Foundation Pillars of Successful Leaders

Successful leaders must have certain exceptional traits which serve as the pillars of the foundation of successful leadership. Effective leaders should have enabling capabilities, must be able to share the common vision, are supposed to be deft in challenging the existing system/processes, should have encouraging qualities and be able to model behaviour.

Inspirational Leaders as Enablers: Inspirational leaders as enablers play a crucial role in creating a culture of collaboration, empower teams to drive optimum performance by encouraging employee involvement in decision making and in developing high-performance leaders/teams.

1. Creating a Culture of Collaboration: Inspirational leaders create a culture of cooperation and collaboration which is helpful in getting the desired support of the team members for realizing a common goal and creating a sense of shared responsibility. A culture of collaboration is facilitated by fostering trust in others, encouraging maximum interaction and exchange of ideas. Inspirational leaders focus more on “we” while addressing the teams and assignments instead of “I”, to foster a feeling of togetherness, interdependence, and mutuality.

2. Empowering Teams for Performance Excellence: Empowering teams in this context means giving the freedom to people to participate and implement decisions so that they acquire a sense of ownership and involvement in the organizational processes. By facilitating periodic training and education, providing variety and challenges in the roles, giving ample opportunities for demonstrating their competence at work and by being involved in active listening, a leader can empower the teams.

3. Developing High-Performance Leaders/Teams: Leaders as enablers do have the ability to transform followers into leaders by making them accountable individually, allowing them to exercise control over circumstances and decisions, giving them the necessary support and confidence for taking charge of various responsibilities.

Sharing a Common Vision: Inspirational leaders should be experts in articulating the vision, mobilizing the required support and involvement of their teams for the achievement of the ultimate vision. They should be able to assess the opportunities and visualize the possibilities, communicate the same with others and gather their support and be able to align the individual goals with the organizational vision.

An effective leader, instead of focusing on personal vision or individual aspirations, should be able to attract the attention and support for the common values, principles and goals. Inspirational leaders have an exceptional ability to animate the vision and seeking the support of all the key stakeholders or the team members by providing a strategic direction and the required guidance.

Skills in Challenging the Existing Systems & Processes: Successful leaders must have an extraordinary ability to anticipate the change, analyze the developments or changes in the external environment, capitalize the opportunities by taking proactive initiatives and be skilled in experimenting or taking risks.

A leader can efficiently anticipate change and take proactive remedial measures for coping with the challenges posed by the change in advance by being creative, flexible and using their competence to the optimal best.

Apart from this, developments in the external environment play a crucial role in the determination of the futuristic strategies of an organization. In the present scenario, organizations function in a global environment, and it’s very important to stay abreast with the challenges posed by the external factors or the developments in the outside environment. It can, therefore, be said that various stakeholders such as clients, employees, suppliers, etc. all are supposed to be given equal importance by the leaders.

Inspirational leaders demonstrate their real potential during times of adversities. A true leader turns adversity into opportunities and demonstrates his/her complete potential by enabling things function efficiently.

Besides this, true leaders are good at taking risks and experimenting with new ideas and processes. They act as the catalysts of change for introducing reforms in the existing systems & processes. Inspirational leaders are efficient risk takers and they are experts in challenging the existing processes for evolving innovative processes and ideas.

Encouraging Qualities of a Leader: Inspirational leaders motivate teams for achieving excellence in performance by appreciating & recognizing their contributions, sharing the success stories and achievements with the team members and celebrating the achievement of the common goals.

They play the role of facilitators and motivate the teams for demonstrating the best of their performance by fostering trust, passion amongst the team members to exceed expectations and motivating others to direct their focus and attention for utilizing their best of potential and capabilities in the pursuit of organizational excellence.

Modelling Behaviour of Leaders: Inspirational leaders do have an extraordinary ability in personifying and representing the organization’s values before everyone and get the support of others in modelling the common values. They should be able to cite out success stories or live examples of how others have achieved success by endorsing the common values and following it in their day to day behaviour.

Thus it can be concluded that inspirational leaders should be able to demonstrate the above-discussed traits in their behaviour and be able to drive the teams for achieving excellence at work by building the collaborative capabilities and strengthening the internal competencies.

Inspirational leaders can visualize the big picture and translate the vision into action by setting up the required processes/systems, challenging the existing processes and introducing reforms/changes in the existing processes for achieving continuous improvement at work and driving business excellence.

They are the trendsetters, act as the pioneers of change and have exceptional anticipatory qualities which help the organization and the teams in remaining in a state of readiness for proactively addressing the challenges and surviving in the competitive scenario.

Inspirational leaders have exceptional encouraging qualities and play a vital role in developing high-performance leaders as well as teams; they transform followers into leaders and create an atmosphere of trust and mutuality for the realization of the shared values and goals.