What if you could dramatically boost your team's productivity, engagement, accountability, and achievement of goals—without adding more hours to your day or resources to your budget? The key lies not in working harder, but in leading smarter. Through years of leadership development and talent alignment, we've identified five critical behaviors that, when consistently practiced, elevate good managers into exceptional leaders.
There are five leadership behaviors that, if mastered, would significantly improve your organization's performance. The first three are absolutes. The fourth and fifth might occasionally depend on the situation.
In this article you will learn:
- The Three Foundational Leadership Behaviors
- How to Delegate Effectively Without Micromanaging
- The Importance of Feedback in Leadership Success
- How Strategic Thinking Sets Leaders Apart
- Using a Consensual Leadership Style to Boost Team Buy-In
The Three Foundational Leadership Behaviors
The first three, which I frequently call the Trifecta because of their importance and their interdependence.
- Communication - Stating clearly what you want and expect from others; clearly expressing your thoughts and ideas; maintaining a precise and constant flow of information.
- Delegation - Enlisting the talents of others to help meet objectives by giving them important activities and sufficient autonomy to exercise their own judgment.
- Feedback - Letting others know in a straightforward manner what you think of them, how well they have performed and if they have met your expectations.
In the absence of clarity and consistency around expectations, your team doesn’t have any idea what you want from them. Some leaders do this intentionally, believing this provides more empowerment. It results in paralysis or minimal progress. It stems from the idea most people want to please, they want to make a contribution, and they want to avoid disappointing their manager.
So in the absence of good communication, because most people have very poor mind reading skills, they play it safe. Take very little initiative or what they perceive as risk. Some managers may think of this as freeing but it just feels like the dump and run when expectations are unclear.
How to Delegate Effectively Without Micromanaging
Notice the three big components of Delegation. It’s delegating important activities, not just menial tasks. It also includes providing sufficient autonomy to exercise their own judgment which is the farthest thing from micromanaging. This isn’t spoonfeeding one task at a time with instructions of “do this, and then come back to me and I will give you the next step.” It’s laying out the big picture.
Describing what success will look like in the end, what it won’t look like, and the benefits that should be realized are critical. Then providing a few guardrails and milestones to ensure the train doesn’t run off the rails, allows for creativity and accountability for actions and results.
The Importance of Feedback in Leadership Success
Feedback is critical for team members to know the extent to which they did or didn’t meet your expectations. It’s no longer acceptable to say “if I didn’t say anything to you, assume you did the job well.”
People need to know what they did well, why you liked it, what the impact of their work was, what they might still improve or do differently the next time. One of my favorite expressions: In the absence of information people will make stuff up and the things they make up will blow your mind!
Communication, Delegation, and Feedback are like a three-legged stool. If any of them are not used, underused, or otherwise not balanced with the other two, the stool will topple, and your leadership will be ineffective.
How Strategic Thinking Sets Leaders Apart
The fourth leadership practice is Strategic - Taking a long-range, broad approach to problem solving and decision making through objective analysis, thinking ahead and planning. Most of the time this ability to think longer term, anticipating different obstacles or hiccups, makes it easier for team members to follow your lead because you’re a bit more predictable.
In this manner, if you aren’t around but have been communicating the strategy all along, direct reports can make decisions in your absence consistent with the strategy you've laid out. On rare occasions, being Strategic, is unrealistic. This is when the tides are constantly changing.
Remember COVID? Every day was a rollercoaster. Laws, regulations, “best practices” changed by the hour! Planning 6 months out was not only futile, but would have caused great frustration because soon after a strategic plan was announced, it would have had to be amended. Eventually, we needed to start planning a week out, then a month, then a few months, but in March and April, for many, it was a matter of playing defense.
Using a Consensual Leadership Style to Boost Team Buy-In
The fifth leadership practice is Consensual – not consensus! Consensual is valuing the ideas and opinions of others and collecting their input as part of your decision making process. This is not striving for 100% consensus - you still get to decide, but by sincerely listening to input from others and considering those contributions, your team members feel heard and the likelihood of increasing their buy-in and efforts go up significantly. Studies have shown, even if someone’s suggestions are not used or followed, they will accept a different decision or solution simply because they were heard.
Like Strategic, Consensual doesn't work in every situation. In emergency situations, there just isn’t time for gathering and weighing everyone’s opinion. Think about triage in emergency rooms, a fire, some other natural or tragic disaster requiring fast, decisive, thinking and direction.
Final Thoughts
Generally speaking, Strategic and Consensual still make the top 5, but there may be times implementation of these leadership practices may be impractical. Communication, Delegation, and Feedback are always at the top!
For more information on these leadership practices and how your team can align the right ones with your strategic plan or current direction, check out The Strategic Leadership Alignment™
