Leadership is the one skill that has been on the minds of most of us over the past year. For communication professionals, the demands of a long-term crisis and overnight changes in consumer and client behavior have forced them to become more visible within their organizations.
Here are 5 tips on how you can become more confident and comfortable navigating the role of a leader, whether assigned the role or needing to demonstrate your ability to take charge:
1. Organizations may say they want to change but may resist when change is implemented. This is where vision comes in.
It is important to have a vision for the teams you lead or influence – even if your organization lacks one. You are modeling behavior, and eventually, your whole organization will latch on to an idea of a vision.
Without a picture – or destination – in mind, it is hard to be motivational and engage and energize those around you to actualize it. It will also help to keep everyone focused and somewhat sane through the trials and tribulations of change.
2. Listen and then develop a strategic plan (not the other way around). Communicate that plan to leadership as many times as possible.
Meet and engage with other leaders and staff within your organization to assess the culture and the challenges. The challenges will be the tools for helping you devise a strategy that will be effective upon implementation. You must also research the history of strategic plans within an organization to find out what challenges, as a whole, the organization has been attempting to address and how the vision has evolved.
Lastly, communicate your strategy as many times as possible so that everyone understands why you are taking the approach you are. You may want to get the work done, but it is vitally important that you stop and take the time to explain to key staff why A is happening before B and what the result will look like and feel like. Involve them in the process and encourage them to question and debate aspects that they think will be challenging or insurmountable.
3. Identify a champion who can help you navigate the changing relationships of power and who can defend your ideas at the table.
In hindsight, I should have probably listed this as #1. I have seen many well-educated, talented, and experienced professionals lose leverage because they did not practice this third lesson. A champion is a colleague who has a seat either at the senior leadership team and/or has the CEO and other leaders’ trust. And you should consistently assess your champion’s power position as it will be dynamic, not static, while cultivating additional support among your peers.
4. Empower. Empower. Empower.
As many of you have found – and will find – you cannot do everything and do it all well. The demands on your time will be extreme, and you will need to be flexible enough to move from leadership to strategy to execution throughout the day – back and forth – and often within 30-minute increments. You must have enough confidence in yourself and humility to empower those who work for you and those around you.
By empowering others, you give them the ability to grow and develop and contribute to the organization. Yes, they will make mistakes. But mistakes, to me, are good. I really do not think an individual can grow without making many.
5. Like it or not, as you move up the ladder, politics will have a larger role in your life. Don’t fear it – master it.
As you develop as leaders in your careers, you will deal more with internal and external politics.
In a sample survey of leaders, all have mentioned they spend more time on management issues and politics than actually work in the field to the point where they feel somewhat distant from the issues they are working to solve. I think this a real danger, and I implore you always to stay connected and remind others of whom you are working for.
The goal is to master it, identify trends, and know who is and who is not your champion. Always keep your integrity and make decisions based on your ethics and that inner guide we all have – your gut.
