To lead in the 21st century, what does it take?

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Leaders know how to achieve goals and inspire people along the way. While the terms and definitions may change with the times, it is important to understand the skills and abilities needed to lead in the 21st century. Effective leadership is therefore bent towards getting the team engaged. As a result, leaders will influence their teams by what they say and do, and through how they do their work.

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According to Webster, leadership is the power or ability to lead other people. As our world becomes increasingly complex, the traditional leadership style of “command and control” is fast being replaced with a more facilitative style of leadership. Facilitative leadership is team oriented, allowing for everyone to bring their piece of the puzzle into conversations. It is collaborative and supports diverse perspectives coming together. No longer can one person synthesize all the diverse data and come up with a solution as leaders have been trained to do in the past. To know how to lead in 21st, in this article, we get you started with the following;

Communication
Transition into effective communication. To lead in 21st century leaders are expected to fine-tune their communication skills for effective communication with his team. Further, a good leader is a good listener and who loves gathering information necessary for making informed decisions. Mr. Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart in the USA., once said, “The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. Our best ideas come from clerks and stock-boys.”

Motivation
A leader that can lead in this century is the one who inspire and motivate his people. This is someone who often gives guidance and not giving orders to be followed. According to the late Safaricom CEO, Mr. Bob Colimore, the primary goal of a leader is to attract and retain motivated employees and walk with them as they work towards the desired goal. Effective leaders do not lead by telling people what they have to do. Instead, effective leaders are catalysts and they inspire the staff to working or showing them how to work out a particular role.

Vision
We can all see a vision as a needle in the midst of a dark dusted room, locating it is not an easy task. It requires utmost attention and so is how to work on a vision to become a reality. Although it takes time to build on this vision, it is for the leadership to keep converting visions or ideas into reality that can impact the society either economically or politically. Visionary leadership acts as a catalyst and provides the inspiration needed to spark the performance of others.

Adding Value
To be an elegant leader and earn a chance to lead, you need to add value to someone’s life. Who do you want to lead if you cannot even mobilize a group of people? To lead, you need to create value for not only your organization but also the team you are working with. This can be through investing in your employees through mentorship and training. While systems and equipment are important, it is essential that leaders first focus on the people. Without people, there are no operations.

In the recent days, leaders are faced with multiple challenges in running their organizations. This tells us that what was true about leadership yesterday may not hold today and what is true today will not be true in the future. Even so, leaders must be in tune with their teams and be willing to adjust with the times. To get seamless and flawless leadership training, CrystalPerk has developed means of training via our  weekly and monthly magazine. Subscribe to access