What defines a good leader? Look for these six qualities

WHAT DEFINES A GOOD LEADER? LOOK FOR THESE SIX QUALITIES

Modern business challenges can require new approaches. Leadership will need to evolve in order to continue to guide organisations in tomorrow's world of work. But what are the characteristics of a good modern leader in the workplace - and how can organisations develop them? 

Many studies draw parallels between effective leadership and solid organisational performance. But whether they’re a junior manager or a senior executive, the qualities that leaders need are changing.
 
Nearly 1,500 HR professionals ranked leadership development as the number one priority for 2025, with managers feeling 'overwhelemed' by the expansion of their responsibilities. In today’s unpredictable world, you must combine traditional leadership skills with new abilities. So, what does an effective modern leader look like?
 

1. Remember what makes a good leader

Before looking at the new skills future leaders may need, it is worth reflecting on what a leader actually is.
 
What are the qualities of a good leader? It’s not what you may think.
 
Being in charge of colleagues does not necessarily make you a ‘leader’. Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg explains: “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”
 
Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield believes that good leadership is: “Not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it. Especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter.”
 
There may be varying opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of leaders. But overall, most people believe that great leaders motivate their team members to perform their best and achieve common goals.
 
What traits do you need to achieve this in the modern workplace?
 

2. Use blended leadership styles for a VUCA world 

Stacey Philpot from Deloitte Consulting maintains that the core skills needed historically in leadership roles have remained unchanged.
 
“These skills allow someone to become a leader faster than their peers. This is even true in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment,” she says.
 
The core skills for leading in a VUCA environment include:
 
  • Pattern recognition
  • Motivation
  • Agility
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Ability to understand, control and express emotions
 
This represents psychological assessments of 23,000 senior leaders globally over the past 25 years.
 
Consider introducing servant leadership:
 
Leaders need new styles of leadership to deal with changing cultures. Being comfortable with not having the answer and owning failure can create an environment of trust and openness.
 
Collectively, these behaviours form ‘servant leadership’. The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) defines servant leadership as emphasising behaviours and values such as:
 
  • Active listening
  • Empathy
  • Leading by example
 
These are instead of opting for a more authoritative, ‘command-and-control’ leadership style. Leaders create the conditions for team members to excel by displaying vulnerability. But given the stigma around servant leadership, how can organisations encourage it?
 
How to combat stigma surrounding servant leadership:
 
Alsu Polyakova, HR Leader for GE Healthcare, says reducing stigma around servant leadership will take a specific strategy. Most importantly frequent performance appraisals for leaders.
 
“We give leaders lots of opportunities for self-reflection, so they understand how they behave,” she says. GE Healthcare’s most successful leaders help to encourage behavioural change, Polyakova says. The company measures success by how well employees rate leaders on achieving GE Healthcare’s ‘cultural pillars’. These pillars include inspiring trust and empowering employees.
 

3. Create a culture of trust in the workplace

Gaining workers’ trust is more important than ever. One way to build trust is for leaders to take action on issues such as climate change. 71 percent of employees consider their CEOs’ social awareness as critically important, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer.
 
Social awareness may yield rich rewards. The Edelman poll shows that workers who trust their employers are far more engaged and remain more loyal than their more sceptical peers.
 
Leadership styles are clearly changing. The most effective leaders will need to tailor their styles to suit different scenarios, says Professor Sattar Bawany. “Leaders need a broad repertoire of management styles and the wisdom to know when each style should be used,” he says. “In crisis scenarios like cybersecurity breaches, for example, leadership should be authoritarian because the scenario is unstructured.”
 

4. Adapt your leadership style for different generations

Managers must also balance leadership styles to suit different generations. Modern workplaces will soon house up to five generations under one roof. Therefore, there will be many people with differing preferences on leadership style.
 
As of 2023, millennials are the biggest group in the UK workforce, at 35 percent. Modern leaders must mix old and new leadership styles that meet the needs of younger generations. Doing so will future proof organisations. However, new leadership approaches cannot come at the expense of alienating older workers.
 

5. Commit to lifelong learning

With the workplace evolving so rapidly, leaders cannot rely on past experience alone to get by. Ben Farmer, Head of HR at Amazon UK agrees: “Experience is not always synonymous with wisdom and judgement. And naivety doesn’t always engender novel thinking and openness to change.”
 
Organisations should look for leaders who understand the future as well as those with experience. “Success comes from the ability to combine understanding of exciting, new trends with the experience required to put that knowledge into action,” says Farmer.
 
But what is the right balance? There is no one-size-fits-all approach when balancing experience with adaptability. Achieving the right balance will mostly depend on the organisation and the sector it operates in.
 

6. Be conscious of culture

Organisational culture is an important factor. Risk-averse firms may prefer experience over novel thinking. Leaders may be fearful of a backlash from stakeholders should novel thinking fail. To lower risk, companies should seek leaders who use both scientific evidence and intuition when making decisions.
 
Ultimately, there’s no single blueprint for an effective modern leader. Each organisation must tailor their approach to leadership development. There must be a focus on organisational culture, industry nuances and employee mix.
 
But above all, leaders should recognise that today’s reality may be old news tomorrow.
 
