leadership matters

5 Reasons Why Great Leadership Matters

Good leaders are driven towards a mission that everyone can get behind. They know how to motivate a team through honesty, transparency, and genuine passion. In the book Leading at a Higher Level, a study showed that leaders that had a strong vision had the highest performing teams. In short, leadership matters.

The experience that a great leader creates is hard to describe, but you just feel better when you’re around them.

Good leaders also understand the importance of employee engagement, and what it means for bottom line profits. Gallup did a meta-analysis and found there is a direct correlation between a company’s level of employee engagement and performance.

To me, there are 5 important reasons why great leadership matters.

1. They Help Motivate And Grow Employees

“A manager says ‘go’ and a leader says ‘let’s go!’” – E.M Kelly

One of the things that makes a great leader great is that they want to let employees grow into better people, and therefore better employees. Great leaders encourage employees to submit new ideas, and to learn new skills. Great leaders are always encouraging fun team building activities to make the team stronger and more unified, and make sure all employees are working well together.

One of the things that makes a great leader great is that they want to let employees grow into better people, and therefore better employees.

2. They Move The Business Forward

Great leaders have a vision, and are incredibly focused on realizing that vision. I’ve seen bad leaders switch gears too many times. It’s distracting for employees, and it doesn’t really give them a sense of purpose.

Great leaders know when to say yes, when to say no, and how to move towards the goal. Bad leaders are usually very short-term focused, whereas great leaders are usually long-term.

3. They Create Loyal Customers

A lot of people don’t think about this enough, and how important this actually is. Usually when we discuss leaders, it’s how they affect internal culture. Great leaders indirectly create loyal customers by creating an environment for employees to shine. A great leader who understands transparency, collaboration, and sharing of ideas, will create a culture for employees to please their customers.

A great leader who understands transparency, collaboration, and sharing of ideas, will create a culture for employees to please their customers.

4. They Create Passionate Brand Ambassadors

When you’re passionate about where you work, and who you work for, you can’t help but want to spread the good word about your business and what they do. This is powerful word-of-mouth marketing that employees gladly do for free.

They’re passionate about the brand because they can feel the leader’s passion. It’s infectious. Instead of hiring a massive sales force, let your entire company handle that for you. All a leader needs to do is create the environment for this to happen. The rest will take care of itself.

5. They Inspire Other Leaders To Be Great

Great leaders inspire other leaders to be great, both internally and externally. Everyone wants to be a great leader, since they know that it’s a really important trait to have for their business. I’ll often watch video interviews with leaders that inspire me, and try my best to emulate them in my every day.

Great leaders inspire other leaders to be great, both internally and externally.

Being a great leader isn’t something you can fake, or learn overnight. It’s very obvious when someone is a great leader, and employees can spot fakeness from a mile away. It’s something that you as a leader have to truly believe, and truly be passionate about.

Why do you think great leadership matters? Let me know in the comments!

 

 

Jacob Shriar

I currently serve as the Growth Manager at Officevibe. I'm passionate about web and mobile. I love online marketing, and I have Google and Hubspot certifications to show for it. I believe that good marketing comes effortlessly through honesty, transparency, and a solid product. I'm passionate about startups and culture. It's something that I read and talk about a lot. I also believe that you should never stop learning.

  • Ben Simonton

    Do I think leadership matters?

    Ask the 37 men who died when in 1987 the USS Stark failed to defend itself when she was hit by two Exocet missiles fired from an Iraqi jet. Stark was specifically designed to defend against this exact threat but none of her defensive systems were ever turned on during the attack.

    Ask the Eastern Airlines employees who allowed their company to fail because of being so mad at management or ask the employees of Enron.

    Superior leadership is capable of achieving a 500% performance gain according to Stephen Covey senior, not 5% or 50%, but 500%. I was able to achieve such a gain as an executive because I understood the right actions to unleash the full potential of every employee and knew why they were right and other actions were wrong.

    Yes, leadership matters. Sadly, leadership is wildly misunderstood as are the actions that constitute superior leadership. The results of this misunderstanding are obvious from the Gallup surveys reporting only 13% of employees worldwide being engaged and almost twice that percentage being actively disengaged.

  • Dan Benoni

    Great article @JacobShriar . Loved it!

    Do you think the Leaders (traditionally called “Managers”…) also have the responsibility to maximize an employee’s growth, even if it edges on the personal level?

    I believe so, but I’d love to get your opinion on that.

    To give a bit of context, I’ve seen a situation where—during a quarterly update (the equivalent of a “Performance Review” in other companies I guess)—the discussion was oriented around the individual’s personal growth and objectives instead of simply doing an old-school “Performance Appraisal”.

    The result was surprising.

    I think it led to a feeling of greater purpose both for the employee and for the company since it reminded the Leaders of the organization of the importance of values alignment and personal growth as a way to engage people.

    What are your thoughts on that?

  • There’s a more human way to do business.

    In the Social Age, it’s how we engage with customers, collaborators and strategic partners that matters; it’s how we create workplace optimism that sets us apart; it’s how we recruit, retain (and repel) employees that becomes our differentiator. This isn’t a “people first, profits second” movement, but a “profits as a direct result of putting people first” movement.

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