Are You Prepared for Your Leadership Journey?
Whether you are a leader of today or tomorrow — and no matter your field — thinking consciously about leadership is essential, as this will affect your choices, decisions, and performance.
The journey of leadership is primarily a self-discovery.
Before your venturing into leading other people, you will seek answers within yourself to acquire clarity about your path in life. You will be compelled to define your values, ideas, concepts, and expectations for yourself.
By being a transformation process, leadership is more of a journey than a destination.
All leaders are perpetual travelers — they are constantly in the flow. They have stop-points in life for review, introspection, renewal of thoughts & ideas and then they move on.
So get started…right where you are.
Geeknack
1
Prepare Yourself for a Leadership Role
While you were promoted for being good at a certain role, leading people requires a very different set of skills. To migrate into your new role successfully it’s important you come prepared.
Just because you’re good at what you do, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be a good leader.
Contrary to popular belief, no one is born a leader. Leaders are made. It takes years of hard work, determination, and sacrifice to be a great leader. As you progress in your professional career and move toward leadership, it is important that you dedicate time toward learning how to be a leader.
Leadership is a privilege and a responsibility. It is not a promotion, a title and a pay raise.
Leadership gives you the opportunity to shape an organization and to turn a vision into reality. However, people often have unrealistic expectations and find the reality of a leadership role tougher than they imagined. Conduct yourself the right way and leadership opportunities will definitely come knocking at your door.
Here are our top effective ways to get you started right now!
2
Sharpen Your Leadership Skills
A leader is a person that inspires, motivates, and leads himself and a group of people. A leader will encourage others to pursue goals with intentionality. I don’t believe anyone is born a leader, but an effective leader is a person that consistently sharpens a set of leadership skills.
Leadership is a skill set; one that can be learned and developed.
Leadership development involves identifying and mastering the key skills and characteristics that are required to become a successful leader. Strong leadership skills will help you score more responsibility at work, which means higher chances of a promotion, increased salary, and growth opportunity overall.
By showing that you have what it takes to be a leader, you can fast-track your career.
There are several core leadership skills that are considered important traits to help you become a more effective leader. Whether it’s taking the initiative, developing critical thinking skills, or learning how to motivate and empower those around you, you must constantly be challenging yourself to enhance your leadership capabilities.
Let’s take this opportunity to discuss how you can sharpen your leadership skills!
3
Take The Leap Into Great Leadership
In essence, leadership is the ability to influence others. It isn’t about position, or title, or rank. It’s about influence. Influence is often forced by means of position or rank, but real influence can be attained by anyone, in any position, at any rank. Even though you have the title, the evidence, and the results, your title is not what makes you a leader.
Leaders need to get out of the technical weeds and focus on leadership pillars to facilitate a positive, result-driven team.
If people listen to what you say, or follow where you go, then you are a leader. If you influence what someone thinks, how they behave, or the actions that they take then you are a leader. There are good leaders. And there are great leaders. Those who rely on the true pillars of leadership.
Being a great leader requires these seven attributes, or pillars, as a foundation.
With a solid foundation in place, leaders can lead by example. The attitude and mindset of the leader is one of the decisive factors for the organization’s success. Leadership pillars describe the behaviors a leader can follow to achieve such an organization.
A boss does not engender loyalty and top effort; a true leader does!
4
Find Your Voice
So many people are really good at what they do, but they find it hard to speak up. If you want to add value, if you want to know you are contributing, if you want to know you are making a difference, you must learn to find your voice and do so proudly.
Let your voice be heard proudly, and earn the reputation of being a valuable person.
Keep your values front and center. Use them as your moral compass when you make decisions. Don’t allow yourself to make exceptions that would require you to set aside your own core values. Others will understand what you are asking, and why. They will respect your character and be inspired by your dedication to your value system. Over time, they will see you as a highly credible leader who is consistent and true to what he believes.
Expression translates your vision beyond yourself.
Expression creates followers, persuading others to contribute their talents and capabilities. Your expression is the culmination of finding, creating and using your VOICE to make a difference in your career and your life. Start building your legacy as a leader by voicing your confidence, courage, and commitment.
Life is too short to not use your VOICE!
5
Turbocharge Your Team's Engagement
No matter what the cause, low morale requires a proactive response from you, as a leader. And while you may not be able to change what’s going on in the broader organization, you can foster an environment that’s more productive and rewarding for your own team.
High engagement only occurs when employees feel taken care of by their company.
Employee morale doesn’t simply translate into how happy your people are; it’s a direct reflection of how healthy your company culture is, how well you and other leaders are communicating with teams, and how effective you are.