 

For more expert advice, take a look at the following articles: 

Blog title V2

BLOG

 
 

Asset Publisher

null Managing hybrid teams in an inclusive way

MANAGING HYBRID TEAMS IN AN INCLUSIVE WAY

Manage hybrid teams inclusively

COVID-19 has forced many challenges upon us and for leaders who continue to manage a hybrid team, understanding inclusive workplace practices in this new team environment is one of them.

When managing a hybrid team, you are overseeing a distinctly uneven playing field – some of your staff are based in the office while others work remotely. According to our Hays Barometer Report, 55 per cent of professionals say they have worked from home during this crisis. Of these, 51 per cent do not yet feel safe and happy to return to the workplace.

The recent forced work from home experience has also led many organisations to realise the benefits of flexible working. Many employers are now considering what form of regular, long-term hybrid working model they could support.

Clearly then, hybrid teams will remain in place for some time yet to come. While there are many advantages of this model, it also creates challenges. There is, for example, a risk that remote employees may be left out of conversations or decisions made in the office. Your office-based staff could also have incorrect perceptions about their remote colleagues’ productivity or work-life balance, while a potential team divide could develop.

To overcome these challenges and create an even playing field for both office and remote workers, employers need to be intentional in their efforts to manage their hybrid team in an inclusive way. After all, creating an inclusive work environment allows you to create a sense of belonging for all employees. This in turn helps you support their mental health and wellbeing while also improving morale, productivity, teamwork and innovation – all important factors that will help an organisation quickly return to growth.

How to purposefully manage a hybrid team in an inclusive way

1. Design inclusive team meetings: To begin with, gather feedback from your employees to determine how team meetings could best work for everyone. Make sure all members of your team have an opportunity to share their insights, both personally and professionally, on how meetings attended by remote and office-based workers could be administered successfully. Share the parameters within which you must operate, too, so that your staff are aware of the circumstances. Take care to be respectful of each individual’s personal circumstances and try to tailor a solution that works for all.

Since your team now has ample experience in virtual remote meetings, continuing to use video conferencing tools might be the best solution. This gives your remote workers face-to-face interaction with their colleagues and helps them feel included rather than a detached add-on.

Before the meeting, distribute an agenda so everyone can prepare their talking points or thoughts in advance.

2. Ensure every team member has a voice: When it comes time for the meeting itself, confirm that all remote participants can hear and be heard. Allow enough time for everyone to participate. You may like to start the meeting by mentioning that you would like everyone to contribute and you value everyone’s opinions. Mention that rather than interrupting another speaker, you should wait until they have finished talking to share your perspective. Try to foster an environment in which ideas are respected.

During the meeting, ask a lot of open-ended questions to encourage people to share. You could even try to structure involvement during the meeting, such as by giving everyone a set role or by assigning everyone an agenda item to introduce and discuss.

3. Understand that office and remote employees have different work experiences: Coming into an office where you interact with colleagues is a very different experience to working in isolation at home. Therefore, talk to your individual employees about their experience of remote working and understand what does and doesn’t work for them. Then, you can focus on retaining the positive experiences while improving upon the negative.

4. Create opportunities for informal conversations: Pre-COVID-19, how often did you strike up a conversation with a colleague at the lift, in the kitchen or elsewhere in the office? These unplanned informal conversations help to build team connections and improve morale, while also supporting mental health and wellbeing. So, purposefully create opportunities for informal interactions between remote and co-located employees, such as virtual Monday morning coffee chats, Friday afternoon drinks or by inviting people to stay on the line at the conclusion of a meeting for a relaxed conversation.

5. Ensure team communication actively involves all staff: Office-based staff may naturally revert back to informal meetings over their computer screens. But to encourage an inclusive environment in a hybrid team, this mindset needs to shift. Remind your office-based staff to use the agreed communication channels for all work-related conversations, rather than hold ‘watercooler’ discussions that exclude remote employees. If possible, use video conferencing tools so that your remote workers have face-to-face interaction and connection with their colleagues.

6. Have regular one-on-one catch-ups: Do not skip your regular one-on-one meeting with your remote employees. These meetings give you a chance to check in to see how they are. For your staff, they can be an essential lifeline to you and the workplace, so regularly postponing these meetings can lead to your remote workers feeling disconnected and underappreciated. While it is naturally easier to spend more time with those who are co-located in the workplace with you, proactively ensure the amount of time you spend communicating with remote workers is proportionate to the time you spend talking to co-located staff.

7. Give staff a sense of purpose: Regardless of where they are working, make sure all employees understand the purpose of their organisation and how their role and individual results contribute. Communicating the big picture keeps your employees invested in the overall vision of the organisation and how their own personal responsibilities fit in.

Build a culture of inclusion, trust and assurance

Of course, the above strategies will not work until your organisation has created a culture of inclusion. As part of this, you should prioritise communication to employees that is always purposefully inclusive, regular and transparent.

For more insights on equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, download our Hays Barometer Report.

AUTHOR

Nick Deligiannis
Managing Director of Australia and New Zealand
Nick Deligiannis, Managing Director, began working at Hays in 1993 and since then he has held a variety of consulting and management roles across the business. In 2004 he was appointed to the Hays Board of Directors. He was made Managing Director of Australia and New Zealand in 2012.