The 4 Ps of Leadership to Reap the Positive Benefits Within the Workplace

The 4 Ps of Leadership to Reap the Positive Benefits Within the Workplace

Are you a manager or a team leader thriving to reap positive benefits out of your leadership within your workplace? Leading and managing a team to work effectively requires a little more effort than usual, but it is in no way impossible. This content piece will walk you through ways and tips to promote positive leadership at work.

Your alarm raised aloud, waking you up from your comfort, as you are wiping the sleep from your eyes and whispering:

“I will go to work today and make the life of those I lead dejected”

I am assuming that this does not describe your morning routine being a leader. On contrary, you might be the leader who motivates, engages and energises your team members. But this could become frustrating and lonely at times despite all the managerial efforts.

If you are a leader who wants to reap positive benefits out of their leadership and retain the employees for longer, then this article is for you.

Leadership is complex and multifaceted and can make or break a company’s culture. With lots of people spending more time at work than at home, it is important that they feel connected to their organisations and workplaces.

Poor interpersonal relations, lack of practices and safety policies can contribute to stress at work. Therefore, employers and managers must have an inclusive approach to contribute to positive leadership.

What is positive leadership?

The implementation of positive practices that help people and businesses attain their highest potential, excel at work, experience uplifting energy and achieve levels of efficiency makes positive leadership, according to Dr. Kim Cameron.

Improve your employee engagement

Improve your employee engagement in less than two minutes

Get started for free today.

Free sign up

It is all about influencing positive emotions to motivate team members, employees and workers to their fullest to work effectively.

Benefits of adopting positive leadership

Positive leadership is important as it yields numerous benefits to the organisations. Being a leader, you can make your employees work, even forcefully, but incorporating positive leadership practices helps you them keep motivated, engaged, and productive.

It creates a more sustainable and result-driven work environment which in turn is beneficial for you and your staff members.

How to become a positive leader?

To become a positive leader, you must be familiar with fostering practices that ensure an effective work culture within the company.

This can be achieved by implementing the 4 Ps of leadership at work, which is as below:

What are the 4 Ps of positive leadership?

The 4 Ps of positive leadership are:

Psychological safety

Ensuring that you as a leader can take interpersonal risks in your team and can speak up about the ideas without being judged

Purpose

Incorporating the belief among the team members that “I matter, my work matters and so does my contributions”

Path

Enabling the role clarity and providing opportunities to the team members to achieve these goals

Progress

Promoting a sense of value, growth, and appreciation among the members they tend to lead

Let us discuss these four in more detail.

Psychological safety

Psychological safety is the first step of the 4 Ps. It is the process of believing that you as a leader, won’t be punished for speaking the ideas, concepts and concerns that lead a workplace towards more benefits by mitigating the chances of risks and health hazards.

It is a cultural phenomenon of having a belief that “it is safe within this team to:”

  • Ask for help
  • Ask for suggestions
  • Admit short comes
  • Share the mistakes and lessons learned from them
  • Challenge each other in day-to-day operations and work tasks

These things are of significant importance due to many reasons like individuals working in a team lacking psychological safety tend to make repeated mistakes.

The results are a lot of shortcomings, lack of or missed opportunities for learning, growth and development.

On contrary, leaders, managers or employers making psychological safety, a priority reaps many benefits.

As it:

  • Increases confidence
  •  Boosts creativity
  • Develops trust among team members
  • Improves engagement
  •  Improves productivity

Tips to develop a psychologically safe working environment

Below are some ways employers and leaders can implement to ensure a safe work environment:

Prioritise safety (psychological & physical)

The best way to prioritise psychological safety at work is by having an open conversation about it with your colleagues and making effective strategies to incorporate this behaviour in team members.

This emphasises the importance of positive goal setting to create a safe environment for all.

Encourage learning

Employers and leaders who encourage learning as part of the job are truly great leaders who know the importance of creating a safe work environment. You can never be able to develop a safety awareness culture within the company unless your workforce is trained well to identify, control, and mitigate workplace hazards.

Therefore, making learning a norm by providing training sessions to your team that include basic to advance level learning helps create an efficient workplace. These include mental health training, workplace stress training, sickness absence training, IOSH managing safely training, violence and aggression training, business risk training and more like these.

Have an effective communication method

Effective communication channels and modes are also effective things to consider when talking about phycological safety. It is your responsibility to convey the message correctly and effectively to your team and have open discussions for feedback and suggestions.

