Operational leadership is a leadership style focusing on the day-to-day management and execution of an organization’s operations. This type of leadership is critical for making sure an organization successfully carries out the core functions of its business. Effective operations leaders steer their organizations in the right direction by overseeing policies, processes and people, resulting in quality operations and competitive advantage.
The Core of Operational Leadership: Definition, Purpose and Scope
Operational leaders manage the daily execution of processes to meet the organization’s goals, bridging strategic intent and tactical execution. The purpose of operational leadership is to ensure smooth and productive functioning of an organization’s processes. Operations leaders generally focus on four core areas: efficiency, effectiveness, cost control and quality.
Key Functions of Operational Leadership
As the people who make sure things get done on a day-to-day basis, operations leaders are responsible for a variety of key functions within organizations. These can include:
- Overseeing workflows and operations
- Quality and performance monitoring
- Managing teams, training and employee engagement
- Driving efficiency and minimizing costs
- Ensuring regulatory compliance and safety
- Building operational resilience
- Driving organizational agility
- Managing change and disruption
Foundational Skills and Attributes of Effective Operational Leaders
Strong operations leaders possess a number of core competencies that enable them to carry out their mission of making sure the organization runs smoothly and produces quality results.
Core Competencies for Operational Leadership
These include:
- Process optimization: Pinpointing problems, analyzing situations and developing solutions for continuous improvement.
- Risk management: Identifying, assessing and mitigating potential threats to ensure organizational stability and success.
- Crisis response: Remaining calm and decisive while leading through unexpected and high-pressure situations.
- Resource allocation: Strategically distributing resources, including personnel, time and funds, to maximize efficiency and achieve objectives.
- Task delegation: Assigning responsibilities to the right team members to optimize performance and accountability.
- Effective communication: Clearly and confidently conveying information—and actively listening—to ensure understanding and alignment.
- Analytical skills: Interpreting data and trends to make informed, evidence-based decisions.
- Critical thinking and problem-solving: Evaluating complex situations and generating innovative, practical solutions.
- People management: Empowering teams to achieve strategic goals while fostering a positive work environment.
- Financial management: Planning, tracking and controlling financial resources to ensure sustainability, efficiency and strategic growth.
Operational Leadership Traits That Matter
Along with advanced skills and competencies, effective operations leaders share a number of leadership traits in common, such as:
- Detail-oriented
- Highly organized
- Hands-on
- Decisive
- Adaptable
- Resilient in complex situations
- Emotionally intelligent
- Team-oriented
Leveraging Tools and Methodologies for Effective Operations Leadership
Technology is also critical for effective operations leaders. They need to be proficient in the tools that can help with creating actionable plans, communicating directives, monitoring progress, evaluating data, decision making and more. This can include tools and platforms for enterprise resource planning (ERP), collaboration, process automation, project management, analytics and reporting dashboards, financial management, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, inventory management and more.
Operations leaders should also be well-versed in the various established process improvement methodologies, such as Lean Management, Six Sigma, Kaizen and Total Quality Management. These provide frameworks for continuous improvement, enhanced quality and efficiency gains. Using these methodologies can help operations leaders identify and eliminate waste, reduce errors and ultimately improve the bottom line.
Matching Leadership Approach to Organizational Needs
Operational leaders should also be aware of leadership approaches that can be useful in various situations. These include:
- Transformational leadership — where leaders inspire and motivate teams to achieve exceptional outcomes with a shared vision — can be especially effective in routine task environments.
- In support service roles, servant leadership — where a leader prioritizes the needs and growth of employees and the broader community — can bring success.
- Adaptive leadership, where a leader embraces change, challenging the status quo in favor of experimentation and innovation, can be a good fit for volatile environments.
- In crisis scenarios, directive leadership is key. This leadership style embraces clear instructions, specific goals, and close supervision.
- Collaborative leadership, where leaders work alongside their teams, emphasizing shared responsibility and mutual trust, can work well in cross-functional teams.
Operational leaders can keep all of these approaches in their portfolio, mixing and matching as appropriate for the situation, team and organizational goal.
Real-World Examples of Operational Leadership
A chief operating office (COO) role is a prime example of operations leadership at the highest levels of an organization. The COO is generally responsible for day-to-day operations, in contrast to a chief executive officer (CEO), who focuses on overall business strategy, or a chief financial officer (CFO), who is responsible for financial management.
Frontline managers are also key operations leaders. They’re the ones responsible for overseeing the employees performing an organization’s most elemental tasks, ranging from sales to production. As the managers closest to where the work gets done, they play a crucial role in operations leadership.
Operational Leadership in Specialized Sectors
The role of each operations leader is unique to their organization’s industry, size, structure, mission and strategic goals. Examples of primary responsibilities in various sectors include:
- Healthcare: Regulatory compliance, patient safety and human resource management
- Education: Resource management, student services and academic scheduling
- Food processing: Production management, safety standards and supply chain operations
- Manufacturing: Quality control, efficiency management and cost controls
- Retail: Inventory management, staffing and customer service
Operational Leadership Development: Training, Mentorship and Programs
Some people seem born to lead. But all leaders benefit from doing the work to develop and hone their leadership competency. Operational leaders have a variety of options for improving their effectiveness.
