Over the last 20 years, I have constantly been intrigued by the responsibility of Leadership and what it takes to build a loyal and engaged team. How do some leaders create teams and organisations that enjoy long term sustainable success, while other leaders build teams that only enjoy short term or periodic success, and suffer from regular attrition and high people turnover? It is a fascinating question and one that was fiercely discussed during a recent Leadership Mastermind session. One of the members of the Mastermind group was sharing a story of a leader in a large not for profit organisation, who was having all sorts of challenges retaining staff – and they could not identify why. The leader believed they were leading the team effectively, constantly seeking opportunities to improve performance, to motivate the team, and to reward performance, but following a detailed analysis, it in fact turned out that his ‘leadership’ was driving his people away. The very things he thought was building a loyal and engaged team, was in fact, building the complete opposite.

So the Mastermind group then set about identifying the key leadership attributes & responsibilities that builds engagement and loyalty, based on achieving long term sustainable success. Whilst there may be many more on the list, the group came up with 4 key areas that when implemented consistently, delivers outstanding results :

1. Building a Vision – one of the greatest attributes and responsibilities of a leader is the ability to create a vision for the business/team and be able to communicate this vision in a way that people can connect to, attach meaning to and play a direct role in creating. They have this incredible ability to carry people on a journey of discovery, constantly painting a picture of what the future will look like, and providing coaching & mentoring along the way, because the leader understands that the successful achievement of the vision is going to be built on the success of the people.
2. Developing Trust – the ability of the leader to develop trust with their people is critical to achieving sustainable success. From a leader’s perspective, trust is not an automatic thing – it is something that must be earned through constant and consistent actions, that over time, will earn the leader the right to lead. And often it is the simplest, and almost incidental things that build the biggest levels of trust. Things like punctuality – the leader who lives by the principle of ‘to be early is to be on time, and to be on time is to be late’ will very quickly build a level of trust with their people. As will a high level of accountability and delivering what they said they would, when they said they would. When a leader does this, they answer one of the fundamental questions that their people will constantly ask (either consciously or unconsciously) – ‘Can I trust the leader?’
3. Genuinely Caring for People – as well as the people asking the question “Can I trust the leader?’, they will also constantly ask themselves ‘Does the leader care for me, do they understand me?’ If the answer to this question is ‘no’ then not only has the leader not earned the right to lead, there is a high probability that the people will be driven away. In fact, there has been a significant amount of research conducted globally which suggests that people leave a team or an organisation not because of the organisation, but because of the leader. So a leader who genuinely cares for their people, is accessible to the people and takes time to actively listen to the people (listen to understand, not just listen) will build a strong and engaged team.
4. Encouraging & Empowering – the 4th key area is the leader who actively encourages and empowers their people to strive for achievement, they entrust the people to deliver, encourage them to take calculated risks, expects them to ‘fail’, and backs the people to develop and grow from the experience. The leader who is able to create this environment of encouragement and empowerment can very quickly build a strong and loyal following, which will build a higher level of engagement and will ultimately lead to long term and sustainable success.

Understandably there are other responsibilities and attributes of leadership that can build engagement & loyalty to underpin long term, sustainable success, but as a Mastermind Group, we agreed that if we, as leaders, could master the above 4 responsibilities and attributes, and constantly and consistently demonstrate them, we would go a very long way to not only building a loyal and engaged following, but outstanding success would be inevitable.

I would love your thoughts. What do you believe are the greatest leadership responsibilities that build engagement?

 To your leadership success.

 Darren