4 Steps to Increase Your Leadership Skills
Business is so often not just the nuts and bolts, it is more about you as a leader. Increase your leadership skills to improve YOU, and the world around you. The word leadership often is equated to political officials, CEOs, military commanders, or even athletes. The fact is we all can be leaders. While it’s true that you need good leadership skills to excel at these occupations, leadership is a valuable skill that everyone from any vocation or background can use for their benefit and the benefit of others.
Effective leadership doesn’t come naturally for most of us. It usually isn’t taught at schools, and yet the skills are ones you will use throughout your life; in business, in relationships and in general. Luckily, there are several methods that you can use to build and refine your leadership skills. Leadership skills are important in any business, since they facilitate strong teams and the ability to get tasks done efficiently.
Discover the leader in you! Try these techniques to boost your leadership skills:
- Strive for excellence. Part of being a successful leader is your ability to set the bar for others. You can be a good role model by constantly seeking ways to improve yourself and aspire to excellence.
- A hallmark of leadership is excellence. Look at where you are and consider how you get a little bit better.
- Increase skills and knowledge. Work on sharpening your existing knowledge and skills and developing new ones. With practice and time, you’ll begin to embody examples of leadership skills to facilitate success.
- Become self-aware. The better we know ourselves, the better we can lead ourselves and others. Understand what you like, what you don’t like, what your leadership style naturally is, and ways to improve it.
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- Focus on your vision and set goals. Increase Your Leadership Skills and apply it to your business and in life. Consider what you want to accomplish in different areas of your life. Set goals that will help you to achieve your vision.
- Set goals where you are able to periodically measure your (and your teams) performance and progress.
- Break up larger goals into smaller ones so that you can celebrate your successes and maintain motivation.
- Work to the Kaizen method. As in the above point, you break down the larger goals and as a team you achieve incremental improvements. It’s all about small changes making a powerful change.
- Identify and work with your current resources. When making plans to reach your goal, always work with the resources you have in your current circumstances, rather than developing plans based on resources and circumstances that you wish were reality.
- Be willing to refine your plans and ultimate goals based on your progress as well as your dreams.
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- Develop your people skills. Leaders are known for their ability to inspire others to work towards a common goal. To be successful at inspiring others to work with you, it’s important to develop your people skills and emotional intelligence.
- Learn how to listen. Doing so helps to establish a connection and build camaraderie and trust, so others are more likely to follow your lead and help you.
- Help others to be their best. Part of being a good leader is motivating others towards positive change.
- Seek feedback and offer feedback to enable you to reach your objectives. Give others a stake in the results by seeking their opinion. They’ll be more motivated to help you.
- Embrace tension and the positive action it may cause. In a recent interview with Seth Godin I heard him share the analysis of a rubber band, and if you wish to make it go across the room, or into the air vents in the roof, you need to pull it backwards (create tension) for it to shoot forwards. Tension always shows up when fear is on the table. It is the fear that potential change creates. As leaders we need to accept that a small amount of tension enables us to move forwards. We need to seek out this tension.
- Ask good questions. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, believes the answer to a great solution lies in the quality of the questions being asked.
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- Be passionate and maintain a positive attitude. Life doesn’t always go the way you want it to. When this happens we can be down, or we can look at the learnings from what happened. In life, our success and fulfillment comes down to how we see things. Increase Your Leadership Skills, your habits and your success.
- Create habits to use it regularly. Train yourself to not only have a positive attitude, but also express it consistently.
- Give you and your team the best shot. Maintaining an upbeat attitude and giving your best effort help to energise the entire team so everyone is able to accomplish more, regardless of the circumstances.
- Take responsibility for the impact of your attitude. It is essential to the quality of your life, and on others.
Taking the time to develop your leadership skills can radically increase the amount of success that you experience in all areas of your life.
These tips can help you to hone your leadership skills so that you can achieve your goals and enjoy a more satisfying life.
If you would like to discuss your leadership with Merinda contact her today and book in for a free strategy session.
