Powerful Traits of Positive Leadership

Those of you who are leaders in any sense of the word, know that it’s a difficult job. And for others who might ask why? Here is the why explained.

Because leadership is much more than giving orders, attending meetings,  setting deadlines, managing employees, or conducting performance reviews annually. Leadership is a task that requires dedication and a wide range of skills.

Leading others is a vital role but not an easy one. It can get messy and complicated. That is why you have to continue to evolve, develop, train, and be coachable to get it right.

So, how can you approach leadership in a positive, effective, and impactful way?

Positive leadership isn’t about constant smiling and being kind to other employees. In fact, there will be times when positive leaders must deliver bad news or even take on challenging situations and learn how to give unfavorable feedback positively. This is a crucial part of a business’s success. We all know things don’t always go as planned, and there are times when you can’t always be the nice one. The key is to convey your point without losing your positive credibility effectively. The key is to deliver the message you need to get across without shutting down or demoralizing the person with whom you are speaking. Remember, it is easy for many to remember the bad more than the good.

 

What is Positive Leadership

It’s an area of study within positive psychology concerning leadership styles, techniques, or behavior the leader engages in that falls outside the normal range seen in leadership. Imagine a bell curve of leadership behaviors, with negative behaviors on the left and positive behaviors on the right. Most leadership behaviors will fall within the middle, the thickest part of the bell curve. Destructive behaviors will fall in the far-left tail, while positive leadership behaviors fall in the far-right.

A lot of time is spent discussing bad leadership, pointing out what not to do, and getting people to shift their behavior from the left side to the middle right of the bell curve. Positive leadership aims to get leaders to move their behavior from anywhere on the bell curve to the far right of the curve.

 

Positive Leadership Umbrella Term

Several different leadership theories live under the positive leadership term; the most notable include:

1. Authentic Leadership Development
2. Transformational Leadership
3. Charismatic Leadership
4. Servant Leadership

Each has its unique style, behaviors, and assumption; however, at its most basic level, they all agreed upon the following critical aspects of leadership:

• High self-awareness, optimism, and personal integrity
• Positive leadership involves modeling, experiencing, and purposefully enhancing positive emotions.
• A positive leader is interested in their employees’ development and the bottom line.

 

Positive Organizational Leadership

It’s a subfield that explores positive areas at an organizational level. Such as organizational citizenship behaviors that indicate commitment, loyalty,  and a willingness to go above and beyond, particularly positive-focused change management, change management, and other high-level ways that positive leaders can impact an organization.

 

Which Positive Leadership Style Work Best?

According to research, it’s hard to answer that question as there are tons of positive leadership styles out there, and it depends on who you ask. If the question is to spark a debate, I believe it’s easily accomplished. However, read on if the ask is based on knowledge gain and professional improvement for growth and embracing positive leadership styles. It would be helpful here to summarize each of the most popular positive leadership styles out there known to humankind.

• Authentic Leadership: style is characterized by relational transparency, self-awareness, a sense of ethics and integrity, internalized moral perspective, and balanced processing being fair and open-minded.
• Visionary (or Authoritative) Leadership: they have an ambitious vision, inspiring others to pursue it.
• Coaching Leadership: they know how to further develop and get the best out of those around them, and they usually do just that.
• Affiliative Leadership: these leaders are well-versed in applying and enhancing positive affect in the workplace, bringing harmony and conflict resolution to a team.
• Consensus (or Democratic) Leadership: they thrive on collaboration, bringing together diverse viewpoints to gather information and make decisions (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002).
• Transformational leadership is characterized by idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation; the transformational leader promotes innovation and creativity through non-threatening questioning of ideas and open-mindedness. Additionally, you can include individualized consideration where the leader treats each follower as a unique individual with unique strengths, weaknesses, and needs.
• Charismatic Leadership: this is a subtype of transformational leadership. In this role type, the leader checks all four of the boxes outlined above but is also skilled in communicating significantly deeper with others.
• Servant Leadership: Servant leadership embodies three essential elements: This type of leadership empowers and develops people. The result is an expression of humility, authenticity, interpersonal acceptance, and stewardship. And it provides direction.

Does any of this sound familiar as you review the list of positive leadership styles above? Try to see if you can relate with any on the list. Whether you have worked with leaders in the past that embody one of those leadership styles, or if you can determine which one of those is your leadership style falls under without conducting any assessment or tests. The goal here is not to look at the list from “what’s lacking” but more of a baseline to understand your leadership styles, looking at past interaction and experience to determine for yourself which of these positive leadership styles you work best with. It is important that we take the approach to understand that one size does not fit all. Sometimes some leaders may subconsciously switch between types based on certain situations.

However, it is much easier to define one’s leadership style and consistently show up in the same manner to your followers and employees because it’s your natural home base. The positive leadership style that you resonate with the most will be easier to sustain in the long run. It reduces confusion, clarifies expectations, and increases positive relations and morale.

