Here are my top tips for being a highly-effective leader. If you’re aiming to develop your leadership skills, it’s going to take effort, time, and patience. Be realistic with yourself and most importantly, be kind to yourself.
Chances are, you probably haven’t received adequate leadership training and you probably haven’t had an amazing leader yourself who exhibited highly-effective skills for you to witness and learn from. What you’ve learned so far has likely been mostly self-taught because you’ve learned by witnessing ineffective, dysfunctional behavior – the what not to do. The more you understand what highly-effective behavior looks like, the more you can practice applying it and set realistic expectations for yourself and others.
How do you do this? How do you learn what highly-effective leadership skills are? Reading this monthly insight newsletter will provide you with valuable knowledge of what these highly-effective behaviors look like, as well as tips on how to apply them. I try to share real life examples of both dysfunctional and highly-functional behavior.
Other ways to learn what highly-effective leadership behavior is: review the Lominger / Korn Ferry competencies, read leadership books, get a subscription to Harvard Business Review and sign up to get the management tip of the day, start talking to other people about leadership skills (it’s rarely talked about and that’s why people feel so insecure. Let’s make it more talked about!).
Make goals, timelines, milestones. Figure out what habits or skills you need to accomplish these goals. Define consistent progress checks with clear measures of success. Outline what barriers might get in your way and how you’ll overcome them. Define how you’ll hold yourself accountable or what accountability methods you’ll use. And define your support system. Some clients use me for this and we work through it together.
👉🏻 Want some accountability? Reply to this email and tell me what’s on your professional development plan!
How do you define success as a leader? What does that mean to you? How is leadership purposeful for you? What leadership legacy do you want to leave?
What are your strengths and weaknesses? How are you navigating your weaknesses (intentionally having other people compensate, or getting them to a functional level)? What’s your value proposition? What makes you unique? What’s your negative self-talk? In what ways could you be self-sabotaging? What firmly held beliefs are you holding onto? What past dysfunctional experiences have you had and what are you making them mean? What are your insecurities? What can you do to gain more confidence in yourself and your abilities? What’s most important to you? How do you define success for yourself? What are your values and how do you use those to guide your decisions? What are you tolerating? What things energize you and what drains you? I just dropped a LOT of self-awareness probes for you to reflect on. These are also a lot of topics that I cover with my coaching clients. Self-awareness is crucial for long-lasting change and fulfillment.
Please, please, please do this frequently and consistently. Take time to pause and celebrate your accomplishments. Often times, we get stuck on the never-ending hamster wheel going after the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing and we don’t take time to stop and recognize how far we’ve come and celebrate that. Do this regularly and also pick certain milestones/successes and select rewards for yourself – things that would be a splurge for you. Make it meaningful.
If you’re doing it right, being a leader can be pretty lonely. You shouldn’t be gossiping internally to others (and oh boy, I’ve witnessed C-Level people doing this and it’s bad, bad, bad! Bad at all levels. Don’t do it.) You should be maintaining confidentiality. You need to be intentional about having someone or multiple people who can act as your sounding board, counsel/advise you, and/or listen to you vent. I suggest looking outside of your significant other, friends, and family. These people should be neutral parties who feel comfortable giving you honest feedback but also empathize and listen to you.
Read my article if you want to learn how to minimize gossip & politics.
For some reason, leaders feel like their job is to solely provide feedback to others. Why should you solicit feedback as much as you provide it?
👉🏻 it shows you care about hearing viewpoints from others;
👉🏻 it builds trust… because soliciting feedback exhibits vulnerability. The caveat here is that you need to actively listen to the feedback, take it seriously, and not get defensive;
👉🏻 it shows others that you aren’t perfect and that you don’t have to be;
👉🏻 it helps you improve or gain awareness;
👉🏻 it creates open communication, which can lead to more innovation and progress toward company initiatives.