This will develop a sense of authority among the staff members that they are cared and valued and in turn motivates and engage them to do the work efficiently.

Purpose

The second P of the process, Purpose, refers to associating meaning to the work rather than just getting the job done. It is like a feel-good force that pulls employees toward a better and bright future. Team members are more likely to be engaged when their work is linked to some higher purpose in the company.

So, you must always seek ways to incorporate a sense of purpose among your workforce.

Path

The third P of positive leadership is the Path. It focuses on clear goals, strategies and resources to lead the team. It is all about giving clear instructions and a path to get the work done safely and timely.

Staff members who don’t have any doubts about what is expected of them, the right tools for work, the strategies to achieve their goals or other constraints tend to work more efficiently and productively than those who do not know.

Progress

Progress is the fourth P of positive leadership which focuses on promoting the sense of value, progress, development, and growth among the team members, employees and workers.

You can do this by appreciating the valuable employees, celebrating the wins of the company with the staff and developing a sense of positivity in them.

You can also develop good relationships with your staff by providing them support in need and feedback for improvements. This will boost employees’ morale and make them productive.

Alongside this, social interaction is also of significant importance. The connection in employees towards common goals makes them enthusiastic to learn, work and grow together.

How to implement positive leadership in your workplace?

The implementation of positive leadership is easy if you have the right strategies supported by effective practices. Below are some of these ways:

Create a culture of affluence

A workplace culture where everyone observes an abundance of money, time, assets, acknowledgment, opportunities, safety and relationships. A company’s culture encompasses the standards of habits and attitudes within the work environment.

Organisations that are prospering are the ones that have developed a culture of affluence which is distinguished by an engaged workforce that bring meaningful results with the support and guidance of the right leaders. In turn, you should focus on teamwork to reap the benefits of effective leadership.

Have a balanced behaviour with team members

The implementation of positive leadership requires you to have a rational and balanced relationship with your staff and team members. It all comes down to implementing a better decision-making approach that results in the optimal level of benefits for the individuals.

It requires a lot of emotional intelligence in your leadership skills as it implies that you would rather take actions that are beneficial to your employees or could result in severe harm to them.

Being a rational leader cultivates positive benefits for your business and improves the workplace culture. Therefore, being a leader, you need to incorporate such behaviour.

Convey negative feedback positively

Positive leadership does not mean avoiding tough messages or pretending to be happy at all. But it requires you to have crucial conversations with the employees and team members where unclarity, uncertainty, volatility or complexity are a norm.

Positive leaders are the ones who communicate their message to staff effectively and give feedback in a way that encourages them to improve. They are able to deliver negative feedback in a way that impacts the workers positively.

Set SMART goals

Another great way to inculcate positive leadership within your workplace is by setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for you and your employees. These goals help positively deviant the target gaps and represent everyone’s contribution towards a sustainable and positive work environment.

Give full support to the employees

A good leader is not the one who only gives feedback to their team members rather providing full support and guidance in need can open more ways for employee improvements. You need to be the kind of manager who develops such relations with them to yield positive output.

You need to look at the defined goals and track them regularly to ensure that they are completed on time. Give regular feedback and suggestions to the staff and involve them closely in the process to achieve them.

Show appreciation for your team members

Showing that you care enough about your colleagues, employees and team members by openly appreciating their small and big wins is also an effective way to boost their morale and productivity. Appreciating and valuing your employees does not make you less of a human, but it brings a positive influence on the workplace.

Including small gestures like acknowledging them or rejoicing in their achievement not only encourages them but inspires them to perform even better in the future.

On contrary, if an employee is having a tough time, stressed or burnout, she/he is more like to leave or switch to a better place.

In Summary

Encouraging, appreciating and rewarding your team members might seem a daunting effort but, if managed and led by example can result in many positive benefits for your business. If you want your workforce to be engaged, motivated, and productive, you have to have positive leadership skills in you to implement practices that work best for them.

The tips and strategies mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg to creating an ideal workplace for everyone. Implementing these in your daily work tasks can help reduce stress, increases psychological safety and boost the unity among the staff members and employees.

 

About the Author

Jessica James is a writer and blogger with a core focus to make the workplace safer and welcoming for all. She is always looking to bring her passion for helping others into her work, providing excellent, expert advice on occupational health and safety. All digital certifications were received from Human Focus.