In order to have a successful career, leadership is an essential trait now. You must have heard many times, but it still deserves a reminder that proficient leaders are not born, they are made.
If you keep the following points in mind, you would know how to upgrade your leadership skills and create an aura as a leader at your workplace:
Credibility and Transparency: The leaders who people look up to are credible and at the same time, they are transparent. While dealing with your people, make sure that you are straightforward and clear. As you maintain clarity and transparency, you not only get more done but also save time significantly.
Delegation: In your pursuit to be an effective leader, you should not poke your nose into each and every small thing. As you restrain yourself from doing so, you would notice your team showing up with unprecedented creativity. You can leverage their knowledge and creativity to create more value for your team. For this to happen, you would need to clarify your expectations and let them come up with a solution. This will keep them motivated. While doing this you need to be mindful to hold your employee accountable for the tasks assigned to them.
Decision making: Decision making is a critical task for a leader. When you show up poorly at this, you lose the trust factor among your team members. Therefore, you need to be mindful that performance at work is not compromised in any manner as poor performance leads to low morale among the employees. Many leaders are known to involve their teams in the decision-making process. Besides keeping the people motivated, this also increases the accuracy of decisions as you would now have ground-level information that you would otherwise miss.
Clarifying & Aligning the Goals: Goal-setting is a routine task in business scenarios for those leading a team. While goals have to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound) they also need to be communicated well to the team members. The real test of leadership is aligning individual goals to business goals and creating a win-win both for the organization and the employees.
Communication: Most business projects are derailed because of ineffective or inadequate communication. Therefore, you would need to talk to your people regularly and keep them updated about the developments. As the communication channel is on, you will also have an opportunity to course-correct if something is not moving in the right direction. Regular touch with your team members gives them confidence and add to their motivation.
Right Amount of Confidence: Confidence is another skill that you cannot afford to ignore in leadership. While displaying confidence be mindful that you are not operating from ego and seen as self-centered and pompous. People have strong repulsion for those who are big-headed and self-centric. Loud leadership doesn’t offer desired results in the current business scenario.
Taking Absolute Responsibility: As a leader, you are responsible for your actions and you also are responsible for the actions of your staff. Quite often leaders are seen to be passing the blame to others if things go wrong. Regardless of who messes up, be forthright in owning the responsibility. If you expect others to clean up the mess, that would show a lack of leadership.
Guidance From Mistakes: When individuals make errors, good leaders utilize those blunders as an opportunity and introspection. Reflecting on what led to the failure and also utilizing the learning to show the team can help prevent the reoccurrence of the same issue in the future. This practice makes the organization more productive and efficient eventually.
Leadership is a dynamic subject and the qualities expected from an effective leader cannot be limited to the ones shared above. One thing that is widely accepted is, leading by example. When people see you following what you speak, they are inspired by your actions more than your words. So, if you ask me to rank the important traits of a leader, I would put ‘Integrity’ at the top.
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Vivek