How to be an Effective Leader

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The following blog aims to develop your understanding of leadership, your role within it, and how these skills can be improved.

Stereotypes of Leadership

Empowering, decisive, inspirational, all words that would typically be associated with a leader. Leadership plays a pivotal and influential role in politics, business and the primary focus of this blog, sport. There is often talk of ‘on the field leaders’ and ‘off the field leaders' which is mostly separated by the prescribed roles in the team (captain, head coach, etc.). However, in a performance setting are we not all leaders? Is there not always room for someone to take the metaphorical bull by the horns and empower those around them into achieving something?. Please continue reading this blog as it aims to provide you with how developing effective leadership qualities can improve not only your own performance but that of your extended ‘team’.

Typical leadership styles: Lewin's Three Leadership Styles:

• Autocratic - do all the decision-making themselves

• Democratic - taking an active role in decision-making but involves others

• Laissez-faire - the majority of decisions are made by the team

Which style best suits your environment?

The ‘how and why’ of Leaders

A much heated discussion point around leaders and leadership is the phenomenon of whether leaders are born or made? I would argue that whilst some people may be born with characteristics that make them naturally fit a leadership role, the majority of leadership is developed and can be furthered no matter the background or starting point someone may be at. A famous example of this is England Men’s first team coach Gareth Southgate, he himself admits to rejection in his earlier career that moulded him into the character and leader that he is now, this is a great example of how someone who may have previously not been a traditional leader can mould themselves to becoming successful even if this isn't something that they consciously wanted.

A similar development outside of a sporting setting is one of the youngest and most successful British CEOs Ben Francis, Founder of ‘Gymshark’, Ben speaks a lot around his development alongside his brand into becoming CEO and how his personality and people skills have adapted and improved for the needs of his job. In a particularly insightful and inspiring interview on “The High Performance Podcast” Ben speaks on his development of values and how he progressed from being very introverted to being an effective world-leading CEO.

Wider-impact of Leaders

Locard’s principle of exchange is the idea that “every contact leaves a trace” this has been applied to many differing contexts and is also very easy to apply in a leadership setting. Running with this theory, we can assume that every contact that two individuals have in a performance setting will impact both parties and with research showing that peers consciously and unconsciously influence each other furthering the extent to which we are all leaders. It may be assumed that imitation only occurs if someone is sees as “more successful” than their peer, however, in-depth research on this in an economic business setting found that imitation occurred no matter the assessed “value” or “success” of the other person, this therefore teaches us the importance of having skills that someone would associate with being a good leader as even if we do not feel that we are leading others, our tendencies and behaviours are influencing our peers and with the ultimate performance goal to be successful at the forefront, displaying attributes congruent to this would be most beneficial for optimal performance.

When looking at the entire leadership environment, it is worth remembering that leadership is not a one-way street, the leaders and those being lead have to work equally together in order to be as successful as possible as shown in many ways such as the leader work-engagement and the positive impact this has on follower optimism, work-engagement and perceived competence.

A simplistic yet in-depth representation of the performance environment can be found below ‘An Integrative Model of Leadership, Management and Performance’, this demonstrates the holistic environment in a performance setting and where leaders fall within this. With behaviours being the outermost section of the diagram and therefore having the greatest impact on the performance environment and leaders being the foundation and fundamental level to this, we can learn that despite the distance from leadership to behaviour the direct knock-on effect that this has is clear and sequential. Consequently we can look at this without the titles and learn that leadership influences attitudes which in turn influences behaviour then performance so the more positive and effective the leadership, the more successful performance!

Invisible Leadership

It is not solely the explicit actions of a leader that can influence their peers but also the implicit or subconscious characteristics and actions. An individuals’ expectations and assumptions of a leader are unique to their own experience and are highlighted in theory as implicit leadership theories, this suggests that everyone has differing desires as to what they want from a leader therefore there is not a “one size fits all” perfect leadership style but there are subtleties that can develop you and make you a better leader as we will investigate. Oppositely, implicit followership theories are highlighted in research which similarly suggest there are preferences and assumptions leaders have of their followers, with a perceived positive connection with their “followers” having a positive effect on career success for both. From this we can learn that leadership is very valuable in any form of team or department, but it is not solely the named “leaders” that can influence others, but everyone in the team in some way influences, leads and empowers other people's performance.

How can I lead?

As mentioned above in this blog, leaders are not only the “top dogs” in any setting, everyone has a place to become a leader, whether that is within an organisation or self-leadership which may be of interest if you perform in a solo role. Therefore, what could we be doing better? How can all of us improve our leadership? Here’s some tips from gold-standard research that you can apply into your area:

• Keeping a real focus on the task in hand will help improve your effectiveness, but remember a social connection is important for them

• Focus on the long term benefits of investing in your leadership, the small steps you take now will help build the whole process and provide effective future foundations

• Try to enhance your emotional intelligence and confidence, this is shown to improve leadership effectiveness, whether it is conscious or subconscious, have confidence in your abilities and decision-making

• Reflect on yourself throughout the process, self-assessment can be incredibly helpful for identifying successes and improvements maintaining your effectiveness on the way!

Time to lead!

It’s time to lead, as discussed, no matter the role there's always the opportunity and you never know what possibilities may arise in the future, so why not use the present to develop the skills! Strive to be like anyone who inspires you because ultimately they are a leader, and who knows who you could inspire?

"Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It's being able to take it as well as dish it out. That the only way you're going to get respect from the players"

~ 3-time NBA Champion, 12-time All-Star Larry Bird