- Geekmaster
- 2020-09-13 15:00:45
- 12 minute(s)
Untold Leadership Secrets Revealed
Are there leadership secrets you need to know to become a respected and trusted leader? In this post, I’m going to talk about those untold little secrets of leadership that no one likes to talk about.
Working on your leadership qualities will help you become someone who achieve strong and consistent results.
Being a good leader is a challenge that few people can face with dignity. For many, leadership is something that exists far beyond their field of perception and understanding.
Great leaders are not born into the role.
ImportantThey exhibit traits that have been learned, refined, honed, and improved over many years. There’s no single trait that makes someone a great leader. It is a collection of refined attributes.
Every leader’s abilities are put to the test at some point in their career.
WarningHow well they handle the ups and downs, the excitement and turmoil, proves whether they’re truly a great leader, or just another wannabe.
In order to be a great leader, you must master the art of leadership.
If that’s your goal (and I suggest it should be), here are six secrets that will help you become a truly great leader.
Leadership matters. It’s what separates the good organizations from the bad and the great organizations from the good.
It turns out, the skills and talents necessary to guide your team in the right direction can be simple, and anyone with the determination can develop them. Here’s a list of my top favorite tips drawn from the secrets of successful leaders.
People Matter
There is more to leading a team of employees than simply telling them what to do. Are you perceived as more than just a manager? Are you even perceived as a leader and respected as such?
Ask your employees. They will tell you.
ImportantAsking for their feedback earns trust and respect with your employees. It shows them you genuinely care about their success more than your own.
Being a supporter and being a dictator are two different things and will affect your team differently.
A supportive leader helps their team to achieve goals by finding the most appropriate solutions to the problems and attaining overall success. A dictator loses trust, and cannot expect effective co operation.
A leader needs to find new people to build a strong team that will accompany and assist him in reaching the goals. As the success is a common result, as well as a failure, a leader is responsible for hiring top-quality specialists dedicated to the work.
Communication is an essential element for leadership success.
WarningYour people depend on you to express yourself clearly, openly, and freely, and you depend on them to do the same in return. We have almost an unlimited variety of ways to communicate with our people today, but it’s up to you to determine which works best for your particular organization.
Even the best teams need the ongoing support of the leader who is in charge of them.
Not just to provide resources and other support, but to back them up when they hit a challenge or roadblock. Provide your people with the benefit of your experience and provide them with air cover when others in the organization threaten their mission.
Conquer Yourself
Good leaders instill their personality and beliefs into the fabric of their organization. If you be yourself, and not try to act like someone else, and surround yourself with people who are aligned with your values, your business is more likely to succeed.
Don’t expect the world to look at you as a leader, unless you feel the same for yourself.
The biggest asset of a leader is self-reliance, and if you doubt your capabilities then leadership is not the game for you. No matter how skillful you are, if you doubt your power as a leader, you are giving power to your doubt.
Be humble! Kill your ego!
WarningAvoid arrogant, know-it-all, my-way-or-the-highway behavior. When things go well, share credit; when they go wrong, accept responsibility and learn from mistakes. Have a sense of humor!
The strongest factor that determines success is self-esteem. To start your leadership journey inculcate these traits in your personality along with self-assurance, confidence, clear thought process and gratitude. Once you will adopt these major skills in your personality, you will climb the ladder of leadership earlier than others.
Leaders need to be courteous, treat everyone with respect, and practice common decency.
ImportantRespect reverberates and multiplies and employees want leaders who respect and value their teamwork and individual contributions. When leaders demonstrate civility, they are leading not just from the head, but the heart.
Employees want leaders to be themselves — to have consistency and harmony between their values, their messages, and their actions.
Authentic leadership requires having honest, transparent relationships. It centers on trust, transparency, inclusiveness, and fairness. Authentic leaders are self-aware, genuine, mission and purpose driven, focused on results, and focused on the long-term.
You Can Be Wrong
Great leaders are not the ones who are always right or the best at what they do. They are the ones who know how to bring the best out of themselves, and other people when it matters the most.
Don’t be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.
ImportantOthers might say that great leaders cannot fail or they always make the right decision, but the reality is that great leaders know how to make peace with them and turn them into their success stories.
Doing the right thing won’t be easy.
There will be times when you will have to be harsh, brashy and critical of other people’s performance. That’s when the true test of a leader’s mettle comes across.
A leader has to be unbiased when it comes to making the right decision. You might have to lay someone off, or take some harsh decisions that others might not agree with, but you have to do what’s right for the business.
It is the responsibility of a leader to make sure the team gets the first taste of success.
But, when failures knock at the door you need to guard your team and be the first man to whither the storm. That’s how you make a strong team!
Good leaders know their strengths and admit their shortcomings.
WarningLeaders don’t have all of the answers, nor should they act as if they do. Employees appreciate and respect leaders who recognize, understand, and admit their own limitations, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.
