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4 Solutions to Leadership Challenges


Studies show that leaders around the globe consistently face the same main challenges — even if they describe their leadership challenges and specific context in different ways. These are:

  1. Honing Effectiveness

  2. Inspiring Others

  3. Leading a Team

  4. Guiding Change

  5. Managing Stakeholders

Here are 4 concrete things leaders can do to address these common leadership challenges:


1. Set goals.

Be proactive in setting goals, as well as establishing the timelines — and deadlines — necessary to keep yourself and your teams on track. The distractions that you face can make it easy to lose sight of long-term and even short-term goals. You can easily get sucked into dealing with urgent issues that arise unexpectedly rather than staying focused on producing the outcomes that matter most to your organization.

While no leader can completely avoid surprises, goal setting provides a map that you can return to time and again to refocus on your top priorities while handling other leadership challenges.


One time-honored approach is the SMART method. When setting a goal, make sure it’s:

  • Specific. Write down a detailed description of what accomplishing the goal would involve.

  • Measurable. Set targets that you can quantify to assess progress.

  • Attainable. Stretch goals are fine, but you also need to make sure that achieving the goal is possible.

  • Realistic. Be sure you understand what you will likely need — in terms of time, resources, and talent — to achieve it.

  • Timed. Create deadlines for hitting milestones on the way to your goal, as well as for achieving the goal itself.

Just be sure to avoid these 3 common mistakes when goal-setting.



2. Delegate more.

You’ll be more productive tackling leadership challenges, and you’ll empower your colleagues to take more ownership if you delegate. Effective delegation requires more than just getting a task off your desk — it involves a repeating cycle of 4 key steps:

  • Understanding your preferences. Effective delegators prioritize their workload and decide which tasks to keep and which to give to someone else. They also understand how much feedback they want as the person they’ve delegated to works on the task.

  • Knowing your people. To delegate effectively, you must assign tasks to people that match their knowledge and skills. That means that you have to understand your people. Use delegation to help direct reports develop, allowing them to learn as they take on new tasks.

  • Being clear about the purpose of the task. A task’s purpose gives it meaning. By aligning this purpose with team or individual beliefs and goals, delegation can become an opportunity for personal growth.

  • Assessing and rewarding. You should work with your direct reports to develop ways to help them, and you, decide if a task has been completed properly, and to reward them appropriately.

You’ll build more trust on your team if you delegate more, as well.


3. Maximize your unique value.

Prioritize by focusing on doing the most important tasks that only you can do. There will always be more things competing for your attention than you have time and energy to do. Prioritize the most important tasks that only you can do, and delegate everything else.


Leaders overcome leadership challenges and create value for their organizations by focusing on the unique contributions only they can make. Understanding what those unique values are for you, and delegating everything else (or as close to everything else as you can), allows you to maximize the value you create for the organization. This is part of increasing your self-awareness and understanding your personal leadership brand.


4. Get role clarity.

Understand what the core responsibilities are for your role, and what are secondary responsibilities, or even work that belongs to someone else.

That won’t stop people from asking you to take on additional tasks and projects. And there are certainly times when taking on additional duties may be required due to unusual circumstances, or might be important for your own professional development. But the most effective managers understand that they will largely be judged based on how effective they are at their core responsibilities and how they can overcome leadership challenges.


This also means that there will be times when you’ll have to say no. That can feel uncomfortable. Practicing saying no and finding ways to do so with tact and professionalism are important. Turning down work that’s not part of your role helps keep you focused, and communicating messages effectively is a critical skill for leaders.


In fact, many of these suggestions for responding to the top leadership challenges around the world are part of developing the core leadership skills you need in every role, at every stage of your career.


Leaders who sometimes feel overwhelmed by their work, can take heart in the fact that they’re not alone. By focusing on these 4 key behaviors, you can beat back those feelings and provide more value to your organization as you take on the most pressing leadership challenges.


TO LEARN MORE ABOUT LEADERSHIP & CHANGE MANAGEMENT TRAINING PROGRAMMES & EXECUTIVE COACHING SUPPORT OFFERED BY BLAZING BEYOND, CONTACT US AT EMAIL: althea@beyondbananas.net or visit our website at www.blazingbeyond.com.

NEXT LEADERSHIP TRAINING DATE: SEPTEMBER 9 & 10, 2020

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