Unlocking the Essence of Leadership: A Guide to Navigating the Journey to Greatness

The path to great leadership in the everchanging workplace is both a huge challenge and a great adventure. In an ocean of roles and responsibilities, the exceptional leader stands out not for what he or she does but for who he or she influences. But what differentiates these paragons of leadership from all the other fish in the sea? What makes for a great leader at work?

Values at the Helm: Leading with Integrity and Purpose

Strong, value-led leadership is, as Tim Lancelot at MHR puts it, pretty simple: ‘Good leadership is about being the kind of person people want to follow. It means leading from the front and setting direction at a time of enormous change and ambiguity – showing you walk your talk and being truly value-led.’ Clear, fair decision-making is essential, making sure that what you decide is consistent with your values, and everyone involved can see where they fit into the bigger picture. In the face of changing data and changing circumstances, the basic values and principles remain constant.

Co-Creation: The Power of Working Alongside Your Team

With the development of an ‘ethos’ at the French lingerie retailer Etam, Sophie Gallay vividly illustrates how leadership today no longer involves issuing orders to be obeyed, but rather working with one’s team so that they are willing to follow you voluntarily to achieve shared goals. This process of co-creation, which may make use of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, not only makes the relationships between executives and the teams they lead stronger, but also creates the dynamic conditions for innovation and development.

The Clarity of Vision: Setting Unambiguous Goals

As Attiq Qureshi, a football coach at Manchester United Football Club, highlights in his book Intelligent Leadership (2013) – titled along those very lines – it is all about having super-clear goals, and being able to inspire the team about what you want to achieve. Not only do leaders need to define exact goals, allowing those they lead to understand the overall objective and purpose, but they also need to set goals that are ambitious without being unachievable. It is important that leaders give the individuals they manage both the ambition and the support to be able to accomplish the goals. Being effective at prioritisation – to getting the right things done – is why leaders and their teams are able to achieve success in the face of sustained organisational complexity.

Prioritizing People: Listening and Serving the Team

Indeed, the servant leadership philosophy, as described by Debra Bonomi of Rakuten, revolves around the fact that the true entrepreneur is the servant of his or her people. True leaders, therefore, should never view their people as a tool to achieve specific business goals. Instead, they should actively listen to their team and understand their needs and desires so as to help them fulfil their potential. By listening and taking into account the people on your team, according to my friend, you can unleash the hidden power within any organisation. Here is the shift that I witnessed: from overseeing your team to participating in making your team better.

Harnessing Talent: The Art of Listening

According to Benoît Dageville, co-founder of Snowflake, the art of listening is the foundation of good leadership, harnessing your team’s collective talents to find support for the common vision, allowing you, as a leader, not to simply point the way forward, but to help your team get there. The best leaders then are the ones who rely on the strengths of their teams to make the impossible possible.

The Essence of Leadership: Understanding Its Core

Leadership, at its heart, is not the same as management or power. It comes from modelling values, working with your team, setting direction, tending to the needs of your staff, and listening to the people around you who are doing the work. Leadership is the ability to inspire, nurture and guide a team toward a vision; to adapt and be resilient in the face of change. Leaders who can adhere to these principles set a course toward not only greatness but also toward cultivating greatness in others for the future.

A final, unifying lesson emerges from each of these successful leaders. It is that leadership is of the heart and mind, requiring an unswerving integrity, a sense of direction, empathy, plus the deft ability to coax the best from others. It is about making a meaningful difference to people and the organisation overall. This will be achieved through the guidance of a clear vision, the labelling and navigating of obstacles, and by empowering others to embrace initiatives, rise to challenges, and achieve shared goals. This is a lesson that can be taken to heart by all would-be leaders, whether striving to reach the top or simply striving to do the best job they possibly can.