How To Create A High-Performance Working Culture Through Your Leadership Strategy
Hand arranging wood block stacking with icon leader business. Key success factors for leadership elements concept. GETTY
Creating a high-performance working culture begins and ends with good leaders. To bring out the best in their people, leaders need to be expert motivators, with a good understanding of their teams and the confidence to communicate effectively in a range of situations to achieve the best results. In my day-to-day work with clients, I typically find that the best leaders are not those with a rigid leadership strategy, but those who have the flexibility to adapt their style depending on the needs of the situation.
This was borne out in the global research I conducted for my first book, The Culture Builders: Leadership Strategies for Employee Performance, which demonstrated that the strongest leaders out there are capable of fulfilling five key roles within their team. They understand the subtleties of different situations they encounter in the workplace and are able to navigate deftly between different roles to effectively manage those situations.
The Five Roles of Effective Leaders
To be an effective leader, I believe you need to embody five different roles: Prophet, Storyteller, Strategist, Coach, and Pilot. With all of these modes in your arsenal, you will have everything you need to empower your team to achieve great things and operate at their best. Here’s a breakdown of these roles, and tips for incorporating them into your leadership style.
1. Prophet – the Prophet role is all about big picture thinking. As a prophet, you provide the overarching vision for your team and motivate them with ideas of what the future could look like, and what amazing things all their hard work is going towards. This ignites positive emotions in team members and makes them feel part of something bigger and more inspiring.
Tip for Prophets: Don’t forget that your managers are also prophets to their teams, and remind them of this! Each of them will need their own overarching vision for their teams, to help them find direction and drive them to do their best work.
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2. Storyteller – like that of the Prophet, the role of the Storyteller is an inspirational one, but puts the vision of the team in context, sharing metaphors and examples that ground the teams shared goals in practical reality. The storyteller is also instrumental in providing team members with a sense of personal motivation, by helping them to identify where their unique skill set fits into the big picture of the organization.
Tip for Storytellers: Think carefully about the story of your organization’s people strategy and what you could do to put your business at the forefront of people management.
3. Strategist – the Strategist is the person who turns the overarching vision of the team or organization into a reality. They make step-by-step plans for the growth of the business and the development of their people and keep teams focused on the roadmap they must follow to achieve their aims. They will also have their eye on wider stakeholder engagement to make sure good relations are maintained between them and the business.
Tip for Strategists: The role of Strategist is one that many managers instinctively shy away from, so it’s important that recognizing the value in planning forms a key part of their training. The best way for managers to be good strategists is to know each of their team members well and understand what conditions and incentives will lead to optimal performance and by extension, attainment of long-term goals.
4. Coach – an effective coach is a people person who invests in team members to make sure they are fully engaged and feel valued. They will guide each of their team members towards achieving their best and have a good understanding of everyone’s personal goals so that they can build those into the ongoing strategy for the business. They will also make sure they maintain a level of respect for all employees, regardless of their job title, by “asking” rather than “telling”, even when under pressure.
Tip for Coaches: It’s important that managers are equipped to give constructive feedback to their team members on both a formal and informal basis so that all team members are able to grow and flourish in their roles. It’s a good idea to make sure managers are trained in good communication, giving feedback, setting manageable but challenging goals, and recognizing good performance. Being able to do these things will greatly increase trust and loyalty within your team.
5. Pilot – the role of a Pilot is to keep the team calm and grounded, even in times of high stress. When there’s a lot going on, it’s natural for people to panic a bit, but as their leader, you need to be able to respond to change in a way that makes them feel secure and able to tackle the challenge. Your approach here may vary in different situations from inclusive and empathetic to strong and authoritative.
Tip for Pilots: Make sure your managers are mindful about the way they communicate change to employees. Team members will take their cues on how to react to the news from the language and tone of voice managers use when discussing it.
If you have all five of these qualities as a people manager, then you have everything you need to create a high-performance working culture within your team. Good leaders will also have an awareness of which role is appropriate to which scenario and dial them up and down as necessary. Understanding these five competencies and being able to apply them day-to-day is a crucial skill for both senior leaders and managers to master and is therefore crucial to their training.
In the contemporary working world, so much emphasis is placed on leaders being great Storytellers, who can inspire their teams on a collective and individual level, and this is very important. It is also important to note that depending on the personalities and managerial styles of each of your senior leaders and people managers, they will naturally lean more heavily on certain roles. However, the ability to tap into each of the five roles as and when appropriate will really take their leadership strategy to the next level, and help them bring out the best in all of their people.