Is Your Leadership Style Innovative

Last month we looked at some examples of companies that recognized opportunities for improvement through change. The ability to recognize and implement improvement is integral to the company’s culture, which is the supported through its leadership.

The term “leadership� certainly gets thrown around quite a bit.  Working in the business improvement field, it is something we talk about a lot at Bizmanualz.  What does it really mean to be a leader, or more specifically, a good leader?  Is being a good leader being able to manage your staff in effective ways to meet objectives?  Is it about how you manage your staff to meet the objectives?  Perhaps it is about what objectives you set for your organization?

What is a Leader?

The lines and definitions of leaders and managers may seem somewhat blurred and confusing.  Just who or what is a leader?  At times it is useful to think of leaders as developing vision while managers oversee tasks.  It is also true, however, that whether you are the CEO of large company or the manager of a small department, you are a leader.  People in your company or in your department are going to pay attention to, and most likely follow, the example you provide in taking on your responsibilities and carrying out your tasks.  The guidance you provide as a leader is in the how, why, what you do, as well as in what you say.

A concept about leadership that I encountered years ago rings the most true with me.  An extensive study on successful and unsuccessful organizational leaders found that, while attributes and styles of successful leaders varied widely, there are two things successful leaders do that are common.  Successful leaders initiate structure and show consideration.

Employing an Innovative Leadership Style

Initiating structure means setting clear priorities and goals, establishing an organized approach to accomplishing the work, and allocating the resources effectively and properly.  Showing consideration means recognizing people as individuals with lives, interests, and needs outside of the workplace that need to be recognized, accommodated, and even encouraged.  Effective leaders don’t see their team members as identical functioning cogs.

It seems intuitive that successful leaders initiate structure and show consideration.  Being innovative in these important areas, though, plays a significant role in how successful they are as leaders.

Successful leaders provide clear direction and individual appreciation to encourage workers to contribute toward reaching organizational goals; innovative leaders have the ability to make people want to contribute to reaching goals.  It may seem like a small difference, but that could be the difference between achieving standards and setting new standards.

If you’re looking for a definitive description of innovative leadership, good luck.  Like good art; it can be difficult to explain but easy to recognize.  Most would agree, however, that innovative leaders are willing to try to new approaches and to think in different ways.  They understand that at times failure is part of learning.  They keep their eye on the horizon as well as the bottom line. They tend to see the inherent and potential value of organizational operations instead of just the cost

How does your leadership style align with these approaches?  In the next few articles we will continue to focus on innovative leadership, including a very exciting and clear example of just how much a leader who thinks differently can mean to an organization.

To learn more about using process improvement programs for your organization, attend the next Implementing Lean Thinking  or How to Align a System of People and Processes for Results class.  If you are eager to learn more about creating more order out of the chaos you are feeling at work, then the How to Create Well-Defined Processes class is right for you.

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Posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 under Business Management & Operations