Regardless of what field it is, leadership is a privilege. If you have the opportunity to manage other people, you have been presented the best gift – the opportunity to change people’s lives for progression.
To do this, you need to keep taking your leadership skills to a new level – continuously develop yourself. To make others better you have to become better yourself. You need to keep building leadership brand equity for others to be inspired.
No matter how good you are, every leader has the potential to improve. You have an obligation as a people manager. As a leader, you have an opportunity to help your people grow and develop so they can enhance their abilities and skills and contribution.
But to positively impact others, you have to be willing to keep learning and growing yourself. You have to role model the same thought and act. After all, the leader who stands still is destined to fall behind and be defeated. Here’s the good news – you don’t need a big budget, long hours or an elaborated plan to develop yourself. Fortunately, it is possible to get a little better each day as a leader. If you’re willing to find some space, you really can learn, practice and apply new skills daily.
Given today’s pace of change and challenges, you can’t wait for the organization to bring leadership training to you; you have to be willing to work on your own game. You can’t rely solely on your boss for coaching and mentoring; you need to take charge of your own growth as a leader.
You need a personalized learning strategy and a customized plan of action. You need the mind to seek and get feedback and to be reflective about how you can improve. Leadership is about the people you lead… it’s not about you. Which begs the question: Is this how you look at leadership? Do you spend your time on the big picture and is one of those things people development - of course starting with you?
Perspective
As the first step, know what’s working and what’s not working for you? You have to carefully scope out what areas to work on to be a better leader. Get feedback and listen with an open heart to your colleagues and reflect on your own leadership brand – know where you should and can get better?
If you are to change your game, you need to do more than just leveraging your strengths and minimizing your current weaknesses. If you really want to improve, you have to continually add new elements to your leadership toolkit. Get curious about the world around you to expand your horizons.
Developing yourself as a leader also means stretching your point of view, and seeing beyond the borders of your office and day job. The world may be shrinking, but you need to go the other way – you need to broaden your perspective.
You have a lot to gain by stepping outside your comfort zone and adapting different leadership behaviour. Pick out the one thing that you’ve always avoided as a leader, and bring it inside your core set of skills.
After you’ve expanded your world view and stretched the boundaries of your leadership, it’s time to take some risks with your development. Try something new. Consistency is an important element of great leadership, because it sets a familiar, predictable standard.
However, it’s also important to try new things. Whether those new things are procedures, employees, ideas for products, or marketing strategies, the element of newness is what drives your business forward.
Newness
Integrating new ideas into your existing framework is a great way to discover actions that are no longer relevant, and a perfect opportunity to find new ways to grow the business. Being open to new ideas is also a great way to improve your image as a leader. It shows that you’re innovative and willing to take risks, and that alone will increase the amount of respect your followers have for you.
Keep your feet on the ground. Instead, focus on building real relationships with all the members of your work force and work to understand their styles, thinking patters and concerns. Not only will it make you appear more personable and worthy of respect, but it will also give you an opportunity to identify pain points and work to resolve them. Never let yourself climb a ladder so high that you can’t see what’s going on at the bottom.
Work to be involved with everybody, at every level. Becoming a great leader doesn’t have to be a soul-searching journey, nor is it dependent on your natural charisma. Instead, through a series of relatively simple actions, you can refine your leadership skills and cement yourself as an authority in your space. Leadership doesn’t always come naturally to people.
Some leaders are born, but most leaders are created through a series of circumstances and a passion for great work. Commit yourself to continual self-improvement as a leader and eventually you will earn the respect you desire.
More importantly, your team members will be inspired to follow you on the same path. You make this work as a leader; the rest will naturally fall into place