Big data is used by companies around the world to inform and improve countless business processes, from customer service to marketing campaigns. But the ability to collect and analyze vast amounts of information isn’t just useful for external operations; it can help you strengthen your business internally, too.
One often-overlooked application of big data is leadership improvement. By looking at a variety of data points like performance metrics and employee survey results, you can determine what’s working and what’s not, and ultimately strengthen your leadership abilities. Below, six members of Forbes Coaches Council explain how.
1. Reducing Guesswork For More Targeted Decisions
While data can be imperfect, it can generally help identify trends, and from those gaps, development or hiring practices can evolve. Less guesswork can lead to more resources spent on ways to enhance leaders capabilities. That can lead to stronger teams, happier customers and better ROI. And leaders who lead well and employees who will enjoy working for them. - Kari Price, The Art of Being a BOSS
2. Customizing Leadership Criteria To Your Specific Context
Much leadership advice falls short because it is generic. Big data can help you customize what it takes to excel in your context, company, industry and culture. For example, what are the attributes of the best managers at the firm? In financial services, we use big data to get rid of the false dichotomy between producing revenues and managing people. - Shoma Chatterjee, ghSMART
3. Identifying Common Gaps
The more data we can access, the better we can assess the most common pitfalls of aspiring leaders. As we gain this information, we can tailor trainings to help leaders develop skills early in their academic or work careers that will counter these common gaps. - Billy Williams, Archegos
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
4. Instructing And Creating Dialogue With Your Teams
What the online universities and other remote-focused institutions know is that you need to bring big data into your virtual classrooms. Don’t firehose big data at employees; use big data to teach. Educate, interact and ask for insight into the numbers. Leaders should share what the data seems to say. Get their insight, and integrate the human element as a leader. - John M. O’Connor, Career Pro Inc.
5. Pinpointing Where To Invest Your Team’s Resources
Big data provides insight into areas that need attention and allows leaders to make decisions based on evidence. Companies that make data-driven decisions perform better overall. Data should be used to pinpoint where to invest budget and time to increase efforts, but it is not a replacement for having and communicating vision and setting goals. Big data should inform leadership, not replace it. - Jean Ali Muhlbauer, People at Work
6. Evaluating Employee Perspectives On Leaders
When fear is present during communication, truth cannot be exchanged. Source your big data in a way that allows contributors to be completely honest about their perspective on a particular leader. Singular input is key, as one bad managerial experience could easily taint one’s view of leadership as a whole. If successful, you’ll end up with better leaders and better people. - Derrick Bass, Clarity Provoked
(Forbes)
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