earning respect, trust, and the right to lead others.

Different leadership styles, such as hands-on deck leadership, authentic leadership, planned leadership, rewarding leadership, and trustful leadership, can all contribute to the overall success of a leader and their team.

Effective leadership is a continuous journey of self-awareness and growth. By focusing on transparency, feedback, mentoring, and building strong relationships, leaders can create an environment that fosters success and brings out the best in their team.

Discover comprehensive strategies for business excellence in 'Operations Optimization: Your Guide to Streamlining Business Operations.'