Effective leadership is about more than just delivering results. You have to foster collaboration, support the well-being of your employees, and drive innovation. This is especially crucial when leading hybrid, remote, or flexible teams.
Setting purposeful leadership goals can help leaders gain clarity, build team cohesion, and enhance employee engagement — all of which are critical steps toward building company culture as a leader.
In this guide, we explore what leadership success looks like today, how to set helpful goals for leadership, and how you can build those goals into your overall workplace strategy to transform your organization for the better.
What Success Looks Like for Today’s Leaders
Sure, good leaders want results — but that’s not all that’s required of a strong leader. The goal of leadership is to inspire, guide, and empower people to achieve success while also continuing to focus on growth.
Successful leaders are emotionally intelligent, flexible and adaptable, and adept at empowering their teams. To further these efforts, leadership goals may fall into three key areas:
- Personal goals: Improve strategic thinking, cultivate a growth mindset, or build self-awareness
- Team goals: Foster a culture of collaboration, develop trust, or boost innovation
- Organizational goals: Enhance company culture, better align teams and business objectives, or better position the company to scale
Focus Goals on Clear, Trust-Driven Communication
Effective leadership begins with communication, so this is a great place to start when considering leadership goals for managers. Especially when working with remote or hybrid teams, it’s crucial to keep the channels of communication open, transparent, and inclusive.
Some communication-focused goals for leaders may include:
- Hosting weekly check-ins or one-on-one meetings with team members
- Seeking regular feedback from direct reports (and providing positive and constructive feedback to them as well)
- Providing consistent, transparent updates about organizational changes or team expectations
Adapt Messaging Styles To Fit Hybrid Teams
When teams are fully remote, geographically distributed, or simply don’t come to the office on the same days, you need to adapt your messaging and leadership styles.
For instance, you could combine in-person meetings with video calls to make it easy for everyone to participate. As much as possible, provide updates to the team asynchronously. Be sure, too, that everyone has access to written documentation rather than expecting everyone to receive verbal instruction.
Not only will this type of adaptation enhance inclusivity and allow your team to be more productive, but it can also reduce employees’ frustration and stress, ultimately helping to improve their mental health and well-being.
Support Mental Health and Well-Being With Intentional Habits
Teams look to their leaders to set an example, so it’s imperative that leaders set boundaries for themselves to model wellness behaviors. Intentional goals in this area could include:
- Avoiding responding to email after hours (and asking the team not to, either)
- Scheduling team wellness breaks and encouraging the team to take advantage of them
- Promoting flexible scheduling or working locations
While not every goal will apply to every workplace (for instance, some jobs require after-hours on-call availability, while other roles don’t allow for schedule flexibility), it’s important to look for areas where you can lead by example to foster a healthy work-life balance.
Create Space That Encourages Focus and Recharge
Don’t just talk about wellness, though. You’ve got to put your goals into action by cultivating a space that actively encourages focus and recharging. This is possible even if employees work across locations.
If you leverage a workspace like Industrious — designed with quiet zones, natural light, and ergonomic equipment and features — you can give your team a work setting that enhances their clarity and productivity.
Empower Your Team to Lead, Not Just Follow
Instead of simply prescribing goals for leaders and asking teams to follow along, you can work together to set transformational leadership goals that will empower both leaders and their teams.
Through these development goals, you’ll delegate decision-making and strategic thinking to employees, encourage teams to take ownership, and recognize individual employee contributions. For further leadership development, encourage employees to undergo cross-training to gain new skills or participate in mentorship programs to learn directly from others. The more opportunities you give the team to grow and take on the role of a leader, the more empowered they’ll feel.
Make Innovation a Team-Wide Practice
Look for ways to include the whole team in innovating and brainstorming new ideas. Here are a few types of short-term goals you can set in this area:
- Holding regular brainstorming sessions and setting specific objectives for each
- Piloting a new tool or process and making a recommendation
- Completing a new project as a team and sharing the learnings
While accountability is important, you should also focus on rewarding your team’s creativity and experimentation. After all, sometimes trying new things results in learning what doesn’t work, and that should be celebrated as a part of innovation, too!
Strengthen Strategic Thinking Through Daily Practice
Effective leaders don’t just focus on short-term goals, but on long-term objectives as well. Each short-term goal should tie into a longer-term one, and leaders can use daily planning and focused work to achieve them.
To do this, leverage deep workspaces that give you a quiet, peaceful environment to think, analyze, strategize, and execute. And when possible, work closely with your team, peers, or mentors to seek out constructive feedback and uncover opportunities to get even closer to your goals.
Lead With EQ To Foster Loyalty and Growth
There are several important qualities of great leaders, many of which are related to emotional intelligence, such as:
- Empathy
- Adaptability and flexibility
- Communication skills
- Vision
- Integrity
- Decisiveness
- Accountability
These seven qualities build the foundation of effective leadership. When employees trust their leaders and feel respected and well-treated, they’re more likely to be engaged and productive. When setting goals, prioritize empathetic decision-making, active listening, conflict resolution, and transparent communication.
Unify Distributed Teams Through Shared Culture
To reinforce the culture you create, consider setting goals that build consistent rituals and behaviors across your teams, regardless of location. Consistent communication practices will keep everyone informed and foster an open and transparent environment. Shared rituals like team meetings, recognition for accomplishments, and celebrations for big events build camaraderie and culture even in fully remote teams.
In fact, Industrious’s national presence makes leading teams even easier. When distributed teams work in cohesive, elevated environments, like Industrious spaces, culture remains consistent across the team — even if they’re not all in the same place.
Use SMART Goals To Track and Measure Progress
The best way to set meaningful goals and stay on top of progress is by using SMART goals. While leadership SMART goals will vary by team and organization, a SMART goal has five specific qualities:
- Specific: Ithas a clear, defined objective.
- Measurable: The goal includes metrics to track progress and success.
- Achievable: It can realistically be completed.
- Relevant: It aligns well with team or business priorities.
- Time-bound: The goalhas a (realistic) deadline.
A few examples of SMART leadership goals include:
- Increase employee engagement scores by 20% in six months by implementing hybrid- and remote-focused initiatives.
- Start a monthly team brainstorming session and implement one new idea a quarter.
- Hold quarterly development check-ins with 100% of direct reports and seek upward feedback from each report.
Refine Goals Based on Feedback and Real-Time Needs
Over time, check in and keep track of how your goals are progressing. Start by making reflection time part of your overall work stream. Use this time to consider what’s working well, what could be improved, and whether anything has changed.
Also, seek input from your team and peers. They may have observations, ideas, or constructive criticism that you haven’t thought of yet. Make adjustments as needed based on your reflections, feedback you receive, and any major organizational or project changes.
Build Leadership Goals Into Your Workspace Strategy
Strong leaders are the backbone of a successful organization. Setting leadership goals in line with business operations can enhance not just leadership and management skills, but overall team performance.
Moreover, the success of your leaders is further amplified by the working environment. And in a hybrid, remote, or distributed culture, it can be challenging to ensure everyone has the best environment in which to work.
But when you align leadership goals with the right environment, your team is poised to succeed, wherever they work. Industrious offers flexible, elevated spaces nationwide to help leaders innovate, inspire, and grow.
Explore Industrious’s Flexible workspace solutions to learn more.