The Essential Leadership Cycle

Entrepreneur

2 days ago

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur United Kingdom, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
The Essential Leadership Cycle (ELC) provides a dynamic and intentional framework for developing high-performing teams. It defines the behaviours and conditions necessary for excellence and sustainability in team performance. The cycle is built on two foundational categories: Driving Elements and Resultant Conditions.
What is the purpose of the 8 essentials?
The Essential Leadership Cycle is an organisational performance improvement process for leaders and teams, used as a framework to help business leaders evaluate the current performance of their teams, identify strengths within team performance that should be reinforced and sustained and, where necessary, recognise gaps that can be addressed or closed with the right actions. Through the Essential Leadership Cycle, leaders are also better able to establish targeted goals to drive progress and maximise both their results and the long term growth of their team.
Let's take a closer look at each of the eight leadership essentials, across both Driving Elements and Resultant Conditions, as well as the key practices that entrepreneurs and business leaders can apply today to begin implementing the Essential Leadership Cycle within their own organisations.
Driving elements
These first three essentials are foundational and set the conditions for team success:
1. Self and team awareness
Self and team awareness is the cornerstone of effective leadership. Self-awareness involves recognising one's own strengths, potential limiters, blind spots, personality tendencies, and emotional drivers. Team awareness expands this understanding to how others think, communicate, and react under pressure.
Key leadership practices:
Use personality diversity tools, such as E-Colours and Personal Intervention, to manage behaviour intentionally.
Promote feedback, reflection, and self-assessment to understand impact on others.
Leverage tools such as the Social Intelligence Self-Assessment to identify group dynamics.
2. Shared vision and values
High-performing teams rally behind a clear, compelling vision and a set of shared values that guide their behaviour and decision-making.
Key leadership practices:
Leaders should consistently communicate purpose and alignment.
Values should not be merely displayed, but rather lived and referenced in daily decisions.
Leaders and their teams should work in step to clarify the key questions of: "Who we are, What we do, Why it matters, and How we behave".
3. Clarity of roles and processes
Clarity reduces friction and enables people to act confidently and responsibly. When roles and processes are ambiguous, performance, morale, and safety suffer.
Key leadership practices:
Use the rule of R2A2 (Roles, Responsibilities, Accountabilities, Authorities) to define expectations.
(Roles, Responsibilities, Accountabilities, Authorities) to define expectations. Provide clarity by aligning tasks with team members' strengths and personality tendencies.
Ensure everyone understands not only what they do but how success is defined
Resultant conditions
These five Essentials emerge once the driving elements are fully embedded in the organisation:
4. Trust and psychological safety
Trust is the foundation of collaboration. It includes both competency trust ("I trust your ability to deliver") and relational trust ("I believe you care"). Psychological safety allows individuals to express ideas and concerns without fear of ridicule or punishment.
Key leadership practices:
Build trust by demonstrating consistency, integrity, and empathy.
Address breaches promptly, constructively, and with emotional intelligence.
Model vulnerability by admitting mistakes and actively seeking input
5. Diversity and inclusion
Diversity is a fact; inclusion is an act. Teams thrive when all voices are heard, respected, and leveraged for innovation. This includes diversity of thought, experience, background, and personality.
Key leadership practices:
Leaders should embrace tools such as E-Colours to highlight and embrace the personality diversity present within their team.
to highlight and embrace the personality diversity present within their team. Address unconscious bias and promote inclusive dialogue.
Utilise micro-affirmations to ensure all members feel valued
6. Commitment
True commitment is about aligning and moving forward, even when consensus isn't complete. It is a choice, not a demand.
Key leadership practices:
Allow space for dissent before seeking commitment.
Ensure clarity around what the team is committing to - ambiguity kills engagement.
Continually gauge commitment and effort levels across the team
7. Accountability
Accountability is the willingness to take ownership for behaviours and outcomes. It is rooted in trust and clarity and leads to growth rather than blame.
Key leadership practices:
Start with leader modeling - take responsibility for decisions and outcomes.
Encourage peer-to-peer accountability supported by psychological safety.
Differentiate between accountability (developmental) and blame (punitive)
8. Learning and continuous improvement
Great teams evolve intentionally. They reflect, adapt, and improve, not because they're broken, but because they're committed to excellence.
Key leadership practices:
Build regular debriefs and feedback loops into team rhythm.
Treat mistakes and near-misses as learning opportunities.
Use the Intentional Action Plan to track growth and learning goals for individuals and teams
Lead with intention to build a culture of high performance
The Essential Leadership Cycle is more than a framework - it's a behavioural philosophy. When leaders intentionally embed the 8 Essentials into their teams, they build cultures of trust, resilience, and excellence – all while supercharging the productivity of their people. High performance never come about by accident. Instead, they are the result of consistent leadership, self-awareness, and collective intent.