Successful Leadership: The Four C’s

It takes skill for successful leadership.  Unfortunately, not everyone is innately born with the qualities that make a great leader. Fortunately, many great leaders do develop their skill set over time.  It requires training, experience and time.

While there are many team building strategies that leaders can implement, the four C’s impact successful leadership.  They are charisma, collaboration, competency and commitment. These four C’s go a long way in helping leaders achieve sustainable success within their organizations.

Team building strategies for successful leadership

With team building strategies and the four C’s of successful leadership, leaders improve their skills and lead others to success.

C number one:  Enhance your charisma to improve successful leadership.

Charisma is an innate skill for many. For others, it must be developed.  Here are some strategies for boosting charisma and becoming a more charming leader. This is the type of leader who is able to inspire and motive workers to perform better in their positions.

1. The first step is to engage the skeptics. Before speaking in front of a group, go out and talk to the outliers or those distracted by their devices and get to know them a little bit. By getting them on your side, you will be more effective in gaining their attention during your presentation.
2. Connect on an emotional level. Make employees feel valued.
3. Instill your understanding of employee hardships and desire for their well-being.
4. Give employees a sense of hope. Why does their work matter? What are you doing to improve workforce culture and behavior?

By connecting with employees, you boost your charisma and likability. This encourage them to work harder for the company because they understand why their performance matters to both colleagues and the bottom line.

C number two: Create a collaborative work environment.

Collaboration in the workplace is one of the most important aspects for success.   A leader can’t accomplish ever tasks on his or her own.

To be successful, leaders require a competent workforce where every employee understands their role and performs their core functions successfully. Likewise, everyone must to work well together in order to get the most done.

In addition to collaboration, superior communication is also required.  Work teams cannot function properly without clear communication.  Therefore, leaders must communicate clear expectations to their team members. Team members must also feel comfortable enough to approach their leaders with questions and concerns.

For successful leadership, work with team members to set measurable milestones. Consistently check in to ensure tasks are being completed and goals are being met.

C number three: Check your competency.

We all have our own areas of expertise. However,  80 percent of leaders perceive their abilities to be above average. While it’s safe to say some are above average in certain areas, no one can be above average in all areas all of the time.

This means that as leaders, you must take a good hard look at yourself and assess your capabilities. Welcome 360 Surveys that assess how workforce behavior is performing in your departments and company culture. Frequently, leaders view their strengths as the most important aspects of leadership while dismissing or downplaying their weaknesses.

In order to truly be successful, leaders must carefully identify their workgroup dynamics and set goals to improve those dynamics. Understand that you won’t always be able to identify your areas of weakness by yourself. Ask for honest 360 feedback from your peers and those below you to gain a clear picture of your leadership success.

C number four: Commit to your team members.

Strong leaders also understand that they won’t always be in their positions.  They must also work to develop the next generation of leaders. This means investing in both themselves and their high potential employees .

The key to successful leadership is creating a work culture of continuous learning. This means seeking training and encouraging  team members to do the same.

It’s also important for leaders to define success for their team members. This helps team members  understand what they’re working toward.

Leaders should also work to challenge their team members. Give them challenging work. Encourage creativity and push their current skills so employees improve.  Commit to your future leaders to enhance  long-term success of your company.

Successful leadership comes in many forms. One of the best measures of success is how engaged and successful your team members are. While there are many team building strategies that you can implement, the four C’s go a long way in building your success:

• Enhance your charisma and charm to encourage team members to want to follow you;
• Create a collaborative environment that encourages teamwork;
• Evaluate your own competency to improve your own performance and that if your department; and, Commit to your team members and their development.

With these successful leadership strategies, leaders create strong teams that enthusiastically complete tasks and achieve goals.

Care to dig deeper into this conversation?

We found the following articles to be helpful in adding to the conversation:

• The 5 Things It Takes to be Truly Charismatic
• Sample Survey Findings: The TIGERS Team Behavior Profile
• The 5 C’s of Great Leaders
• 4 Ways to Check How Competent You Are
• How (and Why) to Commit to Investing in Your Future Leaders
• The book: TIGERS Among Us – Winning Business Team Cultures and Why They Thrive
• Leading On An Emotional Level
• Emotional Intelligence – The First Step to Leading With Empathy
• Training: 6 Principles That Build High Performance Teams
• TIGERS 360 Team Behavior Survey

Copyright TIGERS Success Series, Inc. by Dianne Crampton

About TIGERS® Success Series, Inc.

TIGERS® Success Series is a Bend, Oregon Management Facilitation and Team Improvement Consultant that helps committed leaders build more cooperation among employees and collaboration between departments for improved success.

We do this by deploying the TIGERS® team facilitation process that improves workforce behaviors that are anchored by trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk resolution and success. Providing diagnostics and customized, facilitated team interventions,  you can improve both work culture and transform your adequate teams into exceptional ones.

We also license and train HRD Executives, Project Managers, Managers, and Trainers in the use of our award winning resources. Invite us to present at your next business retreat or association gathering.

For more information, or to invite a proposal for you next corporate or association meeting call 1+ 541-385-7465.