Seven Leadership Imperatives

Becoming a great leader isn’t a day’s job. It takes time, patience and a lot of understanding of human behavior before you finally become a leader who is loved and respected by everyone in the organization. Leaders are the reflection of an organization’s values. 

In modern times, where every aspect of an organization is being upgraded and the focus is shifting to creating an employee-centric culture at work, the leadership styles too, are changing.

To look after the current workforce that is dominated by Millenials, the leaders are opting for an interactive and more engaging leadership style. The following are the seven imperatives of great leadership at work:

1. Coaching: A great leader invests resources and his time on making coaching plans for them and then executing them so that their managers do the same thing with their employees.
   
   When a leader coaches his managers, he passes on the company values, vision and culture to them. Those leaders who involve themselves with their managers can keep them and the others engaged, enhancing employee engagement at work. Such leaders are supposed to be more understanding than the rest and prefer coaching their managers over commanding them.
2. Skip level meetings: Great leaders are very good at this. Skip level meetings are those where a person of senior-level management meets with employees that are more than a level down to him in the chain.
   
   Skip level meetings let the person know what is going on in his organization, how his employees are feeling about it, what are the changes they think are needed by the organization, etc. Skip level meetings are done by the upper-level managers for their lower-level employees so that they can voice their opinions and are on the same page about the company values and vision; which are sometimes either missed out or comprehended differently. 
3. Great communication: One of the greatest leaders and communicators of time, Sir Winston Churchill once said, “The difference between mere management and true leadership is communication.”
   
   The more you communicate the more you are aware of your employees’ perceptions and attitude towards work. Communication helps in avoiding differences and bad-blood between employees. For a leader, communicating with his managers helps him know them better and helps the managers to confide in their leaders. 
4. Motivation: Great leaders will look for things that motivate their employees and keep them going. They will be optimistic and will always push their employees forward. They create an aura of positivity and optimism where everyone is given a chance to prove his worth.
   
   Advantage Club enables the HR personnel to motivate their employees and keep them going by providing them with a wonderful collection of rewards and recognition options and over 10,000+ brands to choose from. Rewarding and recognizing an employee for his performance works wonder at the workplace. If an employee is demotivated, it not only affects his work but also shrinks his self-confidence. Even if any employee fails at what he was doing, great leaders will always appreciate them for his efforts rather than criticizing him.
5. Building trust: Great leaders are the most trustworthy ones. It takes years to build the trust of employees.
   
   When employees have leaders that they can trust and believe in, they feel safer. When they feel safe, they know who to go to in times of distress and bad days. They only open up to the leaders who they trust in.
6. Accountability: All of those who have ever worked in a corporate know that when it comes to taking ownership of a task that is not complete, everyone points fingers at others.
   
   This is the difference between a manager and a leader. In a situation where a manager will put everything on his employees to save himself, a leader would take the whole responsibility of the event and then do things to improvise. Taking accountability shows how the leaders are employee-centric and always on the run to improvise and enhance their skills. 
7. Empathy: Empathy is one of the 5 elements of the concept of Emotional Intelligence. Empathetic leaders are loved by everyone in the organization as they can relate and connect with them on an intellectual level and not just at the professional level.
   
   Leaders understand that every human has emotions that can’t always remain hidden. Leaders respect every emotion of their employees and never make them feel embarrassed about having or showing their feelings.

There are a lot of things that differentiate normal people from leaders. Leaders focus on the holistic development of the organization and on the company's growth that is accompanied with every employee’s personal growth and development as well. Today’s managers are tomorrow’s leaders. Everyone should learn as much as they can from their leaders and always thrive for becoming a better person so that they can help the next gens just like their leaders helped them.