Month: October 2020

In spite of having all your team’s tools and work processes in place, do you still feel your employees are disengaged and uninspired? A clear and confident leader is one major component of an active, motivated workforce.

When speaking of leadership, it’s useful to note that there are several different types of leadership styles, all with benefits and downsides. One such unique type of leadership style is transformational leadership.

Transformational leadership is a system where leaders work towards creating change and influencing the behavior of their followers through inspiration rather than with rewards, punishments, or other tangible results.

Emergence of the “Transformational leadership” concept

James V. Downton, a sociologist who studied leadership and group behavior, was the first to introduce the concept and even coin the term “Transformational leadership.”The concept was further developed by presidential biographer and leadership expert James MacGregor Burns.

Inspired by Burns’s work, American scholar Bernard M. Bass further researched and developed the concept. According to Bass, transformational leaders possess the following traits, also known as “the Four Is”: Idealized influence, Inspirational motivation, Intellectual stimulation, and Individualized consideration.

Idealized influence is when a leader acts as a role model and leads by example.

Inspirational motivation means the leader sets challenging and achievable goals and inspires the team to move forward towards achieving them with optimism.

Intellectual stimulation occurs when leaders encourage their followers to be open to new ideas and be more creative.

Individualized consideration is the leadership practice of forging and nurturing healthy relationships with their followers. This style often means that the leader is more caring and offers support and empathy.

Who are transformational leaders, and what makes them stand out?

Unlike the transactional leadership, which follows the principle of gaining compliance through rewards and punishments, transformational leaders inspire and influence their team through their actions and motivate them to strive ahead outside of their comfort zone. They work with the team to enhance their morale and help unleash their true potential. These positive changes in turn affect the entire business.

Transformational leaders are also typically more charismatic and easily gain the trust and loyalty of their team members.

Now that you understand the essence of transformational leadership, let’s explore the advantages it can offer a business.

1. Establishes strong relationships

Transformational leaders are conscious of the fact that in order to build a strong business, one must start with building sturdy and healthy relationships.  All strong relationships rely on honest and transparent communication. Forging relationships within a team helps minimize internal conflicts and develop unique talents within the team. Ultimately, transformational leaders help eliminate unhealthy relationships and encourage harmony within the team.

2. Serves as an ideal influence

“ The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.” – Ken Blanchard 

Transformational leaders model the behavior that they want their teammates to personify. A transformational leader walks the walk and earns the trust and respect of their teammates.

These leaders quickly grasp the needs of the team and help them achieve their objectives with satisfaction, which on a larger scale enhances the growth of the business.

3. Helps bring enthusiasm and motivation into being

Transformational leaders are also good at analyzing and identifying the gaps in a company’s vision and in formulating a new one when needed. Their charisma helps them bring this vision to their teammates and get everyone on board.

We all know enthusiasm is highly contagious. Transformational leaders are usually eager and upbeat, and in turn, exert the same positive influence on the people around them. They motivate the employees by their behavior and use of effective communication. Effective communication and the ability to motivate go hand in hand with each other. Poor communication is a hindrance to employee engagement.

4. Encourages learning and stimulates creativity

In addition to working towards a unified goal and improving self morale and satisfaction in employees, transformational leaders encourage their employees to continue improving by creating opportunities to face new challenges. They help their teammates discover their own capabilities by bringing them out of their comfort zone.

When an employee’s growth becomes stagnant, it directly affects the growth of the business. Good transformational leaders keep their teammates engaged in their work and open to new learning areas to help them grow consistently.

5. Reduces employee turnover

According to this Bersin by Deloitte study, “The retention of high potentials at all levels has strong links to an organization’s ability to meet and/or exceed financial targets.”

Employee retention is crucial for an organization’s success, partially because finding and training new employees costs so much, and partially because high employee turnover can lower team morale and create roadblocks in work processes.

By boosting employee morale and by helping them achieve personal satisfaction, transformational leaders often are able to retain more employees than other common leadership styles. They usually follow an inspirational process for gaining the trust and loyalty of their team members, rather than treating their role like a dictatorship. As a result, employees admire and trust their leader and find fewer reasons to quit.

Tips for becoming a transformational leader:

1. Foster a positive environment and set high ethical standards

2. Model the behavior you expect from your followers and inspire them

3. Provide individual support and attend to the needs of every team member

4. Set challenging goals and focus attention on boosting the motivation of employees

5. Use a persuasive approach rather than a directive approach

6. Promote harmony and build a strong relationship with your team

7. Motivate your employees to look beyond self-interest

8. Share ethical values and pave way for moral development

A transformational leader has the potential to help businesses evolve in the long run by identifying gaps, formulating a new vision and challenging goals, and helping employees embrace change with optimism. When employees become the best versions of themselves by moving out of their comfort zones with improved morale, they in turn directly contribute to the growth of an organization.