As a leader, it is vital to focus on rejuvenating your team’s engagement, to avoid a spiral of morale.
There are times where the mood of the team is not optimum. When team’s engagement suffers, it is important that you take steps to rebuild your team’s mood quickly. A low employee engagement can literally break a business.
Here are ways you can contribute to a thriving culture and continually boost employee engagement.
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6
Build a Strong Network
Networking is important for everybody—particularly those who are interested in becoming a leader in their organization or field. A well-built and maintained professional network could be one of the most powerful tools for great leadership.
Professional networking doesn’t always get the attention it deserves.
Networking’s payoff may seem ambiguous and delayed compared to completing the functional tasks at hand; however, networks will only be successful if they are consistently used — both put into and taken out of. Successful networking is not a talent, but something that takes practice. It necessitates going outside one’s comfort zone and making a long-term commitment to the process.
An effective leader understands that networking is important.
Your network can be an excellent source of new perspectives and ideas to help you in your role. Exchanging information on challenges, experiences and goals is a key benefit of networking because it allows you to gain new insights that you may not have otherwise thought of.
Here are some efficient ways to strengthen your leadership networking skills!
7
Surround Yourself With Talent
Many leaders get caught up in thinking that great leadership is all about their personal talent and abilities. But the reality is, today’s very best leaders have talented teams of people working alongside them and behind the scenes, driving productivity, profitability and overall success.
Surrounding yourself with great talent is a crucial component to great leadership.
Great talent is a key ingredient to making things happen and accomplishing goals. Moreover, it’s a leadership responsibility to onboard the very best and then influence those talented — and not just smart — individuals to achieve their full potential.
Leadership is a team sport.
It is not about what one person does, but instead the cumulative actions of everyone in an organization. Success requires broad embracement of ideas where people are motivated to change because they want to, not necessarily because they are forced to. It’s both a two-way street and a give and takes relationship.
Surround yourself with people better than you. Behind every good leader is a great leader!
8
Manage Through Chaos
Don’t let your team’s story be one of defeat or distress when the chaotic storms of the workplace roll through. Lead your team through chaos and come out on the other side even stronger.
Life is a constant stream of change.
The last-minute change, sometimes with no explanation, can send your team into chaos. So, how do you lead your team through chaos in times when changes are thrust upon them, and they feel betrayed, angry or distrustful? We can be mad about change or we can learn how to make the most of it and go forward to do good things anyway.
All change brings about chaos and unpredictable circumstances.
Crisis leadership is about being ready for it and being motivated as you won’t get followship from others unless you have the ability to lead from the front. It is also about finding the balance between needing to lead others through an element of the chaos but also ensuring everyone involved has the ability to suggests ways forward or even stepping into that leadership role at any time.
Be a leader that creates an environment where you embrace chaos with energy!
9
Shape Your Company Culture
Many companies take culture far too lightly. Perhaps some think it’s a trait that will simply sort itself out given enough time. However, companies that want their culture to stand the test of time have to start at the top — with a clear-eyed vision and high-quality leadership.
Leaders are the key to shaping company culture — and even the culture beyond their walls.
Every day leaders have the ability to make or break organizations. Leadership and culture are the crosshairs that, when coordinated, can give an organization a competitive advantage. Conversely, poor leadership can reinforce the wrong values, behaviors, and attitudes, creating interferences that can shape a toxic culture and create discord between an organization’s image and how it actually operates.
Through their actions and decisions, leaders set the tone for a company’s culture.
Organizational culture is learned behavior that reflects how people inside the organization interact with each other. Therefore, leaders should start to model the behavior they want the organization to emulate if they want the organizational culture change to begin.
Employees are not your company’s most important resource. They are your company!
10
Leverage Mindfulness
Life and work are stressful and at the end of the day there’s not much we can do to stop stressors from popping up. However, through mindfulness you can manage how you handle stressors and build resilience to learn how to deal with them.
A mindful leader is someone who embodies leadership presence by cultivating clarity and compassion in the service of others.
It feels counterintuitive, but slowing down can help you speed up because it can help you see what’s really happening, rather than working from assumptions that may or may not be true. Mindful leadership helps you live with intention, both at work and at home, strengthening your ability to connect to yourself and others, as well as your ability to lead change effectively.
A mindful leader serves others by putting their employees/subordinates needs first.
Helping others before helping themselves. It is not about their own individual performance; it is about collective development. Mindful leaders have the chance to improve this society to a more positive and kinder one and help to develop more ethical business practices for an ever evolving future.
Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it. Begin a practice today!