Show The Way
The secret to great leadership is to act like a coach. You have to set the strategy and the game plan to win, hire and coach the top talent, set goals and measure progress — and then demonstrate how this all works by example to all of your employees on a consistent basis.
Too many teams race down the road before they even figure out who they are, where they’re going, and what will guide their journey.
ImportantYou have to represent the strong values and work ethic that people expect, and you have to anticipate competitive diversions and adjust their plans to insure goals are achieved.
A team charter provides a record of common agreements and can be modified as the business grows and the team’s needs change.
It’s important to create a set of agreements that clearly states what the team is to accomplish, why it is important and how the team will work together to achieve the desired results.
Great leaders inspire their people to go above and beyond to achieve their goals and the goals of the organization. Inspire and energize your employees by setting a highly visible example of what a great employee does and how a great employee acts.
Develop employee-driven, mission-focused strategic plans.
Paint a shared, futuristic vision with ethical values. This creates clear expectations. Passion is not something you can fake. Employees can see whether you have it from a mile away, and they know the difference.
Your number one job is to get the best out of your team.
WarningAbove all else, your job is getting people to do their absolute best. A great leader knows how to identify and navigate around the team members’ weaknesses and capitalize on their strengths.
Earn Trust
Trust is a two way street. Having trust in a work relationship means proving to your employees that you are reliable, responsible, dependable and deserving of their trust.
Trust is slow to gain and quick to lose, so a leader must continually demonstrate trustworthy behavior to cultivate their relationships.
Good leaders trust their people. They provide the skills, tools, and resources needed for their employees to be successful, and they create the environment that allows them to achieve that success.
Great leaders give more freedom to their team members.
WarningYour team will not need a micromanager — someone who will describe every step and detail. They need more freedom and chances to take responsibility. Give them this freedom — let them be engaged with regards to decision making.
Great leaders delegate as much responsibility and authority as they can, and they monitor their progress toward achieving the organization’s goals. They tell their people what needs to be done, and then they let their people figure out how to do it.
You need to gain your team’s confidence.
ImportantYou don’t gain a team’s confidence in a day, and perhaps particularly during periods of turbulence. But, slowly, slowly, as you keep a focus on what really matters and shut out almost everything else, you will rebuild your business into one that will be strong.
Be consistent and fair with employees.
Emphasize teamwork and collaboration. Build strong communication channels so everyone is on the same page. Share meeting minutes, conduct company wide meetings, and distribute financial reports.
Only The Brave Wins
Courage is something that everyone has to some degree. Some people’s courage is suppressed by the fear of being judged or penalized, while others have an abundance of courage and can more easily navigate the workplace.
Great leaders are not afraid to say farewell.
For a successful and efficient leadership, a leader needs to understand when the time comes to let some people go, when there may be people who will become a detriment to the team in the long run.
Be different. Swim upstream! Follow Sam Walton — “stand out in the crowd.”
ImportantAwareness of and learning from your mistakes is what helps shape trust and growth. A strong leader will also utilize courage to stand up for the group, letting the group know that mistakes and all, they’re respected for their hard work and efforts.
Great leaders don’t crave the spotlight, they tend to save that for the star performers on the team. They are willing to accept blame when things go wrong and aren’t concerned about who gets the credit when things go well.
Great leaders take intelligent risks (and encourage and reward others for doing so).
They embrace professional learning and development; they withhold initial judgment, value diverse ideas, and invite new ways of doing things; and they welcome failure as a way to learn and improve.
Resilience is the capacity to not only endure great challenges, but to get stronger in the midst of them.
WarningLeadership can be challenging. When complex business problems arise, you need to be prepared to meet them head-on and be resilient as you work toward a solution.
Final Thoughts
As you have possibly noticed, all untold secrets of leadership lie in the ability to work with a team. A leader is nobody without their people. So, learn to be attached to your team and build strong relationships that will benefit the development of your business.
All I have learned from my journey as a leader is that leadership is not a game for the faint-hearted.
It requires courage, conviction, skill, adaptability and most important of all — people skills.
Leadership is all about people — building, nurturing, and sustaining long-term relationships to achieve collaborative impact.
ImportantGreat leadership is a combination of having effective, systematic organizational leadership processes, but also having a set of learned and practiced traits — the soft skills — that serve to empower, engage, and inspire others.
Whether you have to lead a team of 2, 20, 200 or 2000, these secrets of leadership are going to be your passport to success.
The sooner you start adopting these traits, the better it is for you and your journey as a leader!
These are the ingredients that make up the “secret sauce” for my teams, and strong and effective leaders may contain different doses of each.
WarningOur hope is not that you scrap your current leadership style and follow our recipe, but instead that you to take away the idea of creating your own sauce and recognizing what ingredients are important to you!
Being a great leader is about reading your audience and adjusting the mix of your different leadership ingredients as needed.
What other insights do you have regarding leadership effectiveness? If you have ideas that you feel like sharing that might be helpful to readers, share them in the comments section below. Thanks!
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