How to Create a Leadership Philosophy That Aligns With Your Core Values and Goals?

• Almost any employee is happy with a good, consistent, and dedicated leadership philosophy within the company;
• Numerous organizations, businesses, and institutions state that their leadership is inadequate and unproductive, resulting in poor organizational results;
• Good leadership is tightly connected with your core values, beliefs, and visions, including the style and approach for its implementation;
• You can always learn leadership by yourself from famous and recommended books, movies, or studies on leadership.

A leadership philosophy is a sensitive topic, with field professionals suggesting you can learn it by constantly studying and visiting seminars and training. On the other hand, others claim they’ve mastered it on their initiative. Nonetheless, almost any employee worldwide will say that they’d want to master leadership skills for improved career development and increased productivity.

More precisely, North American employees in 2022 have stated that leadership is among the best skills an employee can learn to thrive in the ever-changing business environment. However, people use leadership skills they have learned by themselves to teach others and get their whole lives together.

In this article, we’ll dive into leadership by analyzing the key elements and showing you how you can become a true leader! Simply put, you’ll learn how to become a leader without following a specific philosophy but your own strengths, values, and visions!

Why Having a Unique Leadership Philosophy is Crucial for Success?

Across literature and the internet, you’ll find numerous examples of successful leadership and the life-changing results of learning this art. However, there’s a tight connection between management and personal philosophy. For example, your personal philosophy usually consists of particular core values and goals you’d like to accomplish in the present or the past.

The management philosophy, on the other hand, is managing and organizing the end-to-end process of respecting your values and accomplishing your goals. That’s why developing your unique leadership system is essential for remaining committed to your values, goals and motivating and inspiring employees.

Furthermore, the leadership philosophy is crucial for tailoring your company’s core values and implementing them on all organizational levels. Some of the most frequent elements of leadership are goals, values, visions, missions, coaching, trust, integrity, creativity, and resilience to change.

This leads us to believe that strong leadership can improve the overall trajectory of your personal or business mission by including others to rally around the particular vision. The vision and mission are crucial, which is why 77% of the employees within various organizations, businesses, and institutions state that adequate leadership is lacking!

Nonetheless, numerous leadership philosophy examples will prompt you to start learning this art because many current professional leaders are taking formal knowledge and are mastering it by themselves.

Understanding the Key Elements of an Effective Leadership Philosophy

Some key elements act as cornerstones within the strong leadership philosophy, and it’s important for you to understand them. For example, you can’t have adequate, productive, and engaging leadership without the core values, goals, mission, vision, style, and approach. Following’s a brief analysis of various leadership elements and core values of a leader.

Identifying Your Core Values and Beliefs as a Leader

The values of a leader are crucial for identifying the mission, vision, and implementation approaches. Some of the most common core values that you’ll find throughout leadership books and philosophies, which are essential for every individual, are:

• Passion, commitment, engagement, and dedication
• Humility
• Respect
• Inclusiveness
• People and result-orientation
• Communication
• Influence
• Empathy and
• Coordination

However, there are multiple ways to identify your core values. The leadership philosophy examples for identifying your core values and beliefs as a leader are simple and time-efficient. All you have to do is write down your core values, consider the perspective of your close and loved ones, consider your experiences, categorize your values, prioritize them, etc.

Defining Your Vision and Purpose as a Leader

The values of a leader build up the vision and the purpose. Here’s a brief example of leadership philosophy and vision statement – “I will lead with honesty and openness and try to include all my subordinates with respect and sincerity towards the accomplishment of our mutual goals!”

The two essential elements for defining your vision and purpose as a leader are the leadership goals and the statements. These two elements will align your core values and goals with the mutual values and goals and inspire your employees or other related persons to stick to the organizational plans and strategies.

Developing Your Leadership Style and Approach

The leadership philosophy doesn’t mean a thing without finding a specific style and approach that works for you and your employees. For example, you can choose between various approaches, including democratic, laissez-faire, autocracy, authoritarian, and accountability.

