I’ve been fortunate to interview some fascinating people this last week for articles I’m writing for the Auckland Chamber of Commerce.

One of those was Sanchia Yonge, managing director of workplace survey provider Kenexa | JRA.

She shared with me the qualities she believes that today’s leaders need to have to be effective:

• The ability to communicate, the willingness to collaborate and the inclusion of employees in decisions.
• Building high levels of trust: People move around to different organisations so leaders need to be straight forward and trustworthy. This promotes solution-based organisations that work lean and where people solve their own problems.
• A broad set of skills and be able and willing to roll up their sleeves.
• The drive to empower their employees.
• Clearly communicating and demonstrating the organisation’s greater purpose. The best organisations set a vision for their team members to get behind.

Sanchia says most organisations tend to be top-down in management style, even those that aspire to be modern (adaptive with high levels of team worker engagement). If they want to become modern they must achieve and sustain high levels of collaboration, communication, customer focus and be prepared to be adaptive.