Strategic Leadership for Organizational Performance
In a bumpy operating landscape where there is much demand on leadership creativity and tenacity to move ahead, you need to be sure about what specific challenges you need to tackle in order mobilize your people to be better producers of profit sustainably. The key issue is that virtually everyone wants a better place to work and express themselves as true producers of profit, and that is where effective leadership comes in.
The results of research carried out by Gallup in 2021-2022 show that as much as 70% to 80% of personnel in the United States of America do not feel fully engaged where they work, with up to 65% considering leaving if they have better job opportunities. These numbers are frightening, considering the huge costs associated with attracting, hiring, training and retaining the best talents in any organization.
There are no data from other countries to compare with, but it is safe to assume that talent retention must be one of the most challenging top of mind issues for organizations that desire to remain productive and sustainable. As a result, to sustain a high performance organization, smart leaders must learn how to use the currency of inspiration, care and modeling to positively influence personnel buy-in and consequent action. This requires establishing trust and building confidence for emotional ownership, which is based on strong cooperating relationship.
The strategies that can be successfully adapted to ensure continued organizational performance and sustainability irrespective of the operating environment and conditions will expectedly vary from time to time depending on the prevailing circumstances. There are however some fundamental strategies that will always be useful and effective for leaders that need to manage the conditions that help their teams to be successful.
The basics are that effectiveness in leadership requires the humility, willingness and open-mindedness to learn new communication styles and/or change current 
styles, if doing so will bring better results. Relatedly, there must be the intentional and consistent investment in training and coaching for every key team member, starting with the top leaders and executive management cadre.
There isn’t much sense in arranging training programmes and coaching interventions for middle management and other staff while top executives lose out on the benefits of leadership coaching, especially in times like these. Importantly, real leadership is achieved when top leaders learn to be coaches and mentors to their team, and also encourage peer coaching. The great advantage with this is that the organization becomes adept at utilising people and team transformation coaching processes, tools and techniques to achieve exponential results. That is the essence of the new approaches in global corporate management of the concepts of coach-leadership, coach-mentorship and the manager to coach solutions.
Energizing Organizational Teams
Managing organizations in rapidly changing local and global conditions, as well as leading organizational teams to remain focused, energized, committed and productive in such times must be quite challenging. But, in reality, challenges are the best creators of the opportunity for greatness, especially because it is challenging situations that compel essential creativity, innovation and resilience.
That is the power that the entrepreneurial spirit confers on notable entrepreneurs who are celebrated for their inventions. The real intentions behind the inventions were always about overcoming real challenges by solving problems and meeting needs. That is simply also what makes organizational leadership to be greatly influential and impactful in sustaining their organizations.
The fact is that people do their best when there is a chance to change the way things are done, as long as they will be improved through the process and experience. It is therefore the responsibility of truly effective leaders to seek every possible opportunity to strengthen others by sharing their vision, ideas, thoughts and needs. This is what gives the team members the power to be creative thinkers, in providing solutions.
The Table below summarises some of these strategies, which transform and sustain organizations. They are applicable for all organizations irrespective of the size.
|  Leadership Focus  |  Conditions for Organizational Success & Sustainability |
| Â Organizational Goal | 1. Challenging: The goal must be challenging, but not impossible to achieve. It is ambitious but realistic. 2.Consequential: The goal must be meaningful and engaging to everyone that must embrace it. |
| Team Purpose  | Clear Purpose: The team purpose must be clear and easily understood and embraced by all team members. |
| Tasks and Roles | Roles: There are well-designed team tasks, with specific roles given to each member for interdependence working |
| Strategic Planning | Direction: There is the right knowledge of destination, as well as the ways, means and plans to get there. |
| Team Composition | Optimal Team Composition: The team is the right size, with right skills. No lack of human capital or excess baggage. |
| Behaviour Norms | Internal Conflicts: Argue/Disagree in private, with focus on goals, never persons or personalities. No festering of issues. |
| Making Decisions
| Consensus: Make decisions based on inputs by all key and affected persons for united front once team leaves the room. |
| Flexibility | Adaptability:Unnecessary procedures are minimized in order to accept new ideas for all key and affected persons. |
| Excellence | Competence:Specific assignments are reserved for those that demonstrate competence and are driven by excellence. |
| Accountability | Personal/Team Accountability:Team members are accountable to self and all, being held accountable by team. |
| Standards | Performance:Â Everyone agrees that mediocrity is not tolerated, so goals are challenging but attainable. |
| Rewards  | Recognition: Feedback reflects excellent performance and appropriate rewards recognise good performance. |
| Team Commitment  | Cooperation: People are proud to belong and cooperate with discretionary effort through self-commitment. |
| Position Power | Leadership Power:Leadership is everyone’s responsibility, not based on position or privilege, but on team stake holding. |
It is wise to gather as much information as possible before developing a solution, especially by listening carefully to all stakeholders involved in the problem. Ask the right questions to better understand the problem context, and consider different perspectives. And, as Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes its impact known in modern business operations, it is important to know how to allay the fears of people who feel insecure.
There is no doubt that robots can never replace creative and proactive humans that are not only uniquely skilled, but also constantly learn new skills and continue to develop and grow. This is where constant interfacing with stakeholders and giving of effective bi-directional feedback become needful. The same applies to individual and team coaching for continued inspiration and motivation of the high performance team.
In empowering people and organizational teams, it is always useful to focus on the goal of personal responsibility, authority and accountability, ensuring that it is never about creating competition or conflict within work teams. Rather, it must be aimed at facilitating increased competence, confidence, commitment, consistency, honesty and loyalty, in order to empower team members to rely on one another. This will also improve emotional intelligence as team members become more sensitive to others. They are thus more in control of their emotions and better at handling challenging situations. In this regard, be assured that truly effective leadership is about climbing the right mountain, for the right reason, with the right tools, and for the right rewards.
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Dr Emmanuel Imevbore is an executive coach, management consultant and business strategist. He is the CEO of International Coaching and Mentoring Institute, a specialist coaching and coach-training Organisation. He can be reached by email:
emmanuel@ic-mi.com; and WhatsApp: +27 79 259 1768.
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