Four Ways to Become a Better Leader
Being a leader takes more than just an esteemed title and a cushy office. It takes skill and experience to back up the position, and who better to ask about leadership than Naluri’s Co-founder, Azran Osman-Rani?
Azran has led diverse teams as CEO of some of the region’s most celebrated companies, culminating in invaluable knowledge on how to bring out the best in people. Here are Azran’s top tips on how to be a better leader:
1. Connect with your employees
When it comes down to it, your employees are the people who execute plans and get whatever is necessary done. Ensure that everyone is aligned with the company’s vision when carrying out objectives, and try to hold conversations with your employees as regularly as possible. Conversations can be carried out either synchronously or asynchronously (e.g. via text). Defining this is important as you can’t always expect someone to be constantly available to respond to you immediately. If you are always trying to talk synchronously, you run the risk of being disruptive to your employee’s work.
It is also important to connect with your employees on a motivational level. Ask yourself, ‘How can I align what the company wants with the aspirations of my team?’ You want your employees to feel like they’re doing work not just for the sake of it, but also because they see it as part of what they want to achieve or where they want to take their career. Just like anyone else, your employee wants to know that not only the work they bring to the table is valued, but also their motivations and objectives.
Inform your employees about the impact made through their contributions. “On a more basic level for me,” Azran says. “Is sharing stories. During meetings and sessions, we talk about the actual lives we change through Naluri. When we connect and make a difference to people’s lives, it just makes everything that we need to do worthwhile. As a leader, I want to make sure that we’re able to create more of those stories and share those stories together.”
2. Practice retrospection
Encourage the practice of retrospective meetings amongst employees and their respective teams. Discuss the highlights of the previous week or month, along with the things that didn’t go so well. How can you do things differently next time round?
This act of pausing and thinking back on ways to improve is important. Essentially, what you want to build is a learning organisation, because nobody should be doing the exact same thing they were doing in the previous month. In order to keep changing, we must get used to constantly reflecting and asking, ‘What is working, and what is not working?’ in order to keep getting better each and every time. If not, you run the risk of your employees losing motivation and interest when only the same thing is repeated over and over again with no improvement.
3. Build trust
Leaders are responsible for many things. They are responsible to point out the direction the organisation is heading in, may be called in to resolve possible disputes or conflicts, and are also seen as a source of guidance or help. When you lack trust as a leader, you immediately lose not only your credibility as a leader, but also your reliability and authenticity. After all, how can you expect your team to rely on you if they do not trust you?
Without trust, an organisation will crumble. Real alignment must exist between what you want as a leader, what the company wants, and what each individual employee wants. Because once you’re seen as self-interested, that’s when things start to go awry.
4. Lead by example
Set high standards for your quality of work, and deliver on your promises and objectives. As a leader, it’s a given that your team will look to you for guidance and to learn from your work ethic. When the example you set is one of a high standard, this motivates your team to work harder in order to match the bar that you have set.
This also means holding yourself accountable when things don’t go as planned. Leading by example isn’t just a matter of only showcasing your successes, but also owning your shortcomings and carrying yourself with integrity when your ideas don’t work out as hoped. Never resort to using other employees as scapegoats in order to avoid taking the blame. As Azran says, “Courage is the ability to be truthful to employees, even when the news is bad.”
