Attitude matters! And it matters the most for leaders.
Attitude is a mood, and mood is contagious. The mood, an essential element for a positive attitude, is highly impressible. Leadership tension, personal objectives, peer pressure, and life stresses all weigh on one's energy and mood and reflect on their attitude. Regardless, leaders' attitude matters more than they may think it does. If leaders fail to manage their attitude correctly, they are prone to ramifications that damage their image, and consequently, a bad attitude will hurt their team, community, and mission.
Leaders' attitude determines their team's attitude.
Again, mood drives attitude. Poor spirit runs a lousy attitude that contagiously affects people around. Progressively, a leader's attitude sets the tone for the team and influences the organizational culture; equivalently to a head of household. For instance, suppose a father has a bad day that can affect the temper of entire family members living in the same home. Similarly, having a bad time and reflecting it on attitude at work will impact the whole team. As mentioned, leaders' attitude is the determinative factor in the formation of an organization's culture.
Traditionally, the most senior person in a family is responsible for setting the boundaries, and the family members' duty is to honor them. That is how the family culture is formed. A grandparent's responsibility is to supervise their children's temper, and behavior since moving down through the hierarchy will set the tone for grandchildren. Any weaknesses and imperfections of the grand
parents can easily spread through the family - as a norm - and create a flawed culture.
Similarly, if a manager thinks his employees lack passion, courage, and enthusiasm, they can find the person to be blamed in the mirror! When leaders attend work completely uninspired, how could they expect their team to be excited about coming to work?
Individuals at the lower levels of a hierarchy in any society, such as political, educational, or organizational, tend to look up to their leaders and resemble them to some extent. For example, a member of a society who continuously witnesses their political leaders attacking their opponents would unintentionally normalize hate speech, wrongful accusation, and biased and purposeful criticism and will implement the same behavior when interacting with other members of the society.
Education is vital for the improvement and boost of leadership skills. And it has to be ongoing and continuous. True leaders should be willing to put themselves through training regardless of their background, work history, and experience level in order to remain motivated, engaged, and productive. Lack of education that meets the date's standards and management needs will lead to Leadership Gap.
What is Leadership Gap?
Center of Creative Leadership describes Leadership Gap as "the leadership gap is how aligned current leadership is with what's thought to be important for leadership effectiveness in the future" (Center for Creative Leadership, 2020). Unfortunately, most managers tend to be reactive rather than proactive. Per my experience of working as a manager for nearly two decades, leaders often fail to educate themselves adequately and, therefore, struggle to deal with serious management challenges usually derived from technological advancement. These leaders are often referred to as old-school managers, instead of preventing their company from facing problems, they wait until an issue matures and then begin seeking solutions for the trouble.
Old-school managers usually employ Traditional Leadership techniques to run their business and heavily rely on skillful employees who possess more advanced and up-to-date information to resolve the issue. While if these employees were given adequate tools and were appropriately valued, they could proactively prevent the trouble in the first place.
I find Modern Leadership, by all means, a proper solution to close the Leadership Gap.
Modern Leadership cannot be achieved overnight and requires thorough and continuous training. "Helping leaders grow and develop as human beings is a long-term undertaking that requires leaders to build enough personal agency to permanently develop these skills beyond short-term courses, to help carry the culture of an organization forward in any environment in the future" (Jacklin, 2018). The long-term training and persistently educating of leaders is what experts consider a tool to close the Leadership Gap.
Assessing current & future leadership talent, valuing current leaders' success, aligning leadership skills with the organization's strategy, and enlisting senior management as coaches and mentors are ways by which Modern Leadership attempts to close the Leadership Gap. (Valloton, 2018).
References
Jacklin, J. (2018, May 12). Why modern Leadership makes people uncomfortable. Www.sixdegreesexecutive.com.au. https://www.sixdegreesexecutive.com.au/blog/2018/12/why-modern-leadership-makes-people-uncomfortable?source=google.com
The Leadership Gap: How to Fix What Your Organization Lacks | CCL. (2020, December 4). Center for Creative Leadership. https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/leadership-gap-what-you-still-need/
Valloton, M. (2018, June 19). 6 Steps to Close the Leadership Gap. MidAtlantic Employers' Association. https://www.meainfo.org/blog/6-steps-close-leadership-gap/
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