When discussing leadership, we often hear words like teamwork and collaboration. People tend to shy away from words like conflict and disagreement. But are these bad?

Strong leaders encourage disagreement, because it ensures that everyone on the team is using their full potential to ensure decisions are bullet-proofed.

We are all trained from an early age to defer to authority. however, people who are closer to the issue or opportunity often have a different, more informed, perspective than more senior people.

My Perspective: If you are always getting agreement to your thoughts and ideas, then your people aren’t contributing their own valued ideas. As a leader you need to ensure that your team feels safe disagreeing and challenging your thinking. If your team automatically defers to the boss, then you and the team will miss out on critical input and thinking.

Make it easy for people to speak up with a dissenting opinion in a safe environment. Actively ask for their input — and then ask again to demonstrate you are serious about hearing their thoughts. Disagreeing with the boss requires courage, so recognize people when they voice a dissenting opinion and challenge your thinking with good ideas of their own.

When discussing projects, share your  comments as initial thoughts as opposed to formed ideas, then ask for input in developing the ideas further. This will encourage people to build on the thinking versus just agree.

Make sure that you don’t react negatively if someone disagrees, even if you think it is a bad idea. This will just shut people down in the future. It’s much better to allow the group to determine that the idea doesn’t make sense based on evaluation — and better ideas that come forward.

Lastly, never confuse dissent or disagreement with disrespect. Disrespect doesn’t belong in any discussion.

Today, more than ever, we need courageous leaders who empower others to reach heights they never thought possible. We need our leaders to expand their capabilities and move outside of the transactional space and into a transformational space that focuses on long term solutions rather than short term gains.

Transformational leadership – growing beyond transactional leadership

Developing your leadership capacity is moving beyond focusing on the day to day operations and expanding your decision making process to focus on long term strategies that are able to sustain business over time.

Leaders need to focus on developing a transformational leadership style that creates positive change and growth. This begins with the goals and vision that are set by leaders and their ability to clearly communicate them to their team in a way that inspires then to buy in.

7 must have transformational leadership qualities

In order to get your team to buy in and be part of your vision for the company, there are certain qualities you must possess to be a transformational leader:

1. A clear vision:
   Transformational leaders have a vision of what they want to achieve and the ability to clearly communicate this vision so that everyone in the organization understands what is needed to achieve this vision. Is your vision clear? Does it need to be refined?
2. Courage:
   An effective leader needs courage; a willingness to take on new challenges, take calculated risks, make tough decisions, and be willing to go out on a limb for something they believe in. Transformational leaders have the courage to create a vision and do what it takes to achieve their vision.
3. Self-motivation:
   Leaders need to fuel their passion from within. Transformational leaders have passion and motivation that people can sense and feed off of it. Are you passionate about your vision and willing to do what it takes to see your vision achieved?
4. Inspiration:
   Transformational leaders, based on their personal passion, have the ability to inspire others and get them to buy into their vision and execute it on all levels of the company. How do you inspire your employees to create change? Are you effective at motivating and inspiring your staff?
5. Know your people:
   Personal interaction is important. The impact of a simple “hello” in the hallway or conversation in the lobby goes a long way into getting employees to feel important and want to be part of the vision a leader has created for the company.  You have the ability to impact each of your team on a personal level. When was the last time you took the time to listen to your team and get to know them as individuals?
6. Set a company standard:
   Transformational leaders model a company standard they expect everyone to follow. They clearly communicate their vision, expectations, and how this standard is to be carried out throughout the organization. What is your company standard? What standard are you setting by example?
7. Follow through:
   While it is a bit cliché, actions do speak louder than words — and when leaders live according to the standard they set, employees take notice. Leaders often promise a lot, but it is the follow through that has a true impact on a leader’s ability to evoke change and get employees to buy in. How do you follow through and ensure your standards are met?

