Leadership through inspiration that what people keep talking about these days. We see many articles up and down the internet on social platforms and everywhere.
What they essentially promoting heavily so it stays in people mind and become a strong desire it is the newest model of leadership style the Transformational leadership style which nearly 89% of leader worldwide are not.
That new breed of leadership who are meant to be a visionary, inspiring, empathic, and compassionate. That all very well and good but is it enough to ensure the critical success factors of your organisation and carry your organisation in the future or make your organisation sustainable? I do not think so.
There are several types of leadership styles out there, and the main one is Autocratic, Laissez-Faire, transactional, Democratic, transformational notwithstanding bureaucratic and dictatorial plus the arrays of others styles people come up with. However, whichever style you choose do not confuse a leader with a manager.
What is a leader
The words "leader" and "leadership" are often used incorrectly to describe people who are actually managing. These individuals may be highly skilled, good at their jobs, and valuable to their organizations – but that just makes them excellent managers, not leaders.
"A leader is like a shepherd, he stays behind the flock letting the most nimble go out ahead whereupon others follow, not realising that all along they are being directed from behind - Nelson Mandela"
So, be careful how you use the terms, and don't assume that people with "leader" in their job titles, people who describe themselves as "leaders," or even groups called "leadership teams" are actually creating and delivering transformational change.
It is merely people or organizations that are being managed by such an individual or group think they're being led, but they're not. In fact, they may actually be no leaders at all, as no one carrying the vision of the organisation or inspire that vision in others.
Girlfridayz take on Leadership
Leadership has no rank do not confuse its position where you hold authority, you may be high in your company but that does not mean people respect you or voluntarily follow you or you are a leader.
Titled has no meaning when when it comes to leadership because the same title that make you think you somebody of high value and morale and people follows you like sheep and adulate you may be due to your success or money and will trip all over you to be near you, when the time come and that title is removed and all these people are nowhere to seen you just another regular person on the street of your town. You were never a leader but just a figure of authority.
A leader has volunteer followers because they believe in their cause and purpose and carry their vision in everything they do, a leader takes responsibility and accountability for the business and the people who work for the business. A leader will share credit amongst the team and failure amongst the team and will take responsibility for failure.
A leader will nurture is talent pool and coach the person(s) who can be a leader so they too acquire leadership skill to ensure the viability of the company in the future. A leader will support their staff and look after them so, in turn, they look after the customers of the business.
A leader is prepared to fail or be humiliated for what they believe in and want to see there vision come true and knows that the vision may not be achieved in their lifetime but still push through in the hope to achieve that goal.
Leadership is about responsibility not about rank, this is not about being in charge but taking care of the people in your charge. We all know a leader who sits at the top of an organisation they have authority but we would not follow them and we all know people in the organisation that are junior who made the choice to look after people on the right and left of them, that why we call them a leader and not necessarily hold a position of rank, but we would follow them voluntarily because they resonate with us, inspire us and they are also the ones who have the courage to go first to be humiliated for what they believed in and we would follow them.
It all goes back to the circle of safety where one needs to feel safe in the care of big brother and we will perform our utmost best for the company, or in your personal life if you support your friends and family when you need help they will support you too. This is just biology we have an inmate need to feel safe and be cared for and in turn, we will return that care to the person who gives it in many ways.
When we have the belief that someone has our back and believe in us. We are actually able to do extraordinary thing, but without that trust and these relationship it is really difficult to muster courage when we foster these relationships we actually have the courage to do what we want to do and the right things, we fearless but also courage is not without the absence of fear as courage is the response of your fear. Courage leader is inspiring and the purpose of their business is morality and ethics, not profit and market share which are the only results.
Look after your staff and lead with courage and by example and you will get good results plus profit. But the more effective leadership is the compassionate leader as opposed to empathetic leader. They tend to say that most effective compassionate leadership is between the ages of 45 to 55 yrs old and has the years grow it monotonically decreasing.
In business you need to know your staff by name and what make them ticks and not run a business where you are disconnected from your staff. In large organisation it is often seen that disconnected staff is the norme especially for the executive. However the role of the leader in a big organisation is to instill this culture in the CEO to care for the directors, the directors for the managers, and the managers care for their juniors staff, which means get to know their staff from the top to the way down. Each level of management should take the time to support and know their staffs.
If you are a leader of an organisation regardless of the size of the business and your staff are dissatisfied and unhappy and work in a fearful environment afraid to get dismissed if the number do not look good or the slightest mistake and complain to their peers that means they are not fulfilled in their job and performance tends to suffer also morale is low the dynamic of the working environment is negative hence high-turnover of staff who will either leave for your competitors or stay until something better come along or wait until a new management team emerge and hope for the best.
This a toxic environment and who to blame is the bosses has they have not instill a culture of looking after one another but concentrate on profit and metrics therefore playing a finite game and all they talk about his being the best and beat their competitor but not seen the visible crack in their organisation where their best talent are leaving and sometimes wonder why profit goes down as customers are leaving too.
In this case, the leader instead of being self-interested should take a hard look and re-address the situation to retain staff and customers, not by offering sweet and candy so to speak but genuinely look after their staffs, caring for their health and personal issues, feeling compassionate and they would be rewarded by high performing staff, morale up the roof and hard working to ensure the organisation remain profitable and instead of prioritising number and metrics they start playing the infinite game which is prioritising people over the metric and number and outdoing their competitor and support their staff teams to achieves the best they can do and in turn profits will rise and the vision will remain and goals laid out towards that vision completed which embodied the critical success factor of your organisation.
In Conclusion
In another word when you are working for an organisation you should feel that you are part of something bigger than yourself, and you are working toward the overall vision of the organisation hence finding common ground and all departments serving to advanced that cause for the greater good. This means you all co-operating with each other to achieve the overarching why of the organisation the vision.
We have a very clear why at Girlfridayz our cause our purpose our very existence is because
"We cherished the ideal of businesses working together in harmony and equal opportunities regardless of their size in a free society in which the concept of market share and support for one another is present. Trisha Amable CEO and Creator of Girlfridayz."
That why we are in business and whatever we do for our B2B customers serves that purpose, and for our B2C customers too.
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