It’s Time to Sharpen Your Leadership Skills

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

-John Maxwell

This blog is for you if you are a leader or aspiring to be one. If you are already a C-level executive, you will agree that learning never ends. You must sharpen your skills to be the leader you want to be and your employees want to see you as. In today’s business, things take no time to change. Leaders can stay on track only if they adopt the ideal approaches to working.

What do you want to do as a leader?

Leadership is about equipping your workforce with the right information and tools to work effectively and accomplish organizational goals without fail. As an effective leader, you want to direct, encourage, motivate, and celebrate with your team(s).

Do you have This tool in your quiver?

But the question is how to become a leader who defines leadership by results and not attributes. Intelligent leaders identify and use the OKR model to lead their workforce effectively. The OKR framework is known to be a simple yet convincing goal-setting strategy used by enterprises across the globe, including Google, LinkedIn, Spotify, Amazon, and many more. Strategic planning, alignment, and engagement are key benefits of using this framework. Besides, as you lead your team(s) with objectives and key results, you help them stay connected to the organization’s mission, strategy, vision, purpose, and values.

OKRs crucial for leaders

OKRs or objectives and key results circle the process of creating focus, alignment, rhythm, and agility. The aim here is to support shared business goals and accomplish measurable results. Here comes the critical role of a leader who undertakes key efforts and initiatives to empower his teams, helping them achieve more and better. You must improve your leadership skills, hone collaboration, embrace a transparent culture, and engage employees, making everyone accountable for their actions.

Here, we learn how using an OKR tool enables you to taper your leadership skills and drive extraordinary business outcomes.

Bridge the gap between strategy and execution

Most businesses fail to deliver strategic plans, and only a small percentage succeed in achieving their objectives, thus meeting their business goals. Implementing the OKR methodology thus helps leaders recognize key drivers helping to attain strategic goals. You can guide your teams and bridge the strategy-execution gap, saving yourself from distractions. You can optimize the use of resources while identifying and focusing on the overarching organizational goals.

Team communication precedes all

As a leader, you must communicate your business vision and strategy to your teams. Identifying a leadership style helps, and learning how an OKR framework supports your leadership style. Use OKRs to trigger conversations with individuals and teams while prioritizing communication via weekly check-ins and recurrent one-on-one meetings. As you connect with teams, you learn how they are progressing on goals and thus realign objectives to keep people inspired and engaged. Most importantly, you get to know their challenges while accomplishing their objectives aligned with the organization. You can thus help them cross the barriers.

Set goals that are clear and aligned

If your team fails to achieve the desired key results, it is not always at fault. You may be lagging in leadership, leading to poor results. Improve your goal-setting skills, and then you can be better focused and aligned. Your employees should meet the company’s objectives, which must be at the top of your mind. As you set clear goals, leaders motivate their teams to move in the same direction. With the involvement of employees across the organization, the OKR methodology helps to bring extraordinary business outcomes.

Increasing accountability on the part of teams

Remember, if individuals can’t take responsibility for achieving their targets, they won’t ever hone their skills. They will lag in productivity. Engage them and make them accountable for their tasks to attain their goals. You don’t need an OKR framework to assign tasks to individuals and teams, but you also bring everyone to the same page. Accountability increases when one can see who is working on what and there is transparency. Besides, when your employees know that their objectives and key results are closely linked to those of the organization, they exercise ownership and work hard towards achieving them.

Engage employees to make them more productive

You will fail in your business if your organization lacks employee engagement. You understand that disengaged employees cost US businesses billions of dollars annually. Adopting and implementing the OKR framework enables you to boost employee engagement. When there are active discussions among multiple teams and their leaders, OKRs come into the picture. As a manager or leader, you can sit and interact with team members when the quarter ends and ask what they learned and how they contributed to the company’s OKRs in the past quarter. Employees participate in conversations, come on board, and get a chance to make decisions. With meetings and touch-bases among teams, employees show increased productivity.

Ways in which OKRs Further Exceptional Leadership and Improve Performance

READY, GET, SET, GO!

Now that you have understood the significance of OKRs in business, execute them to keep your teams aligned, motivated, and engaged. Improve your leadership skills using an OKR product, like UnlockTalent and drive your organization to growth and success get started for free. to find out how UnlockTalent enables you to accomplish your ambitious goals.