Tips for becoming a transformational leader

Leaders cannot just decide to become a transformational leader. However, they can work on developing transformational leadership by implementing these tips:

• Craft your vision and make it the focal point of the company
• Solicit input from senior management to ensure your vision can be spread throughout the company
• Have a process in place that allows your frontline workers to ask questions and get clarification
• Be clear and communicate the importance that each employees plays in the execution of your vision for the company
• Create actionable steps that align with your vision that can be executed by employees
• Understand what is needed to motivate and inspire your employees to buy in and become part of your vision

When leaders openly accept a transformational style they move beyond day to day functions and operate at a higher level that is focused on creating change in employees and culture that will lead to innovation and growth.

Recently I executed an employee engagement survey across a client organization. When I compared the senior executive team with the blended front-line results I discovered a very troubling outcome.

The senior executives were almost unanimous in the belief that they had done an excellent job of communicating the core values of the organization — yet results from the front-line indicated exactly the opposite.

Even worse, some of the comments indicated that the values the front-line were observing were inconsistent with the “advertised” values.

Too many organizations believe that the values are clear in their organization. However, all too often, the values that are communicated are coming via actions rather than words — or the actions speak louder than the words.

Here are few questions to ask yourself.

• Have you crystallized your values and written them down?
• Does everyone at the senior level of the organization agree and commit to live by these values?
• Did you involve your employees? Were they involved in establishing the organizational values? Do they feel ownership?
• Did you solicit buy-in across the organization and give them an opportunity to discuss them and what they mean in their daily lives?
• Do you regularly communicate the values? Do you explain your decisions in the context of your values so everyone understand how the values come to life?
• Do you live your values? Actions speak louder than words — are your values being demonstrated on a daily basis in your decision-making?

My Perspective: If you don’t have clearly defined core values, this is a missed opportunity to influence and engage employees. Too often organizations have a communications plan — but it doesn’t do a very good job of communicating internally.

Having a clear set of values also let’s people know what kind of organization is being built and they have an opportunity to decide whether they want to belong to that kind of organization. And in return, you have the evaluate people for a good fit with your team.

Clarity is key.

Many people are familiar with the expression, Start, Stop, Do Different from personal evaluation processes — those regularly scheduled reviews by our supervisor. They will often use this outline to give us feedback of our performance.

But I also think it should be used more regularly, both personally and with colleagues.

No leader improves without feedback and personal introspection.

So rather than waiting for a formal review by a supervisors, consider asking your colleagues these questions.

1. What should I start doing? What activities or behaviours should I add into my daily activities to provide more leadership to my team?
2. What should I stop doing? What behaviours are unproductive or are interfering with my ability to positively influence others?
3. What should I do differently? What can I do differently to lead my team to achieve greater success?

Lastly, don’t forget to ask what you should keep doing — what behaviours are working and should you continue to demonstrate? In your effort to improve don’t forget to reinforce the positive attributes and behaviours that are working. So be sure to confirm those as well and make sure they don’t get lost in the quest for improvement. After all growth is about building on top of versus replacing.

My Perspective: Whenever I am asked to speak, at the end of every presentation I ask the question, “Beginning tomorrow, What will you Start, Stop, Do Different, as a result of what you have heard today?”

It might be worthwhile asking yourself and others these questions on a more regular basis if you want to become the leader of your dreams.

Have you ever worked with someone who seemed to have a negative viewpoint about everything? Of course you have, we all have.

They find negative in everything. They don’t see the glass half empty — they assume it is filled with poison.

So how do we gather value from a person who seems bound and determined to undermine even the most positive initiative.

First we need to override the natural tendency to filter out and ignore everything they say to prevent being dragged down by their negative attitude.

Then we create a modified filter that allows us to sort their comments. Even the most negative person often has some basis for their negativity and if we simply discount everything they say we might miss some important and valuable insights.

By learning to filter and sort their comments we avoid the negativity but still remain open to the nuggets that are worthwhile.

My Perspective: If everyone in your team is positive then you need to make sure someone takes the opposing viewpoint to avoid the pitfall of “group think” and make sure all ideas are challenged and bullet proofed.

This may be someone you designate to play this important role of devils advocate or it may simply be that you already have a negative thinker in your team. Let them play that role and then as you utilize their input to improve  — you might even see a genuine change in their overall attitude.

Strong leaders find value in even the worst performer and coach that person into even greater capacity for contribution.