Each style and approach has its downsides and benefits and its effectiveness depends on you and your employees. For instance, if you apply a laissez-faire approach, the people you lead will become more creative, free, engaged, and believe that the organization exists for them. However, the laissez-faire approach can result in non-productiveness, irrespective of the mutual rules, procedures, and goals.

On the other hand, an authoritative approach will guarantee that the people will follow your rules and proclamations but can quickly become unsatisfied and try to avoid difficult tasks and procedures.

Tips for Creating a Compelling and Impactful Leadership Philosophy

Following are some tips for creating a compelling, impactful, and engaging leadership philosophy, apart from the previously mentioned elements. However, before you try to do anything, make sure to create a physical/digital roadmap for everyone in your organization. If possible, use stock photos to make the information more understandable as well.

Incorporating Your Unique Perspective and Experiences

Every person has some unique perspective and experience. If you implement them, people will instantly recognize them and start relating to your worldview and experiences. Deep down inside, people are similar to one another, which is why they can quickly recognize bluffing or lent perspectives and experiences.

Balancing Authenticity with Professionalism and Influence

You’ll balance your authentic views and skills with professionalism and influence. For instance, when you develop your personal philosophy – related to leadership – you’ll also have to tailor a comprehensive and professional management philosophy.

The first step towards this balance is aligning the people’s professional expectations and your authentic leadership philosophy. Then, you should be authentic and honest, make people consider your efforts, and be emphatic to your targeted audience.

Communicating Your Philosophy Effectively to Others

This may be the most crucial tip for effectively implementing your leadership philosophy. We can easily divide this tip into subcategories. Following are the crucial steps to fulfill this essential tip and guarantee productive and engaging leadership:

• Set clear, measurable, and engaging expectations;
• Communicate continuously and relentlessly;
• Learn body language and learn how to reinforce your values and vision;
• Learn the coaching methodologies;
• Be spontaneous and flexible;
• Consider the needs and preferences.

These are only some of the methodologies you can use for effectively communicating your leadership philosophy to others. Other examples would be the illustration through stories, simplification, dividing the philosophy into various theses, etc.

Examples of Innovative and Successful Leadership Philosophies

Currently, the most innovative and successful leadership philosophies are democratic and lassie-faire. For instance, art, entertainment, and technology organizations constantly utilize these leadership philosophies at personal and management levels.

Successful leadership philosophy examples of this kind include companies like Google and Apple, where all the employees feel a part of the team and a democratic leadership style is occurring daily.

On the other hand, although many modern organizations avoid authoritative leadership, there are also multiple success stories. A sheer example of this would be Microsoft founder Bill Gates who always had authoritative management and personal philosophy.

Resources for Further Developing Your Personal Leadership Philosophy

Here, we’re talking about how to be a successful and proactive leader without following multiple philosophies and books mindlessly. However, to deepen your leadership knowledge, you should still consider, read, and study various books, podcasts, and courses and get appropriate feedback. Just make sure to find the right resources.

Recommended Books, Podcasts, and Courses

There are myriads of books, podcasts, and courses on leadership. Nonetheless, they differ because of the different core values, visions, missions, approaches, and styles. Some of the leading authors that we recommend are Stephen Covey, Leif Babin, John C. Maxwell, and Simon Sinek.

Moreover, a podcast can be a great way to learn leadership first-handed. Some of the more famous podcasts on leadership are Coaching for Leaders, A Better Leader, Leadership & Loyalty, and many more. You can always find these titles online or search for new ones.

Moreover, we can recommend specific courses to help you develop the leadership philosophy, goals, vision, mission, and approaches. The more comprehensive ones are the courses throughout private and public institutions, including public schools and universities, seminaries, and courses by already developed and proven leaders.

Opportunities for Feedback and Growth

You must leave space for feedback and growth. Feedback from your subordinates or employees must become integral to your leadership philosophy. The leadership feedback will prompt you to grow, frequently change the core goals, and alternate the approach and style to meet your expectations while fulfilling the already established vision.

You can broaden the opportunities for feedback and growth through continuous communication and coordination. Another way to get meaningful feedback and thus grow in the field of leadership is to consider the needs and satisfaction of your subordinates or the targeted audience.