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: 

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null Piecing together the pharma puzzle: part 1

PIECING TOGETHER THE PHARMA PUZZLE: PART 1

The global pharmaceutical industry is on the brink of a tech-driven transformation.

To remain relevant amidst an increasingly competitive landscape, pharmaceutical organisations face mounting pressure to harness data to shorten development and delivery timelines, incorporate the use of SMART technology and increase the pace of innovation in order to secure better outcomes for patients across a range of diseases, while maintaining the quality of products.

In the first of this mini-series, we paint a picture of the current state of the market, exploring how technology is transforming the provision of care, prompting an evolution in the systems and science behind the development of vaccinations and laying a foundation for the latest ‘revolution’ in manufacturing.

 

Preparing for Pharma 4.0: Coined by the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE), Pharma 4.0 represents an evolution in which ‘digitisation and automation meet complex product portfolio and lifecycles.’ The vision is greater connectivity and transparency, enhancing the rate of innovation for the benefit of patients.

However, many organisations remain stuck in a state of ‘3.0’, in large part due to the nature of the pharmaceutical industry. In the production and distribution of medication, there is little tolerance for error, with regulation insistent on holding individuals accountable, should issues arise.

With a traditionally small risk appetite and in the absence of a precedent for combining digital devices, human-insight and conventional processes to guarantee product quality, the adoption of SMART technology has been slow.

 

COVID-inspired collaboration: The onset of a global pandemic prompted a waterfall of innovation across the pharmaceutical industry. In the race to produce a vaccine, resourcefulness trumped routine. Many companies hired aggressively, searching for specific skills to support the delivery of short-term projects.

A change in people was matched by an overhaul in process. The pandemic altered the nature of clinical trials, with restrictions on close contact prompting the uptake of tools, technologies and strategies to enable remote or hybrid clinical trials. Deploying wearables and sensors to track activity offered more accurate, timely and comprehensive measurements that reflected the full range of the patient experience.

As systems advanced, so too did the science, with the messenger RNA technology behind many of the COVID-19 vaccines entering mainstream thinking after decades of research. There is talk of a ‘bio-revolution’ which could transform the treatment of diseases across the globe.

 

A growing appetite for virtual healthcare: The rapid rise in telemedicine, prompted in part by the pandemic, is predicted to have a ‘domino effect’ on health technologies.

Tech-savvy populations are demanding greater access to their medical records to facilitate a more active role in the decisions surrounding their treatment. A care continuum that stretches beyond the walls of the hospital also offers an opportunity to tackle shortages across the health care profession. For pharmaceutical companies, digital tools offer scope to collect meaningful, real-world data on drugs' efficacy, safety, adherence and engagement.

Combining tech with tradition will need to be both seamless and secure, but for those forward-thinking pharmaceutical organisations who define their digital transformation roadmaps, improvements in patient engagement and experience across the disease management journey awaits.

 

The evolution of ‘whole health’: The impact of climate change continues to dominate conversation – and a similar story faces the pharmaceutical industry, as the interdependence between human health and the health of our planet enters the mainstream consciousness.

A climate crisis brings with it an increase in the rate of infectious disease patterns, the likelihood of extreme weather that prompts food scarcity and a drop in air quality, resulting in a rise in respiratory diseases.

With thousands of companies pledging or striving towards a commitment to ‘Net Zero’, the pharmaceutical industry is under increasing pressure to reconcile a commitment to regulation with doing what is right for the environment.

This is, however, no easy feat. Regulation, for example, mandates that paper leaflets must be included with medication. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted further difficulties with the storage and distribution of life-saving medication: the Pzifer vaccine had to be kept at minus 70 degrees Celsius, ‘colder than winter in Antarctica’.

Pharmaceutical organisations must take stock of their carbon footprint across the supply chain and consider how to create a greener future. Bio-based fuel, localised manufacturing and sustainable packaging are just a few of the alternatives gaining traction within the industry.

 

Final thoughts

Technological innovation is impacting all organisations, across all industries - and the pharmaceutical industry is no exception.

Prompted in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, a shift towards a world of real-time monitoring, dynamic clinical trials and virtual healthcare is well underway. As the pharmaceutical industry enters an era in which agility is fundamental, rather than favourable, organisations will need to become familiar with risk, ambiguity and change.

In Part Two of this series, we explore what lies ahead for the industry, as patient-centric care, precision medicine and sustainable supply chains offer exciting new opportunities. Central to shaping their direction in this new era of ‘Pharma’ will be an organisation’s response to workforce planning and management, as new technology requires reskilling, the onboarding of tech-savvy professionals and clear project management to enable and embrace change.

 

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