Great leaders are driven towards a mission that everyone can get behind. They know how to motivate a team through honesty, transparency, and genuine passion. In the book Leading at a Higher Level, a study showed that leaders that had a strong vision had the highest performing teams. In short, leadership is vital.
The experience that a great leader creates is hard to describe, but you just feel better when you’re around them.
Great leaders also understand the importance of employee engagement, and what it means for bottom line profits. Gallup did a meta-analysis and found there is a direct correlation between a company’s level of employee engagement and performance.
I believe there are 5 important reasons why great leadership matters.
1. THEY HELP MOTIVATE AND GROW EMPLOYEES
“A manager says ‘go’ and a leader says ‘let’s go!’” – E.M Kelly
One of the things that makes a great leader awesome is that they want to let employees grow into better people, and therefore better employees. Great leaders encourage employees to submit new ideas and to learn new skills. Great leaders are always encouraging fun team building activities to make the team stronger and more unified, and make sure all employees are working well together.
2. THEY MOVE THE BUSINESS FORWARD
Great leaders have a vision, and are incredibly focused on realising that vision. I’ve seen bad leaders switch gears too many times. It’s distracting for employees, and it doesn’t really give them a sense of purpose.
Great leaders know when to say yes, when to say no, and how to move towards the goal. Bad leaders are usually very short-term focused, whereas great leaders are usually long-term.
3. THEY CREATE LOYAL CUSTOMERS
A lot of people don’t think about this enough, and how important this actually is. Usually, when we discuss leaders, it’s how they affect internal culture. Great leadership indirectly create loyal customers by creating an environment for employees to shine. A great leader who understands transparency, collaboration, and sharing of ideas, will create a culture for employees to please their customers.
4. THEY CREATE PASSIONATE BRAND AMBASSADORS
When you’re passionate about where you work, and who you work for, you can’t help but want to spread the good word about your business and what they do. This is powerful word-of-mouth marketing that employees gladly do for free.
They’re passionate about the brand because they can feel the leader’s passion. It’s infectious. Instead of hiring a massive sales force, let your entire company handle that for you. All a leader needs to do is create the environment for this to happen. The rest will take care of itself.
5. THEY INSPIRE OTHER LEADERS TO BE GREAT
Great leaders inspire other leaders to be great, both internally and externally. Everyone wants to be a great leader, since they know that it’s a really important trait to have for their business. I’ll often watch video interviews with leaders that inspire me, and try my best to emulate them in my every day.
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Blog published by Mike Coady.
