Improving leadership is one of the main challenges that many professionals have. Leading efficiently is not an easy task. And in times of difficulty and uncertainty, leading well becomes more necessary than ever. To help you in this challenge, I share with you 6 IDEAS THAT WILL HELP YOU IMPROVE YOUR LEADERSHIP.
- SPEAK LESS AND LISTEN MORE. Most people associate leadership with speaking well or communicating effectively. To all of us, when we think of great leaders, great speeches by leaders such as Churchill, Kennedy, Obama and others come to mind, and therefore we tend to associate leading with speaking well. And I’m not saying it’s not important, but I recommend that you speak less and listen more. Communication in leadership is a two-way process. Dedicate more time to active listening, to really understand how they are, what they need, and what ideas the members of your team bring to you. As the well-known saying goes “If we have two ears and only one mouth, it is to listen twice as much as we speak”.
- ASK MORE. Very related to the previous idea. To listen more and better, asking can be very useful. Spend time with your team, ask them questions, and listen carefully to their response. Try to bet on open questions, which allow people to offer richer and more detailed answers. asking well and often is key to developing good leadership.
- HIGHLIGHT THE POSITIVE. Focus your attention on the positive aspects of each worker. Discover them and praise them. Receiving positive feedback is often a motivation boost. In addition, it facilitates confidence gains and increases the willingness to change and improve. If you highlight and appreciate the positive behaviors of your team members, it will have a very positive impact on the motivation and performance of your team.
- ACCEPT FAILURE. Things don’t always go well. Accept it with a positive attitude. It rewards the effort and daring in proposing new ideas even if they do not have the expected result. Supporting the team in actions that fail and helping them extract lessons with which to improve is decisive to develop good leadership. As Robert Kiyosaki says, “failure is part of the process toward success”.
- BE FLEXIBLE AND ADAPT TO THE PECULIARITIES OF EACH PERSON. I sincerely believe that to be a good leader, you must be flexible when it comes to people management. Establish general common rules, but then adapt to each person. We are all different. We all have different talents, motivations, and emotions. Dedicate time to your people, to get to know them in depth. The better you know them, the better you can adapt to their peculiarities. To develop good leadership, coffee for all is not enough.
- LEAD BY EXAMPLE. What you do is much more important than what you say. If you want your team to be ambitious, you must be ambitious. If you want your people to be optimistic, you must be optimistic. If you are developing a leadership position, you are going to be very analyzed. And people will draw conclusions from everything you say, but above all, from everything you do. So, think carefully about what you want to achieve and strive to ensure that your actions are aligned with your words and with your goals. As Albert Einstein said “example is not the main way to influence others, it is the only one”.
Well, you have 6 ideas that are going to help you boost your leadership. I finish with a quote about leadership that I love. It’s from John Quincy Adams, the 6th President of the United States, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”
