A key part of being a great leader is about having self-awareness and taking responsibility for your own behaviours and performance.
Do you aspire to be the best version of yourself that you can be? If you don’t, how will you inspire others to follow you? Being a leader is very different from being a boss. Leaders don’t ‘boss’ subservient staff around, leaders inspire action, loyalty and commitment from an engaged team.
Follow these steps
Many successful leaders are focussing on enriching the lives of individuals, building better organisations and creating a more caring world by considering what you can do for others. Author Jeffrey Hayzlett suggests four steps to become a better leader:
- Encourage diversity of thought
Motivate your team to think outside the box and give you more options to consider when it’s time to make a move.
- Create a culture of trust
Communications need to be disseminated to every level of the organisation. Trust is earned and hard to repair once broken
- Have an unselfish mindset
The best leaders show their teams they are valued, supported and trusted. Handled well, crisis management can actually empower teams, forging a sense of community by getting through tough times together
- Foster leadership in others
With the right leadership, your team, your organisation, your community won’t just make it through a crisis but become better because of it.
“It’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you.”
Rachel Dawes to Bruce Wayne – Batman Begins (2005)
Walk the walk
“Be the change that you want to see in the world”, said Gandhi long ago. What this means is: if you want something to happen, take action towards making it happen. We know that Gandhi was a man of peace, so he never demanded that people follow him or take his instruction. He was a passive man, but an inspirational one, this meant that his followers respected him and were inspired to follow him and to take on board his ideas and suggestions.
Can you be that kind of leader? In other words, can you walk the walk? This is vital because what people see you do is far more important than what you say you do. You must embody the values, purpose, vision and strategy of your business. If you don’t – who will?
Example
A senior member one day arrives at work grumpy and uncommunicative, then the next day all smiles and chatty. What impact do you think this has on their team? How do you think this person was viewed?
If you want to see certain attributes in your team members you need to exemplify those behaviours yourself. You don’t attract attributes that you want, you attract attributes that you have, so make sure you are living and breathing the attributes that are required to fulfil your purpose, vision, values.
There’s a whitepaper waiting for you
This blog is based on our free whitepaper ‘Growing as a leader’. Follow the ‘Download our free Leadership whitepaper‘ link below to download it, and learn how to become a better leader.
