What makes a good leader?

What’s the difference between management and leadership? What makes a good leader? These questions were answered by a panel of experts on HR Leader’s “Thriving in a tight talent market with effective leadership” webinar in partnership with The Access Group earlier this year.

Director at Kennedy Reid Group, Stuart Freeman, gave his insight: “Being a manager tends to describe a job function. So, being a manager tends to be a job title with a fixed set of responsibilities. Whereas … leaders can be found anywhere in a team or an organisation and leadership really evolves and develops around a person that acts in a certain way and inspires others to do the same.”

Mr Freeman continued: “So, it's really not reflective of what your title is, or your position is in a team or an organisation. Leaders tend to be followed because of their personality, behaviour and beliefs, but it certainly doesn’t imply that they have to be managing a team of people as such. Whereas managers and the role of management tends to be focused around someone who is assisting a team or a group with planning, organising, leading, and controlling a certain specific set of outcomes.”

Kim Wiegand, Julip’s founder, weighed in on the question: “It’s how you lead people with an idea, a concept … how you engage people around you for a project and take forward a program or project with other people in your wake. It doesn’t have to just be the big CEO who’s managing all of the people and its common vision. So, I think leadership behaviours and qualities and beliefs and how you engage those around you is more important.”

Leadership may vary from business to business. No set style of how to lead your employees will always work, as circumstance and workplace culture play a role.

Michael Byrnes, Swaab partner, gave his reflection on what makes an effective leader: “[It] very much depends on the employees who are being led and also the nature of the organisation itself. More junior employees … I think that lends itself to more tightly controlled management because they are still finding their way… They might need guidance, they might need support, and they need assistance in the development of skills.”

“Whereas more senior employees … by that stage you’d hope that they have the sufficient autonomy, maturity, skills, both hard and soft skills, to be able to be led by an outcomes-type leadership approach. And I think that that is an approach that has enormous merit. It liberates employees. I think it helps productivity. It certainly would help retention,” explained Mr Byrnes.

While different styles of leadership may be needed depending on the organisation, Mr Freeman noted that there are universal qualities that make an effective leader. He said: “There are some common denominators that make up a good leader. And as a founding platform of that, being a skilled communicator is fundamentally important.”

Mr Freeman continued: “I think the leaders that I’ve observed over the years can create a vision. I think they have a skill around storytelling. I think they have skills around getting people onboard to walk beside them and be with them on a journey irrespective of what that journey is.”

He added: “They place importance on keeping people informed of what’s going on, the good and bad, throughout that journey. They typically inspire trust in people as well.”

Ms Wiegand said: “The structure that goes into supporting employees [needs] to be outcomes focused. And I think that takes a really committed leader to not micromanage … but put enough structure and support in place that their employees know what’s expected of them to reach that outcome efficiently and effectively.”

“I think about what makes a great leader … they’re self-aware, they prioritise personal development, they focus on developing others, they encourage strategic thinking, [they are] creative [and] innovative,” she added.

The transcript of this webinar, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full audio conversation and the original webinar can be found here.