3 Takeaways For Being a More Impactful Leader
As we progress through our own career path and step into leadership positions, it’s more important than ever to understand how to maintain motivation both in our own work and within our teams.
After my discussion with Jennifer Selliers, here are three key takeaways on how to be a more impactful leader for your team.
Know Your Why
It is important to remember that YOU are the one responsible for driving both your career and your team forward, and one of the most significant factors in how you handle this is understanding your “why”.
While this might sound like common sense, burnout often occurs when leaders lose sight of why they are making certain decisions and their vision for where they want to go. Work begins to feel aimless and exhausting, and our ability to lead others inevitably suffers.
This has implications both in your personal career and on the team you’re leading. It influences decisions around:
Your Career Path
Your Work Habits
Your Team Goals
Your Team Culture
Career Changes
Additional Education and Credentials
When you have a clear understanding of your “why”, your decisions will feel more confident and your work will be more motivating. Instead of operating based on what you “should” be doing, you’ll be able to drive work forward by having a clear understanding of what you’re doing, where that’s going to take you, and why that matters. .
Create Space to Think Strategically
Regardless of if you are working in compliance or any other career, we all know how easy it is to get caught up in our day-to-day tasks. There is often so much that needs to be done and it can feel difficult to take a step back.
And yet, when we don’t take the time to think strategically, we can lose sight of where we are headed and how far we’ve come. It can be easy to start feeling discouraged and frustrated because we aren’t sure if we are making impactful progress through our work.
This is why it’s essential to make space, for both ourselves and our teams, to think strategically about the work we are doing. One of the greatest values that Jennifer Selliers has found in leading is finding regular rhythms to review the following with her team:
Where are we in our work?
Where are we headed?
What have we accomplished so far?
These are grounding conversations for us to have with our team, because it allows us to celebrate the progress we’ve made, identify areas that need improvement, and gain collective clarity on what still needs to be done.
Align Your Team’s Vision and Goals
Just as it’s important for you to understand your “why”, it’s also crucial that your team understands theirs. As leaders in our field, we need to constantly remind our teams of why they are doing their work, what the end goal is, and how they’re going to get there.
There are many ways that this can be accomplished, but I’ll share two.
The first is to ensure that your team has a clear understanding of your organization's core mission and objectives.
It’s important that everyone on your team is aligned behind what you’re trying to achieve together. This can also lead to meaningful conversations around where their role fits as it pertains to accomplishing the organizational mission and objectives, and individual opportunities within that.
As an example of what that might look like, Jennifer Selliers starts with reviewing this compliance leadership commitment (link) with her team.
The second is to walk your team through personal strategic goal-setting.
As a leader, it’s your responsibility to motivate, develop, and grow your team. By helping each of your team members identify their goals and strategic actions moving forward, you’ll both empower them within their role and receive a clear understanding of how to lead them best.
Here is an example of what Jennifer uses with her team (link).
If you can establish a clear understanding of your “why”, create space for strategic thinking, and align your team’s vision and goals, you’ll develop a team that delivers more impactful, motivated work.
To listen to my entire interview with Jennifer, click here.