Communication: a major requirement

One important trait of a transformational leader is the ability to communicate effectively. Companies with disengaged employees have a turnover rate of 34%, according to a study by Harvard Business Review. For transformational leaders to motivate and inspire employees, they must master the art of communication.  Communicating effectively is of utmost importance because the majority of their strategies can be implemented and achieved only when communicated properly. Building and maintaining healthy relationships, motivating the workforce, improving the morale of employees, and so on are much easier when leaders understand the value of good communication.

Under flexible work conditions or uncertain situations like the current COVID-19 pandemic, which has led us to adapt to remote working culture, the need for an intuitive communication tool is predominant. It’s impossible to communicate and inspire a team without having the means to communicate in place. So, provide your leaders will tools that help them communicate transparently and collaborate effortlessly with their team.

With the proper communication software, all of these benefits of transformational leadership will help a business grow by improving its bottom line. Increased and growth of employees positively impacts the growth of a business, which in turn results in elevated profits.

Nurture an engaging workforce and reach greater heights with the help of transformational leadership.

For an organization to stay consistently productive, it’s important to give employees the tools they need for effortless collaboration, efficient task management, and effective communication. One way to improve these factors is with useful integrations.

In this post, let’s take a look at powerful new integrations in Cliq that will make your remote workflow more efficient and smooth.

OneDrive

• Share your files using the /onedrive command
• Upload your files using the action menu
• Star your important files to keep them accessible

One of the most important factors in effective communication is contextual collaboration. With One Drive you can forget the hassle of switching between tabs and the time you spend searching for a file, especially when you need to share a file with your coworker urgently. The OneDrive’s integration for Cliq can be your all-in-one solution for timely collaboration over shared files.

With OneDrive’s extension for Cliq, you can share your files by simply entering the /onedrive command in any chat and your file will be posted as a message card in the chat as a response. The file recipient can use that message card to view, share, and upload the file to OneDrive directly from their chat.

GoToMeeting

• Be informed about your upcoming meetings
• Start a conference using the /createmeeting command
• Invite members from outside your organization

Integrations with apps like GoToMeeting can help keep your team stay connected and drive productivity. With the GoToMeeting integration for Cliq, you can instantly create meetings by entering the /createmeeting command in any chat. You also have options to customize your meetings securely by setting up passwords, audio mode, meeting type, and more.

One significant challenge in virtual meetings is keeping track of your upcoming meetings and inviting people to it. We got this managed for you as well, From the GoToMeeting bot in Cliq, you can check your current meetings, upcoming meetings, and meeting history by simply clicking on the Meeting bot menu action, and all your meeting details are listed categorically with options to invite, share, edit, and start meetings directly from your Cliq window.

Twitter

• Tweet, retweet, and follow the latest feeds
• Follow trends from the Trending tab in widgets
• Set up Twitter favorites in Cliq to get instant updates on their tweets

Can’t stop scrolling through your Twitter feed? If you’re constantly waiting for your break to grab your phone and check your Twitter updates, our Twitter integration for Cliq is just for you. This integration brings your Twitter feed into your Cliq window to create a workspace where both your social media and work apps can coexist.

Twitter’s integration for Cliq allows you to create, like, retweet, and favorite a tweet directly from your Cliq window. From the Twitter widget, you also can choose to categorically view the tweets from a particular country of your choice or worldwide feed. The feeds from your selected country can be viewed from the Feeds tab and the Trending tab will keep you in sync with all trending updates in that region. You also have options to favorite your top three twitter accounts so you never miss any updates from them.

COVID-19 Bot

• Get screening question reports displayed in the bot or in the channel of your choice
• Get insights on global and country-specific stats from the Covid-19 widget

In the current pandemic, the COVID-19 integration in Cliq provides essential information to keep your organization informed and aware of the COVID-19 cases worldwide. This COVID-19 bot in Cliq provides daily screening questions for employees, as well as country-specific reports and status updates.

You can use the COVID-19 integration to schedule daily screening questions for your employees and map channels to receive your screening reports, or you can access the reports on-demand with the help of the Get Report action menu in the COVID-19 bot.

