The High-Performance Leader – What Skills do You Need?

The high-performance leader is emotionally intelligent, engages group members, and has developed the mental skills to make wise decisions.  Photo Source: womensagenda.com.au

Last week we talked about why coaching is so important to leader development and performance in today’s dynamic corporate environment.  This week, we look at specific skills identified as critical for high-performance leaders and why women have an advantage in today’s workplace.

According to recent research by Gallop, high-performance leaders share similar talents that underlie a foundation of emotional intelligence.  These talents create a supportive workplace culture and employee engagement while moving the organization forward and making wise situationally-aware decisions.

1. Motivate. A high-performance leader engages all members of the group with an inspiring vision and mission.  Understands group members and how to activate intrinsic motivational strategies to build engagement, instill a culture of learning, and maximize performance and growth.
2. Assertiveness and Energy. Leaders have to be advocates for their departments and team members.  Knowing how to be assertive while building relationships across departments is the key to being a high-performance leader.  Leadership requires the energy to overcome obstacles and engage multiple levels of the organization to maximize individual and group performance.
3. Accountability. A high-performance leader empowers group members to take ownership of the work product and creates an environment of clear accountability.  This accountability embraces honest feedback without blaming and includes the behavior and performance of the leader.  The ability to establish and mentor a culture of accountability requires an emotionally intelligent leader.
4. Build Relationships. One of the most important talents of a leader is building engagement and trust with group members and within the organization.  Open, insightful, empathic, and skillful communication are the foundation of relationship building.  Group members have to know that the leader cares and is concerned with the development of the group member.  Perspective taking skills and emotional intelligence are critical to a leader’s ability to build these relationships.
5. Wise Decision Making. High-performance leaders make decisions based on productivity, organizational well-being, and complete situational awareness.  Emotions, stress, and perceptional errors cloud leader thinking and result in poor decisions.  Leaders must be able to control emotions and accurately perceive the environment to make wise decisions.

Why Women Have an Advantage.  The Gallop research found that women leaders tend to engage and be more concerned with employee development than their male counterparts.  Women leaders were found to be more collaborative and more likely to engage in pro-social communication that engenders relationship building.  Supporting research has shown that women are also more likely to identify and be aware of their and others emotional competencies.

The results of the Gallop study show a high-performance leader is rare (about 10% of current leaders) and that the skills needs to be a high-performance leader are not taught and developed in MBA programs.  The study shows the need for organizations and leaders to invest in leadership coaching to develop the skills needed to guide organizations in this dynamic uncertain corporate environment.

Let TierOne Performance Consulting help you develop the skills and confidence you need to be a high-performance leader.

Remember – Put your mind on what matters!