Great leaders have been a source of inspiration for humanity throughout the ages. Over the course of human history, several methods and principle for effectively leading groups of people, sometimes as small as 2 or 3 people or sometimes as large as a nation, has evolved and have been studied. In the modern professional context, leadership generally involves creating a vision for the organization or team and motivating people to give in their efforts to fulfill that vision. In this article, let us look at the 7 leadership principles that drive organizations forward.
#1 Mission, excellence, and culture are the three most important things to always keep in mind.
The first and most important leadership principle is to always keep the mission, excellence, and culture of the organization at the forefront of your mind. The mission of a company lays out the overarching goals and objectives for the company. It offers an organizing focal point that, in the end, determines how decisions are made and how resources are distributed.
A mission statement should also motivate workers to comprehend the part they play in the bigger picture. Through participation in this MIT xPRO Leadership Principles Program, you will be able to develop to your fullest potential and assume leadership roles within your organization. You will be equipped to navigate the culture and networks of an organization in order to drive change and innovation by completing these four online courses offered by MIT xPRO.
A workgroup’s or an organization’s culture can be defined as the attitudes and behaviors that people have come to anticipate from one another within that workgroup or organization. Every company and every workgroup will have its own unique culture. The question that needs to be answered is whether or not a company is able to deliberately envision, create, and safeguard the culture that they want or whether or not they have a culture that develops by itself in a random fashion. The option in the first sentence is much better than the one in the second.
#2: Creating the right environment and inculcating pride:
Pride in one’s work is the single most undervalued (and unrecognized) factor in determining the overall quality of an organization’s culture as well as the enterprise’s ultimate level of success. Employee performance skyrockets whenever there is a strong sense of pride for the company. Again, improved performance can be attributed to an employee’s perception that their employer appreciates and values them.
Almost no supervisor gets out of bed in the morning with the intention of doing something that will lower employees’ pride in the company or send the message that workers’ contributions are not valued. Nobody has anything negative to say about this concept. However, far too few managers are able to say that they invest a significant amount of time and effort into cultivating pride and demonstrating appreciation.
#3: Generate success in both personal and professional spheres:
good leaders put in significant effort to ensure that their followers achieve success in both their professional and personal lives.
When we first developed this principle, the majority of businesses had already made a commitment to assisting workers in achieving success in their professional lives; however, only one outlier business had any idea what we meant by assisting workers in achieving greater success in their personal lives. Today, things are heading in a direction that is better than they were.
The best employees of today are not looking for that worn-out, old cliche known as “work-life balance” – as if they were on a teeter-totter where anything that advances one side must come out of the side of the other. Instead, what workers of today want is work-life integration, which means that they want their jobs to be meaningful components of their overall lives.
The workers should be aware that there will be times when work needs to interfere with their personal lives. And it is the responsibility of employers to acknowledge the fact that the personal lives of their employees will occasionally interfere with their work. When companies fully embrace this principle, they find that their employees’ personal and professional lives do not compete with one another but rather complement and enhance one another’s experiences.
#4: Protect the rights of employees
What could be more demotivating to a great employee than having to work side-by-side with a coworker who is either incompetent or unpleasant day in and day out? A small amount. However, an unacceptable number of people who call themselves “leaders” make the decision each day to put up with constant negativity or poor performance from members of their team.
Do you think it will be the employee who was a great asset to the company or the employee who caused problems and who will still be working there after two years if this pattern is allowed to continue unchecked by a leader? There is no way that they will be a wonderful employee, and that is a HUGE problem.
This unfortunate dynamic is so prevalent for a variety of reasons, some of which include a lack of awareness of the issue, fear of conflict, misguided staff discipline practices (or a lack thereof), and leaders who simply do not know how to address the problem.
#5: Encourage and promote open discussion and analysis
Today’s workers are more concerned than ever before about the decision-making process that their employer employs. When it is not possible to provide employees with the opportunity for input, good leaders make it a point to communicate with their employees, explain the situation to them, and even teach them after the fact.
Educating and involving employees in the decision-making process of the company has four major advantages:
When leaders seek the input of their employees or take the time to explain their decisions, employees report feeling valued and appreciated. And you should want that because it reflects your commitment to the second principle.
When leaders open up the information and processes that go into making difficult organizational decisions to their employees, they give those employees a significant opportunity to learn and grow in their roles. You, too, are interested in this (refer to principle No. 3).
If leaders ask their employees for their input and give it serious consideration, they will occasionally arrive at a choice that is superior. And this is a positive thing for…well, it should be pretty obvious why.
When employees understand the reasoning behind decisions, they are better able to put those plans into action. This is because they have an improved ability to differentiate between expected and unanticipated roadblocks along the way, which allows them to execute plans better.
#6: Effective leaders are adept at mediating conflict.
The inability or unwillingness to address conflict is the leading cause of failure among newly promoted supervisors, even when those supervisors otherwise would have been successful. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise because 1) those who accept leadership roles will inevitably be exposed to conflict, 2) many good and talented people aren’t naturally equipped to handle conflict well, and 3) rarely do new supervisors receive meaningful training on how to best address the various types of conflict they are likely to encounter. However, it is important to keep in mind that 1) conflict is inevitable for those who accept a leadership position.
The best workgroups are led by someone who has established a culture at work in which intellectual conflict is encouraged and even celebrated, while conflict on a personal level is quickly addressed and resolved.
#7: Encouraging others to take pleasure in their work.
The opposite of having fun, work is not and should not be considered to be in any way. The most effective leaders are those who are willing to embrace the notion that teams can work extremely hard while also producing laughter, spontaneity, and joy in the process.
It has been discovered that counting the number of times people smile and laugh is a reasonably accurate proxy for determining whether or not employees are actively engaged in their work.