Gone is the time when a leader had a clear role. Where it was a relatively simple matter of finding out requirements from the source, explaining them to the team and getting the job done. When a lot of the work could depend on previous work for reference, when statistical data was nearly perfect.

Today, a leader is a champion juggler. At any given time, he has a couple of things in hand, and ten times that in the air, which he will have to catch and route safely when they come down. Its no longer simple to get the job done. There are many factors to this:

• Requirements are defined at many sources – its no longer just about what the client wants, but also about the image the company is trying to create, quality standards that come from another department, emotional well being of the team to prevent loss of people resources, satisfaction of the customer, presenting success in a way that means appreciation for the team, acknowledgment by the organization, and ensures future abundance of resources, developing the team and quality of work on a continuous basis….. of course, let’s not forget the job needs to get done.
• Increasing specializations, privatization and economy have led to greater job opportunities that tempt professionals at every turn. As a result, the informal and long-lasting relationships in the cafeteria that earlier cemented an organization have now become organizational procedure in order to create a sense of belonging and prevent trained professionals from leaving. We now have organizational initiatives to build teams and people are more and more aloof in the cafeteria. Guess who has to ensure this happens? – The leader.
• Teams now assume personal as their right, what earlier used to be a much appreciated surprise. Whether they get it or not is another matter, but its absence would definitely cause discontent, that would percolate in the community of the organization (and god forbid, the industry), seep up and down the hierarchy  to create various levels of concern or insecurity and would inevitably mean that the leader would have to “do something”
• Standards of work are being more and more defined and accountable. What would be wryly accepted as an eccentricity a couple of decades ago can now be a lawsuit about unfulfilled obligations or a client lost to the competition. Delivering on everything promised is becoming the mantra – preferably delivering more than promised.
• Competition is increasing and failure is less tolerated or understood
• Perfection seems to be what is needed on all fronts.

Yet, a leader, by the very definition of the word is a single person. He could create roles, but still needs to be on top of it all. Is it any surprise to see leaders feeling more and more pressured and powerless to deal with everything that is expected of them?

If we allow ourselves to travel down this line of thought, things that occur to us are going to cascade and grow till they disable us under an avalanche of difficulty. Yet work does happen. Not perfect, but companies continue to remain in business, which means teams deliver. There are things we do that get the job done. Some better than others.

What are the traits we see in the most effective leaders?

• Acceptance: Most of the leaders who manage to remain enthusiastic about what they do accept that they will not be able to do it all. That no one will be able to do it all. They celebrate what they are able to do.
• Priorities: As a participant on a programme put it bluntly. I first pay attention to the actual work that needs to be done. Then I look at addressing any critical problems that influence the well being of my team. Then I try to take some time out to look at positive changes that we can make in general. After that, if time remains, I get around to all those pending things that seemed a good idea at some point, and among them, I do the ones that people are likely to inquire about first. At any point beyond the first two, if I can’t do more, I leave it for another day.
• Appreciation and acknowledgment: Many leaders know the power of these two words. One thank you group email is worth 10 team building initiatives. A team that feels valued has less problems valuing each other. Appreciation is not a rare commodity that needs to be hoarded in teams that are cheerful about their work.
• Assertiveness: Leaders who can do straight talk help dissolve much of the pressure on themselves and their team. A leader who goes into a management meeting, nods and returns with a pile of work for an overloaded team is not helping matters, or setting the team up for success. If he is able to accept the critical, and refuse the rest, the team starts moving in a productive direction.
• Cut the clutter: A leader I respect bluntly refused an initiative from HR to create diverse groups for promoting creativity (across the whole organization) for being too vague and potentially endless till they die out of boredom. He said that unless there was a useful purpose to the initiative, and an objective with a time frame attachced and it was a worthwhile pursuit, he would prefer to have that time available to his team to simply do what they like and deal with the work they already have.

In our quest to improve leadership, it is important for us to see which among these things we do, and which are those we could do.

All this brings us to the key need – decision making:

As stakes get higher, organizations get more and more risk averse. The need for proofs and guarantees goes higher and higher and the wait for them gets longer and longer, and the power to drive change moves from the hands of the decision makers to circumstantial firefighting.

It is time to accept that ambiguity is not proportional to inputs, but grows exponentially in comparison. The leader who wants complete information in hand before making a decision is destined to wait forever, as the sheer amount of data and collection methods ensure that as long as you keep digging there will be more and more to find. Worse, as our world moves from black and white to shades of grey, your information will contradict at times throwing you into a new research spin on the circumstances of the differing data, etc. Its an unending cycle.

There is never a point when you have ALL the information there is. What is needed, is to exit wings and enter stage. You do your best to gather data, and then trust your experience to make the best decisions based on what you know. Postponing decisions is only going to take you right back into the muddle, and you might as well begin gathering data on the impact of delayed decisions and action on the effectiveness of a team.

What are the traits of effective leaders you have noticed?