Effective Leadership

I recently was asked this question and I thought I would document what I believe is the definition of Effective Leadership.

Here are my thoughts on leadership: #

The definition of leadership varies by team #

To me, leadership is very much team dependent. There is no one book that will be able to explain the specifics of every single team’s dynamic and which can be applied to every single team. We all come from different perspectives, have different motivations, and the organizations themselves are different. I do not believe that we can simply apply a blanket rule for leadership. It’s also why it’s so hard to be taught. I don’t know anyone who has gone to a leadership seminar and really found it helpful. I do believe though that having discussions and reflections for leadership does build leadership skills.

Communication and Listening #

Every relationship between every person is different and getting to know how their personalities work is the key to good leadership. Good leadership is about communicating with everyone transparently, and making sure that there are always clear lines of communication. Team members should feel comfortable speaking to you about concerns and you should be able to emotionally be there to support others. It’s important to remember that folks are human, make mistakes, and have many amazing, exciting, and sometimes depressing things happening in their lives. Overall, I think the most important skill of a leader is listening skills and the ability to not only listen but empathize and put themself in another person’s shoes.

Transparency #

When decisions are being made which have no reason to be hidden, then these decisions should be made transparently and communciated to everyone. Unless personal information may be hidden, I believe that everyone should be able to gain access to information. Building trust within an organization is crucial. Financial information especially for volunteer and non-profit organizations should never be hidden.

Decisions based on data #

Every day, we make decisions which may effect both our ourselves and others. The worst thing to do is always base our decisions on ‘gut’ feel or instinct. We will sometimes be right but oftentimes be wrong. I believe that decisions should always be backed by data and supported by evidence.This data should be easy to understand for the stakeholders.

Delegation is the hard but rewarding #

Delegation is very difficult to do effectively because for community-based organizations they require people to be motivated to put in the time and effort. People who are volunteering in particular are potentially putting away their own personal time and energies into your cause. You need them to truly believe in the cause. Delegating tasks so that people listening to you will do what you ask is hard to do but once you can get them to do it then it is very rewarding. The skills they learn will serve longer than you think.

What I hope to understand more #

I believe leadership is a lifelong skill which we can all work on. Here are some things that I’m hoping to improve on.

I hope to learn how other leaders motivate themselves to wake up everyday and do what they do. I hope to learn how others handle stressful situations and how they persevere through challenges. I want to learn about how other students and other leaders handle innovation and how they apply it to the places they lead. I’d like to learn about listening strategies and how to listen better.

Finally, I’d like to learn about how leaders incorporate “fun” into leadership and the relationship they have with managing that with the pursuit of their organization goals.