Additionally, Cliq offers a COVID-19 widget to provide you with detailed stats about previous cases, new cases, number of tests conducted, recovered, affected locations, and more for a selected country or worldwide.

Pipedrive

• Track your deals with the Pipedrive Bot menu action
• Create deals from the Pipedrive integration in Cliq
• Add activities and view your open deals from Cliq’s interface

Pipedrive is a powerful integration to help get your sales and deals up and running. By integrating the Pipedrive bot with Cliq, you can not only create deals from the comfort of your Cliq window, but also track and be notified about the pipeline stage changes, activities, and deals assigned to you with the help of the Pipedrive bot.

Use the /pipedrive command when you need to view the details of a deal from the list of deals available. With the Pipedrive integration for Cliq, you can leverage transparency and control schedules, as well as get activity reminders to keep you on top of all activities and deals all from within Cliq.

ScrumBot

• Easily create sprints and view your teams responses
• Set up custom questions to for your team to answer
• Get notifications and manage tasks with ScrumBot in Cliq

The success of any project lies in how efficiently you plan and execute your milestones. The ScrumBot integration for Cliq can be your go-to integration when it comes to meeting your team goals. ScrumBot helps you manage your team by breaking your project into short-term goals and setting up sprints to manage their tasks.

With the help of ScrumBot, you can schedule standup meetings, assign work to your team members, and set up questions to ask them on a specific day. Once these questions are answered, they’ll get posted in the channel of your choice, allowing you to track every step and keep your team informed of work progress in that sprint.

GitLab

• Map the GiLlab Bot to a Cliq channel to get notifications
• View updates and issues directly from Cliq

If your team works on projects asynchronously, it’s very important for you to have a platform with all the tools you need in one place. The GitLab integration for Cliq is an efficient platform with a wide selection of the DevOps tools you may need during the SDLC lifecycle.

The GitLab integration for Cliq allows you to connect to your GitLab projects, map relevant channels to receive project updates, get notifications about latest updates, and view issues with a simple click on the View Issues bot action menu.

GitLab also has the /gitlab command to help you to pull your list of projects with categorical information about your merge requests, branches, and commits. With the GitLab Bot for Cliq, you can keep yourself and your team up to date on all developments, dependencies, and requirements for your project.

GoToWebinar

• Easily create webinars using the /createwebinar in any channel or group
• Stay informed about your upcoming meetings with bot menu actions
• Track and view statistics for all your past webinars

Want to host professional webinars on the go? The GoToWebinar integration for Cliq can help you position your expertise, make sales without selling hard, qualify leads, and keep your audience engaged.

With the GoToWebinar bot menu action, you can create a professional webinar in no time and map channels to receive timely updates whenever you receive a new webinar registration. With this integration, you can view your upcoming meetings, edit, view, and share their registration details in a specific channel, maintain a record of all your past webinars, and more directly from your Cliq window.

GitHub

• You can view your repositories, content, commits, and issues directly from Cliq
• With the help of the simple /github command, you can view the list of all repositories related to your account

With the GitHub integration for Cliq, developers can now manage their code from inside their Cliq window. The GitHub bot simplifies your workflow and bot menu actions allow you to view, connect, and disconnect the connection to your GitHub repository.

Once you set up connections with GitHub integration in Cliq, you can view the list of all your repositories, commits, and issues using the YourRepo bot menu action or alternatively use the /github command for the same task. The bot menu actions also have capabilities to set up notifications on issues, commits, and more.

Todoist

• Create tasks and view all tasks and comments in your projects directly from Cliq
• Easily view your tasks with the /todoist command in your Cliq chat

The first step to getting your work done is planning on how to go about it, and what better tool than a Todoist to efficiently manage your plans?

The Todoist integration for Cliq helps you organize your tasks and projects comprehensively in a single application. With the Todoist integration, you can view your task lists and projects and review your progress regularly. Cliq offers efficient bot menu actions to help you view your projects, tasks, and comments. You can also convert a Cliq message into a task and prioritize it as Very Urgent, Urgent, Important, and Neutral.

To view all your tasks at hand, all you have to do is enter the /todoist command in your Cliq chat. All your tasks, along with their due dates and details, are listed. Use Todoist in Cliq to help achieve your goals and complete your tasks efficiently.

Each of these Cliq integrations can help make your work easier by providing you with tools for easy collaboration and task management so that no matter where your employees are located, you can make sure team collaboration and workflows are never interrupted.

The above are some of our new favorites, do let us know your favorite Cliq integration that helped you simplify your workflow in the comment section!