Improve your leadership skills

Do you want to know how to be a good leader? Are you looking forward to enhancing your leadership skills? This article will outline some basic strategies that will help you in your private and work life.

For those of you who are not aware what leadership exactly means, let us start with a definition: Leadership involves establishing a clear vision and sharing that vision with others so that they will follow willingly. It also involves providing information, knowledge and methods to realize that vision and coordinating and balancing the conflicting interests of all members and stakeholders (Business Dictionary, 2017). But there is more behind this simple definition. Here are some basic things that you can implement in your everyday life in order to improve your leadership skills.

Admit failures and move on

Good leaders make mistakes and learn from them. Yes, even the most powerful and inspiring leaders in human history have made mistakes. And what do they do about it? They recognize the mistakes, admit them and take possible actions. So, please remind yourself- it is human to fail. Admit your mistakes, accept them and move on to new things!

Be a follower yourself

A leader cannot follow? That is not true. A good leader is a good follower as well. They ask other people for help when they need it. And even if somebody disagrees, they accept the feedback and listen to the other view point. What can you learn from this in your everyday life? It is important to keep an open mind and give merit where merit is due. It is never easy, but you will learn to value and respect other opinions.

Ask questions

Leadership skills also include criticism and a lot of curiosity. These two things can foresee potential problems. If you stop taking things for granted, you will also develop a more creative mindset. The reason that most people do not ask questions, is because they tend to make assumptions in order to complete the missing parts themselves. Please do not do this mistake! Asking questions will enable you to analyze the roots of situations or problems, explore greater understanding and eliminate confusion.

Take initiatives

Leader are not developed within the comfort zone. You need to step out of it. Do not wait for the perfect chance to come! Do not wait for people to assign you tasks. Try to recognize the needs and do what you have to do to satisfy them. The people around you will be positively surprised if you do more that is asked from you. One can say, that a great way to develop your leadership skills is to take on more responsibility. One thing is clear, you will learn from everything you do.

Listen actively

A leader is not always in the spotlight. An important characteristic of a good leader is to listen. You might have heard about the saying « Speaking is silver, silence is golden ». It is true, most people prefer speaking but without listening you cannot learn. It is also about identifying non-verbal cues such as eye contact and body language. It will help you to gain more in-depth information and build stronger relationships.

Motivate others

John Quincy Adams once said, « If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader ». First, one has to realize that no one is the best at everything. That is why you can empower others to do things. Even when your friends or coworkers lose their passions, you can energize, inspire and motivate them to do greater things.

Self leadership

Are you aware of yourself? Do you know your strength and weaknesses? No? Then, the first step is to become self-aware. You can take a few minutes to reflect on your personality traits. You can start by thinking about the worst leader you have met. Did this person hold back information or delegate too much? Whatever characteristic trait it is that you did not like, judge yourself on it on a scale from 1 – 10. You can do the same thing with good leaders you have met so far. This can help you to become more aware about yourself.

Discipline

It is not simple to be a good leader, it requires hard work as well. A good idea or vision is useless without discipline. People around you will judge your capacity by the amount of discipline you display. In order to be a good leader, you need to be self-disciplined. This will ensure that others around you will be as well. How can you increase your discipline? Try to implement good habits, such as waking up early and getting daily exercise.