Upskilling for Operational Excellence
Leadership is a skill — and it can always be improved. Operational leaders can benefit from leadership training in areas such as:
- Problem solving
- Communication
- Risk management
- Systems thinking
- Process management
- People management
These leadership skills can be developed via a variety of courses, workshops and other training approaches. Leaders can also pursue formal certifications and academic degrees to further their expertise and credentials.
Operations leaders also should have extensive knowledge of how things work in the domains they oversee. This means they need to delve into the details of the company’s processes, products, products and services in areas ranging from human resources to finance, supply chain, IT and more. Cross-training in various departments is an effective way to gain the knowledge they need to guide organizational success.
Mentoring and Succession Planning
Mentoring is a valuable tool that can be used to develop operations leadership skills. Mentorship programs pair a more experienced mentor with a less experienced mentee for long-term learning opportunities and support. When deciding how to start a large mentorship program, remember mentorships offer operation leadership mentees:
- A chance to receive personalized guidance in a safe and trusting environment
- Accelerated knowledge sharing
- Networking and connection opportunities
- Preparation for advancement
For organizations, mentoring helps identify and nurture future leaders from within, improve retention and engagement, strengthen company culture and ensure a strong talent and succession pipeline. It’s a way to build both employee connections and knowledge for a holistically stronger company.
Establishing a successful mentoring program doesn’t have to be a huge lift. An enterprise mentorship program platform such as Chronus can help organizations easily launch and run mentoring programs. These tools include features such as automated mentor-mentee matching and metrics tracking to assist companies in measuring a mentorship program.
Software such as Chronus can help them gain maximum operations leadership development benefits with minimum administration. Mentoring software can be used across industries — here’s an example of its benefits for leadership development in hospitals and healthcare.
Operational Leadership vs. Strategic Leadership
Operations leadership and strategic leadership are leadership styles that work together in a complementary way — and depending on the organization, the same person may have both a strategic and operational role.
In general, however, strategic leaders create long-term business strategy, while operational leaders are responsible for executing it in the short term. Operations leaders and strategic leaders also generally have different leadership approaches: Strategic leaders may focus on synthesizing various inputs to make big picture decisions, while operations leaders focus on creating actionable plans based on those decisions. Then the operational leader puts those plans in action, linking operational KPIs to the organization’s goals, communicating expectations and supervising operations to achieve desired strategic goals.
Operations leaders play a critical role in translating strategic vision into reality by overseeing daily operations, keeping tabs on what does and doesn’t work, identifying areas for improvement and implementing changes. Without this type of leadership, organizations may find themselves with great strategies but fail to produce great results.
Metrics and Evaluation: How to Measure Operational Leadership Success
To measure organizational performance, goals need to be set and progress measured. The same goes for operations leadership performance. This involves several steps:
Define Objectives
Begin by clearly outlining the goals the leader should be working toward. These objectives should align with the broader business strategy, be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) and align with industry benchmarks.
Select Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Other Metrics
Identify relevant KPIs that directly reflect progress toward the leader’s and organization’s goals. These can include metrics such as productivity rates, cost savings, uptime/downtime or retention rates, depending on the leader’s role and responsibilities. Qualitative metrics such as employee engagement levels, customer satisfaction rates or Net Promoter Scores (a metric used to measure customer loyalty and the likelihood of a customer recommending companies, products or services) can help provide a well-rounded view of operations leadership success.
Collect Data
Gather performance data from sources and tools such as scorecards, employee feedback, customer satisfaction surveys, operational dashboards and real-time performance monitoring systems. Data measurement and collection should be standardized, with a clearly defined and accurate data analysis method, and reporting should make it easy to understand and compare data.
Evaluate Performance and Implement Improvements
Compare the leader’s results against the established goals and to assess effectiveness and identify gaps. Use the findings to provide constructive feedback, guide professional development and create an action plan for improvement. Improvement should be iterative and improvement continuous via a cycle of implementation, assessment and adaptation.
The Future of Operational Leadership
Going forward, operational leaders will need to evolve their skillsets to stay ahead of the technological innovations driving modern business operations. AI, for example, is impacting every aspect of business. Operational leaders will need to maintain data literacy and tech integration to stay abreast of trends such as AI in process optimization and digital twins, IoT and predictive maintenance in the production environment. They’ll also need to understand the ethical and governance ramifications of AI and be prepared to make informed decisions and optimize innovative technology while protecting their business and employees. Tech tools such as the Chronus mentoring platform can support operational leaders in keeping things running smoothly in the face of growing challenges.
Whether it’s remote work, machine learning or trends yet to be discovered, operational leaders with curiosity to learn and a passion for excellence will continue to play a crucial role in leading their organizations to success.
