Why Leadership Is Important
Leadership is important for several reasons but let’s be more precise – effective leadership is important, remembering that ‘the achievement of that something of value’ is a key outcome of leadership.
In business, a person who is responsible for other people's performance and conduct is expected to know what it means to lead them.
- Is that a natural talent?
- Is that a skill?
- Is that something you've been taught?
- How prepared are you?
While the achievement or result is important, so is the way it is achieved.
Every endeavour involves numerous stakeholders - all of which want their lives to be enriched in one or more ways by the experience and journey. The ability to harness the collective power of people is vital to achievement and continuous growth.
Leadership Is A Team Sport
Individual learning and excellence tend to dominate early careers where the focus is on professional and technical skill development. Being excellent at your craft or being recognised as a top tier performer is important and rewarding. This is the bedrock of management.
Leveraging and amplifying results through more people invariably requires a team and a high performing culture.
Research shows that business leaders who build cultural elements that drive performance (aka the ‘soft’ stuff – or better described as the ‘human stuff’) in equal measure to other focus areas, achieve returns for their businesses over the longer term, up to three times more than business leaders that don’t.
Business Benefits
Besides improving results, leadership development can create significant benefits for the business, including:
- Improved employee relationships and retention,
- Decreased costs,
- Higher levels of innovation,
- Attracting high quality talent, and
- Increased customer loyalty.
Leadership Is A Choice
The day-to-day impact of effective leadership is also lower levels of stress, improved communication and relationships, higher levels of energy and engagement and ultimately better results.
At a simple level this a choice. In contrast, ineffective leadership is at the heart of environments where stress is high, internal conflict is high, communication and relationships are strained and counterproductive and where there is division.
Leadership Is Key In Changing Times
The global environment today is subject to constant change, volatility, ambiguity, and uncertainty. The rate and pace of change is expected to increase, not decrease.
Business owners and executives understand that speed and agility are vital.
Centralised models of business which depend upon one person at the top of the organisation (the heroic leader and decision maker) is unrealistic and unsustainable.
Organisations based on distributed models of leadership are outperforming hierarchies and are also better able to adapt quickly.
Developing leaders is more important than ever before.
'The Chokehold On The Growth Of Any Business Is Always The Psychology And Skills Of The Business Leader.'
~ Tony Robbins ~
As Tony Robbins has espoused for many years, the chokehold on the growth of any business is always the psychology and skills of the business leader.
Taking the business to the next level requires a different mindset, set of skills and focus. Doubling down on more operational issues or strategies with the same mindset is unlikely to make a difference.
Similarly, business owners who find themselves spending a large part of their time being a business operator understand that something has to change so they can function as a business owner – so they make space to work on their business and not in it.
Change must always begin with these individuals.
Develop More & Better Leaders
The goal of the Business Leaders Roundtable is to develop more and better leaders for the times and challenges ahead. It pays to prepare ahead of time!
Leadership is an often used and rarely well defined term. Discover what leadership is, what it is not and some of the latest thinking on leadership. More
Leadership is a broad term. Let's delve into why effective leadership is important and how it harnesses the collective power of people to achieve something of value. More
How can you judge whether a leader is good, great or excellent when there are so many factors and scenarios? Discover what goes into making an exemplary leader.
Developing leadership is an ongoing quest, not a one-time course or learning. It requires continuing focus, commitment to improvement and for the best implementation support from others. Learn what leadership development is and how it can be best facilitated. More
There are many misconceptions about who and what leaders are. Explore the realities about who can be a leader in our changing world. More
