Flexibility is key for Current Leadership and the Future
In the current world, leadership offers people the ability to adapt in every scenario, however, it is as challenging as ever, because we are living in a time of rapid changes in many aspects of daily life like political, economic, and cultural.
People are looking for a person who is capable to help them with the problem they have, demanding a solution to their unique situations. With social media, people have many points of sight about everything and that made surge the current leadership standards.
Now the organizations need to undergo rapid shifts in their personal direction, the employee needs are more demanding than ever and the future of the company and its quality will depend on the leadership.
But all of this will not have to take the lead the focus on the important things, where they need to think about all the possibilities and situations that they need to solve at the correct time and make the company work without causing problems in the daily work. They also need to consider the implications of what they are doing with the employees and his or her own behavior in future situations.
Which are the questions that a leader must ask itself?
Sometimes, leaders have much time to think about their next action, but in some cases, they could have just minutes and hours and they need to make the best choice. This is why one of the most important aspects of flexible leadership is to ask some questions to make the best decisions.
Some of them are what do the followers need, which are the appropriate alternatives that must take into consideration, and what is the best course of action for everyone in the group.
This will make you act as a flexible leader because if you are in an emergency and you need to solve rapidly you will also need to transmit peace to your followers, guiding them under a safe space. They need to know that the actions the leader takes are consistent with what is better for them at any moment, and only after you do this they will trust you to follow you.
In addition, a flexible leader must react responsibly because even if the leader is in a stressful situation, having inappropriate behavior will not help you. Inappropriate acts such as a raised voice, dissonance among workers, social media posts that do not show the values of the worksite and even an email typed in capital letters can make those followers experience a negative perspective of the leader.
This can damage all the work that leaders do to gain the respect and help from the other employee because trust is something that is difficult to create but easy to ruin. This is why a flexible leader must be a master in controlling his or her emotions during adversity times because that is how they will influence the followers' way of seeing problems, they take the time to react as professional as they can because it sets the tone for the people in their team.
Being a flexible leader requires learning
If you want to be a flexible leader, you need to learn first, and one of the best ways to learn is by the people you are leading. This is why asking the people feedbacks can make you learn a lot from them because it can help you become reflective about the things you are doing and making you flexible in responses.
So as uncomfortable that it may seem to get the feedbacks can make leaders find their willingness to be flexible making them increase the trust of their loved followers, and getting their trust as well.
Flexible leaders are always paying attention to every word and gesture involve in situations, but they also have a way to know things that were not said. For this, leaders need to listen, observe, and notice the things that the followers do carefully because every interaction they have with their followers give them clues about how exactly lead a specific kind of person.
Remaining open to understand and get the personalities of the followers will stretch the leadership because it can teach you what you need to direct them in the best way possible. There are times where this task can be challenging but your leaders need to overcome it and be the experienced person that followers need to keep growing.
Things you can do to become a flexible leader for the current time and the future
You need to find inspiration, for this, you can look for information about the leader you admire and you love for you can take your favorite bookseller to help you by taking its biography, learning his or her story, and how they achieve everything they have today.
Get out of your comfort zone because you can learn many things when you think out of the box, every uncomfortable situation will lead you to new solutions and give you more experience that you can use after with new followers.
You have to be the best believer of your capacities and abilities, only this way you can develop all the flexibility you need to grow as a leader and want to try new things for yourself and followers.
You must know that becoming a great flexible leader can take you some time and a lot of patience but being open to every possibility and seeking experiences will lead you to be the flexible leader that you want to be reaching professional effectiveness.
How psychological flexibility has become a major key in the current leadership
Recent leadership theories say that leaders must see what their real values are and use them to motivate followers; however, it is not an easy task to do. Understanding the self-values requires a long way and experience to really know what they are and after identifying them you must work on them by yourself before using them to help people.
Flexibility has become an important part of leadership; a tool people should learn in school because it can make you affront the problems of daily life and have the best results.
It helps leaders to clarify and understand what their values are, but not only that if not using them to help you in a work environment to help people who need leadership.
Flexibility also allows leaders to move towards the things they value, it is an amazing skill that helps people to understand why values are important and more than that living through them. It can also make you affront difficult situations and bad emotions that many people would avoid allowing you to get over them faster. It is a liberating power because it will make you free from thoughts and emotions that can get leaders stuck or even drag them down, so they choose over their behavior in a more conscious way.
It also help leaders to stay ware of the moment and even the future, making them be more open to other people and everything surrounding them, this will also help to have a more empathic personality and to understand the followers' problems or situation from different perspectives. This also improves the task focus and reduces the distraction taking decisions overall which will enhance the task performance.
As you can see, they are key factors that are needed to improve leadership, trustfully, engagement, and productivity from the leader but also from the people following him or her. When followers notice these aspects of their leader they adapt and try to get this mental flexibility as well.
For this reason, leadership should not focus only on values if not on how to live with them because only in that way you can really use them to inspire people.