Did you ever sit down and think about what kind of leader you wanted to be? Or was your leadership a journey you embarked on, relying on instinct?

It is an important question every leader must answer at some point because it determines how well they will lead in the future. For a leader, not developing a leadership philosophy is the equivalent of a sales professional not working on their sales pitch and just winging it instead. You can get by without it for a while, and perhaps even be successful, but there’s also a good possibility you’ll completely miss your mark. So, what is the leadership philosophy and how do you develop one?

Trust is as important in business as it is in everyday life, especially within the same company. Coworkers need to be able to trust each other to collaborate effectively. The same goes for the amount of trust between different departments or levels of an organization.

As one of the building blocks of trust, transparency is an especially important trait to nurture, both in yourself and all your employees. Let’s have a closer look at how transparency facilitates the trust, and how you can encourage it within your organization:

When a strategy or a major initiative within an organization fails to deliver the desired results, it’s easy to get sucked into a blame game between the departments. However, the fault often lies in poor management and a weak link between the CEO and the front line employees. The poor delegation of work, micromanaging employees and not nurturing accountability are among the factors that can contribute to the lack of success of an organization.

The value proposition of management consulting services is simple: we help organizations create more value. This places great responsibility on us, as we work at a fundamental level with organizations and their systems to improve performance overall. If our work is poorly done, the company could be harmed. As consultants, we have the duty to our clients to provide them only with the very best services so that indeed we can help to drive social and economic success.

 It is an unfortunate fact in business that toxic leaders exist. What’s more, sometimes they have more influence and success than they should. Still, being a virulent leader can’t bring long-term success; it is often only temporary, at best.