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 3

PIECING TOGETHER THE PHARMA PUZZLE: PART 3

The pharmaceutical industry is entering an era in which agility is no longer favourable, but fundamental to survival.

In the first of this mini-series, we reflected on the current state of the pharmaceutical industry , exploring how technology is transforming the provision of care. In part 2, we examined the seismic shifts in process sweeping across the industry, including patient-centric care and precision intervention.

But even more important will be the people driving this change. In this final instalment, we explore how culture will be key in the battle for top talent, offering a range of top tips to guide your workforce strategy, because ‘no pharma company is too big to fail’.

 

Tackling disruption with visibility

Natural disasters, geopolitical tensions, cyberattacks and global pandemics have exposed the complexity of many pharmaceutical supply chains – and the risks presented by disruption.

In an industry where stability is vital, organisations eager to compete will need to invest significant time and resource into devising a future-focused manufacturing strategy ‘rooted in optimisation’.

Visibility will be a key pillar in the next generation of supply chains. A holistic oversight of development and delivery will allow organisations to undertake more frequent stress testing and mitigate the impact of disruption. This clarity will be matched by a need for greater agility. Many companies currently source critical materials from a single region, exposing them to shortages, should natural disasters or conflict occur.

What this means for your workforce strategy

In addition to exploring the possibilities offered by domestic production, nearshoring and offshoring supply to emerging locations, organisations must implement technology that enables quicker changes among suppliers, deploying advanced analytics to help predict potential changes with greater accuracy, if they are to survive in the new era of healthcare.

Organisations will also be required to adjust their appetite towards risk – and people will need to be at the heart of this evolving attitude.

In what is a tightly regulated industry, risk management has traditionally been siloed across several departments, including Legal, Safety and Quality Assurance teams. But to thrive in Pharma 4.0, disruptive innovation and a quicker route to market for new treatments will be hallmarks of a forward-thinking organisation.

To balance these competing needs, companies will need to build a streamlined function of dynamic decision-makers who can identify, assess and mitigate risk. Some organisations are choosing to appoint ‘Chief Risk Officers’, acting as the figurehead for agreeing risk tolerance.

A changing attitude towards process must be matched by a shift in how companies attract and engage with people. The gig economy is gaining momentum in an industry that has traditionally favoured full-time, permanent employees. In a bid to accommodate an ever-evolving research, development and production line, organisations are increasingly looking to temporary talent to close the capability gap.

Companies will need to consider how they integrate contingent workers from diverse talent pools to drive forward their change agenda. A failure to make room for risk will see some organisations left behind by new entrants who are able to source skills and navigate regulation to ‘get their products piloted and into the market more quickly’.

 

Purposeful redirection

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent race to develop a vaccination transformed many pharmaceutical companies into household names, almost overnight.

While treatments will always divide public opinion, the sector did benefit from its time in the spotlight. An APCO Worldwide survey found that 52% of respondents had a more positive perception of pharmaceutical companies than before the pandemic began.

Close collaboration, a focus on innovation and a unifying purpose that spanned the globe revitalised the industry, with reputational analytics company Caliber stating that the attention afforded by the COVID-19 pandemic offers a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity’ to emphasise importance and repair reputations.

What this means for your workforce strategy

How pharmaceutical companies reconcile this recent praise with a return to business-as-usual will form a crucial strand of their attraction and retention strategy.

Pharma was the ‘place to be’ just a few decades ago if you wanted a tech job. But the continued proliferation of AI, Machine Learning and Big Data means that companies are no longer competing solely within their sector, but also facing competition for critical skills from emerging technology companies and start-ups.

The growing desire for data analysts and data scientists amongst these industries, for example, means that demand is anticipated to be four times higher than supply.

To support talent acquisition, pharmaceutical companies must build an Employer Value Proposition fit for Pharma 4.0. Candidates are increasingly searching for organisations that champion innovation, flexibility, wellbeing and purpose – how you reflect this within your company culture could determine your access to critical skills.

 

A complex puzzle

We started this series stating that the pharmaceutical industry is poised on the brink of a tech-driven transformation.

Prompted in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, the sector is indeed shifting towards a world in which innovation, risk and speed reign supreme. As consumers start to expect tailored treatments and precision intervention, the pharmaceutical industry will need to challenge long-standing attitudes towards risk and regulation.

Central to shaping their direction in this new era of Pharma 4.0 will be an organisation’s response to workforce planning and management. People will undoubtedly fuel progress – how you source, attract and retain the skillsets needed to thrive will require organisations to think not just outside of the box, but far beyond it.

For expert advice on your talent acquisition strategy, speak to one of the team at Hays Talent Solutions.

 

Find out how we supported our client in the life sciences and pharmaceutical industry to streamline their apporach

Our client has a 120-year history of advancing the field of medicine and bringing novel treatments and diagnostics to patients, they wanted an optimised and harmonised contingent workforce process as well as increased visibility and transparency in external workforce.

Read now, to find out how we created an efficient procurement process for contingent workforce as well as workload reduction for procurement and the managers.

 

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