 

Positive Leadership in Action

Positive leadership in action looks like leaders who care, empower, and support employees—a few examples of that.

• Supports employees. This entails more than just seeming supportive; it means to be a genuinely supportive leader who has their employees back and to be there for them when they need it most. This might include acting as a buffer between employees and a micromanaging manager, or it may show as speaking up for an employee in a meeting when they are struggling.
• A leader who empowers employees gives them as much power and self-determination as possible. An excellent positive leader does not give orders or answers but provides the guidance and tools necessary for their employees to do their best work.
• A caring leader will address a rare mistake from a consistently productive employee with compassion and concern rather than blame. A caring leader will understand that we are all human, and each one of us ultimately makes a mistake at some point.
• Effective positive leaders will also understand that there is probably a reason behind the mistake, try to talk to the employee to see if they are struggling with something that’s not immediately obvious.
• Empowering leaders might delegate projects and large-scale tasks to staff but allow them to choose how they will tackle them. It also encourages them to choose their training and development opportunities to invest in their growth.

 

Key Traits & Skills of a Positive Leader

To be a positive leader, you will need to develop, improve, and embody some essential traits and skills in your actions and daily interactions with the people you lead. Although there are so many out there, and this list is nowhere near comprehensive, but few are vital to your leadership development journey, including:

• Mindfulness – workplace mindfulness is the degree to which individuals are mindful in their work setting; to put it another way, a mindful individual is not ruminating about the past. They are not worrying about the future; they are simply “being” in the here and now—paying close attention to stimuli, both internal and external. It is mindful information processing: a mindful employee will take in what is happening in the workplace and not react to it. Instead, take in information from their surroundings. Many researchers now consider mindfulness a psychological state that varies from moment to moment within individuals.
• Hope – is a positive cognitive state based on a sense of successful goal-directed determination and planning to meet these goals.
• Confidence – our self-assurance in trusting our abilities, capacities, and judgments; the belief that we can meet the demands of a task.
• Self-esteem – a person’s overall sense of their value or worth. It can be considered a measure of how much a person value, approves of, appreciates him or herself, favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the self.
• Self-efficacy – is the belief we have in our abilities and competencies. Self-efficacy in all forms influences our thoughts, emotions, actions, and motivation. It operates mainly through the cognitive and affective channels and plays a crucial role in shaping our perception of life experiences.
• Positive affect refers to the feelings or emotions that we display and experience, especially in terms of how they influence us to act and make decisions.
• Locus of control – is your internal control span managing the things that are within your control and owning up to those responsibilities.
• Emotional stability – it’s self-exploratory, not losing your temper, volatile moods, emotionally reactive, and transferring and offloading onto others and in other words, losing your center and projecting outwardly.

 

Tips for Being an Effective & Positive Leader

There are key behaviors that you may want to incorporate into your toolbox in order to be an effective positive leader:

1. Self-awareness (asking for feedback)
2. Relational transparency (to have a clear philosophy on leadership )
3. Balanced processing (by using active listening)
4. Ethical behavior (by doing what you say you will do)
5. Trustworthiness (by treating others with respect and keeping your word)
6. Supportiveness (giving appreciation and support to employees)
7. Empowerment (giving your employees freedom and choice)
8. Model your values behind the behaviors, not just the behaviors themselves.
9. Promote self-determination in your employees by showing them how it’s done.
10. Encourage positive social exchanges and positive emotions in the workplace.
11. Set and live up to high expectations.
12. Be sure to deliver on the commitments you make.
13. Value your employees and be sure to nurture skills, relationships, and professional development.
14. Work well with others, engage and promote teamwork and collaboration.
15. Try to resolve the inevitable conflicts in the workplace efficiently and quickly.
16. Be open about your willingness to help, support, and develop others.

If you decide to implement the positive behaviors above in your day-to-day leadership, you will see a marked improvement in employee performance, organizational culture, and morale!

 

A Take Home Message

One of the critical aspects of positive leadership is establishing and achieving Everest goals. A wealth of research has been done to support that having goals motivates individuals and organizations greatly. It is a positive way to achieve higher performance than if they didn’t have any goals at all.

Everest goals focus on possibilities, opportunities, and potential. Every individual and organization should have some of their own. A helpful tool to keep employees motivated is goal setting. Whether it is an Everest goal or a general goal, they help inspire the better. There are other aspects to keep in mind when making a public declaration when trying to motivate individuals. People are more inclined to do what they said they would do if it’s happening respectfully and realistically, not being pushed and forced upon by those leaders. Suppose you are a leader or in the job field looking for help in becoming a positive leader. It’s always easy to say that you will be a good leader. However, whether you are adequately prepared depends on the amount of preparation time you are willing to put forth, open-mindedness, checking your ego at the door, and how coachable you are to embrace the learnings.