The six essentials of a 360-degree leader

Dr B K Mukhopadhyay

(The author is a Professor of Management and Economics, formerly at IIBM (RBI) Guwahati. He can be contacted at m.bibhas@gmail.com)

Dr. Boidurjo Rick Mukhopadhyay

(The author, international award-winning development and management economist, formerly a Gold Medalist in Economics at Gauhati University)

'Friends, Romans, country men, lend me your ears, it takes a lot more than these words today to be listened to, followed while able to evidence influence and effectiveness over time. In successful change, leaders remove barriers to employees' success. Leaders of unsuccessful change tend to focus, by a large measure, on results, and more often than not employees don't get the support they needed for the change. 'Process' and 'people' components of leadership are both equally critical and therefore hard to prioritize since, in reality, they both run parallel. The qualities that a 360-degree leader possesses, as per John Maxwell's work, include adaptability, discernment, perspective, communication, security, resourcefulness, maturity, endurance, and the ability always to be counted on. This list is certainly not exhaustive but does comprehensively capture all the essentials. The difficulty in generalizing this skill set is that they can differ across markets, crises, industries, and perspectives in specific contexts. For such individuals who are or aim to become a 360-degree leaders, there is also a form of assessment that provides feedback in which their skills, effectiveness and influence as an executive, leader or manager are evaluated. This is an effective process in organizations to give leaders clear feedback from their peers, employees and managers. At the same time, this is mostly done in context. e.g., how the process is conducted for HR director would differ from Sales Leader or Communications Head. Both the process and feedback are tailored to roles and contexts.

A) Influence

The role of influence is critical in leadership. It is not only about gaining compliance but also the commitment essential to drive change, and therefore includes the 'people' part of the change the most. At the same time, looking at wider stakeholder expectations today, developing a 'reward culture' also goes a long way, particularly when the immediate fire of a crisis is over the leaders must thereafter reflect and keep stock of who rose to the occasion, who struggled and why. Several organizational roles will change post-crisis and therefore leaders can strategise who they want at the table both during and after the crisis to head to the new normal. During business-as-usual, influence could shape and affect long-term strategy making, talent acquisition and retention mechanism as well as seek knowledge and business partners as fitting. In some cases, where exercising command is difficult since leaders are working in peer groups and therefore the dynamics are different (i.e., not the typical leader-follower setting), influence comes out to be the strongest and the most effective trait that an individual can demonstrate since it includes leading across levels, including peers involved in the same stage.

B) Operations and Strategic Management

Effectiveness of good leaders can be demonstrated by 1) Mobilising realistic and time-bound goals, 2) Laying out clear objectives and setting up the deliverables, 3) Building high-performance teams, 4) Creating a risk-resilient company culture, 5) Creating organizational knowledge building, and 6) Creating a culture of value. Surely, however, these are not magic bullets nor meant to address the challenges or promote business growth overnight. The strategies and planned action that leaders take within firms, whether a large corporation or SMEs, would be largely determined by the stage of growth that a company find itself in at a point in time. In addition, building a reward and trust culture would make employees more confident in making decisions and not being risk-averse.

Besides effectively managing operations, business development, consolidation or a strategic integration of mergers and acquisitions, new research by McKinsey shows that leaders have the following six broad functions. (1) Aspiration, (2) Inspiration, (3) Imagination, (4) Creativity, 5) (Authenticity, and (6) Integrity. When it comes to either managing culture at the workplace or leading others through crisis, leaders also need to develop the right mindset based on introspection and self-awareness which are also equally critical skills. Several studies by Sloan and HBR show that it is the mindset, adaptiveness and change that lead to growth and at times - survival.

C) Leading through Crisis

A crisis is very often systemic by nature, and therefore they need solutions that are also not quick fixes. In the business world, depending on the nature and scale of a crisis which can make or break a business in the medium to long-term needs careful identification and scrutiny after early detection signs become evident. Over the years, studies have evidenced that there is a strong correlation between organisational culture, learning, market orientation, the degree of risk and resilience embedded within the firms – and the role of leadership is undeniably paramount.

Most often, it is the rare ability to dive and drive through the unknown against the known patterns from the past - leaders should gain new insights, work through new patterns, and determine timely and effective responses to a crisis. For example, during the pandemic, the primary function of leaders of large or high-growth firms was driving innovation, exploring new markets, and enhancing market share. Immediately when the pandemic struck, the focus shifted to reducing costs while maintaining the essential – liquidity! Most firms, big or small, face supply chain and logistical impediments, downsizing the firms and other operational challenges daily. All at the same time, it is working through health and safety issues, managing remote working and also sharing empathy with employees and families.

D) Talent Recognition and Retention

During team meetings, it is a good practice to allocate the delegation to the right people and establish who's who and who's doing what to avoid confusion and overlap of roles. Leaders need to break through the inertia for business continuity today while increasing the odds of mid-to-long-term success by focusing on the few things that matter most. And above all, listening to advisors and smart people to seek insight and information from diverse sources, and not only in-group is important. Effective leaders always extend their antennae across all the ecosystems in which they operate while also creating a culture of accountability and transparency during tough times.

E) Leading Change

Most research on organizational change, cognitive flexibility of both leaders and followers, and also managing fast change illustrates a necessary connection between the 'process' and the 'people' part of the change. These 3Cs that unite effective change leadership are a) Communicate – leaders and followers need a continual discussion on the larger purpose of the change and how it would connect to the organizational values, and more importantly establish the purpose of change by focusing on 'what' and the 'why'. B) Collaborate – aligning organizational values with personal values is something that effective leaders constantly strive for; we can nonetheless admit that doesn't always happen. It is a level above when cross-cultural leaders bring people together to plan and execute change going beyond barriers of borders and boundaries. They should also include employees in decision making and thereby in a way solidifying their commitment to change while promoting inclusivity. C) Commit – research shows that leaders who negotiated a change successfully are resilient and persistent, and willing to step outside their comfort zone. On the contrary, unsuccessful leaders failed to adapt to challenges, started a blame culture while creating a toxic workplace environment, and were impatient with a lack of results.

F) Leading Remote and Hybrid Work

With work moving online, leading a remote workplace becomes a key priority. This sudden change in the working environment comes with pros and cons and is new to all of your employees, so they need leadership to guide them through the transition. If your business has employees with more remote working experience than you, let them take charge. Feed off their expertise and appoint them to your business' remote leadership team. This is the time for them to step up. Have communication plans ready. Many employees will have an area where they can relax and have a quick chat with colleagues, and a separate area where they can discuss pressing work issues.

Losing clients during this period has no unpredictability in it. However, businesses can recognise their 'at-risk clients' who can combat this eventuality to a certain extent though. Similarly, losing staff is a ripple effect of a small business losing its clients is the loss of revenue. This lack of profitability, in turn, leads to you having to make a series of incredibly hard decisions as to which members of staff are worthy of retaining. Maintaining a 'punishment' or 'fear' culture makes people afraid of taking decisions and being accountable for their actions. Several organizational roles have changed through March 2020 and March 2022 and therefore leaders can strategise who and what they want to see at the table going forward. As both the goals and approach towards the market change in light of the past two years, it is an opportunity to revisit and refine some of the essential tenets that today's leader needs to possess and effectively demonstrate.