Leadership is tough and often requires sacrifices. But it also can bring big rewards and career satisfaction. Why suffer the pain and challenge? Because the long-term results can be profound for both the leader and the organization.

Read on: blog.WednesdayWin.com​

Read time: 4 minutes

At a time when genuine leadership feels to be in such short supply, it's worthwhile looking at what's different in those enterprises and institutions not so often in the news because they are run well and operating successfully.

Let's look deeper at the rewards for honest, effective leadership:

1. Increasing productivity (the team is greater than the sum of its parts)

For most organizational leaders, the foundation of a great tenure is rising output of the team. For most organizations that requires deep insights into the best ways to organize collaboration, methodologies and mechanisms used to get work done, and a willingness to adapt your preferred modes of operation to the ones that bring out the best in your team.

This requires strong emotional intelligence, domain knowledge, genuine interest in the personal goals of your team, and more. Investing in these ways can enable you to optimize your organization for high performance.

There are few satisfactions greater than seeing your team achieve more than even they thought possible when you started.

• Leaders must help their organizations improve performance by setting the stage for success
• Leaders need to build a range of skills and tune their message for the particulars of their team
• Deep rewards come from enabling each to perform their best work
• This requires leading with integrity; living the values you espouse for your team

2. Shared accomplishment

While improving output is the benefit to the organization, the team feels the results through their shared sense of accomplishment. By setting high goals and reaching them, you build a base that everyone on the team–from junior to senior in experience–can celebrate.

Overcoming obstacles and working through challenges brings team members together by creating shared successes that can be leveraged as greater challenges are faced in the future.

Workplaces aren't families, but they are places of shared experience and often long hours of collaboration. Building camaraderie and shared common goals communicated clearly encourages individuals to help not just to support "the boss" or "the company" but each colleague.

Nothing changes the culture of a team for the better faster than a shared sense of committed goals and celebrated achievement together.

• Encourage common commitment to goals over both the short- and long-term
• Celebrate wins and be honest, but compassionate about misses
• Encourage peer-to-peer help and call out the best examples
• Success breeds success: reaching goals encourages more continued positive results

3. Enhanced respect and reputation

Being an effective leader leads to greater respect from industry peers, colleagues, and even competitors and can raise your profile in your company and industry. One of the greatest benefits is the ability to have greater influence in your field and the overall direction of your organization.

More broadly, you'll have access to more and better opportunities throughout your career as your personal alumni network will help you not only to benefit yourself, but also those with whom you've worked.

• More control over your own professional direction
• Access to the most capable and accomplished staff and teams
• Reduced conflict and greater support for ideas and innovation
• More invitations into interesting opportunities

4. Enabling others' emotional and personal goals

Work is ultimately a big part of life for most and you contribute or detract a great deal based on well you maintain your humanity as a leader and understand that each person is on a personal journey with unique aspirations.

Seek to support those goals and find ways to help your team gain the experience and demonstrated achievements they need to advance their priorities. This goes hand in hand with your priority role as a manager, too: clear the blockers that would keep your team from performing at their highest possible level.

In turn, you'll get to celebrate their success along with your own.

• Embrace that your team members have goals just as you do
• Get to know your team beyond the requirements of the job; become a supportive participant in their success
• Appreciate the differences as well as the common mission
• Celebrate your team's success in their individual goals along with your priorities

Action Summary

Leadership is a challenge and often requires difficult decisions and painful choices. But when done well, it also opens up a rich set of benefits.

While I've yet to mention them, financial rewards often also come to those who are excellent leaders. But those are not the drivers of great leaders in the same way as these intrinsic benefits. Enjoying the experience of a highly functional organization is one of the great joys of a successful professional career wholly separate from the financial compensation.

If you are a manager, seek to provide that kind of rewarding experience for your team and yourself no matter what else is going on in your organization.

• Achieve more together than was possible apart
• Create a shared sense of accomplishment
• Greater respect & enhanced reputation
• Enabling others' goals and supporting their personal journeys

What do you think? What other rewards of effective leadership would you put on this list? Reply to this email and let me know.

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To your success,

Christopher

P.S. Like this one? You'll probably want to check out this earlier Wednesday Win essay on the four sacrifices of a leader, too.

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