Welcome to 2022! What will it take to be an even more effective leader this year? How do you adopt a growth mindset when the environment is shifting, people are anxious, you are working in a hybrid model and clients are tentative about making investment decisions?

Here are some leadership attributes I believe will help you make the most of the year whatever it brings. 

✴️ Collaboration 

We all need to learn how to collaborate more effectively to multiply our results. True collaboration achieves more than the sum of the parts. The key leadership practice for collaboration is to ask your stakeholders how you can help, whether they be clients, colleagues, team members, management, or suppliers. 

✴️ Creativity 

There is no template to follow for your leadership. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. To adapt to the changing environment, we need to come up with fresh ideas and solve existing problems. If we create more free time for deep thinking, those insights will come.

✴️ Coaching

Maybe you want to evolve from player to coach to get the best from the people around you. Many people report that a turning point in their career was a leader believed in them, sometimes more than they believed in themselves at a point in time. It’s important that leaders ask great questions rather than having all the answers.

✴️ Appreciation 

People need to know they are appreciated. Resourcing will be a major challenge for this year. Leaders need to develop a greater ability to connect with people and appreciate them for their contribution if they are to attract and retain talented employees. The key practice is to focus on their team’s accomplishments instead of what went wrong.

Research

This mindset of continuous learning is also good in the longer term to forward your career objectives. In a recent HBR article, Setting Career Priorities When Everything Is Uncertain by Nihar Chhaya he points to research which shows that, “high learning agility is significantly correlated with highly positive career objectives, from compensation to promotion frequency, proximity to the CEO, and perceptions of leadership competence.”

🙋 Which of the above leadership attributes will you focus on in 2022? Are there others that matter to you? 🙋‍♀️

Best regards, Brian