How To Lead Yourself To Be A Successful Leader
You have leadership skills, yes? You have been asked to lead by your seniors as they trust you and believe that you can lead. But here’s the thing, how well are you doing leading yourself before even thinking about leading others? If your answer is “I don’t know” or “I’ve never thought of that before” then this article is for you.
Leadership is not a title you are born with; it comes with time, intentional effort, and experience. The best leaders first know how to lead themselves while leading their teams. Though leadership is a tough job, the good news is that you can learn the skills and hallmarks of being a successful leader.
Let’s find out how you can lead yourself to be a successful leader
In this article we will cover:
Seven top skills to lead yourself to be a successful leader
Create a Vision
Leading yourself requires creating a vision for what you want your life to look like both personally and professionally. Before you can make any positive changes in your life, you need to have a goal in mind. The clearer and more specific your vision is, the easier it will be for you to achieve it and it all starts with self-reflection and awareness.
Communicate with Clarity & Intent
For being successful as a leader you need to cultivate effective communication is a valuable leadership skills. Implementing effective communication takes purpose and intention, but it pays off in the long run. Great leaders achieve their goals by leveraging the power of effective communication skills. Here are the critical ingredients for communicating effectively:
- Stay authentic – find your voice and let it echo your values. People look for authenticity.
- Be Clear – Communicate with purpose and clarity of thought, it plays an important role in aligning people and efforts towards a common goal.
- Stay accessible – present and visible. When you are available, people feel valued and respected.
- Be a good listener – listening fosters trust, respect, openness, and alignment.
Communication, when done well, makes you more effective as a leader by building trust and understanding within your team and inspiring them to work together towards common goals.
Build a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is a key element of successful leadership, one that you can develop over time. A growth mindset works as a game-changer and helps you to succeed in your work, despite any challenges or setbacks. It is a mindset where you are willing to embrace change, learn, adapt, improve, and be a better version of yourself.
Here are small steps that you can do to build a growth mindset-
- Self-belief: It all starts with believing that your abilities can grow with effort, practice, and time. It’s based on the idea that you can learn and develop your leadership skills through dedication and hard work.
- Be self-aware: Know your strengths and improvement areas.
- Stay agile: Bring in agility in learning. Learn from your experiences, past, colleagues, and formal education – any source that can arm you with skills, know-how, and resources to achieve your goals
- Stay confident: Believe in yourself and your abilities. Confidence is something that can be developed over time. Practice being confident by reflecting on your past wins, and doing things that make you feel strong or happy.
- Be Open to Feedback: Ask for feedback from your colleagues, and family and work on the gaps. Take criticism positively in your stride as an opportunity to learn and grow
- Seek the new: Be open to new experiences and ideas, even if they seem scary or intimidating at first glance. Try challenging yourself more often, or taking on new things
- Reward yourself: Celebrate small wins, it helps you to stay motivated and keep the momentum on.
Successful leader’s hallmark is their growth mindset. It is how you think and act. It’s not just about where you start, but where you end up.
Be Empathetic
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It’s a deep level of understanding that allows us to relate to others on a very personal level.
This is especially important for successful leadership because it can help you adapt your actions when faced with difficult situations, which will ultimately lead to better results in your business or team. A leader must also be empathetic to not only lead but also to inspire others around them.
Master the Art of Delegation
Delegation also counts as a key leadership skill. It helps them make their teams more efficient while providing room for growth and development. Few simple ways how you can lead yourself to delegate efficiently. Try to break the task you have into small chunks, identify the right resources in your team and share specifics on the task, goals, and timelines. Make sure you track projects and make yourself available for helping, clarifying, etc., when your team requires you. Share feedback, recognise good work, and steer away clearly from micromanaging. Delegation goes a long way in building team morale, fuels better decision-making, and effective use of time and resources. Harness the power of effective delegation to lead yourself as an efficient leader.
Honesty Is the best policy
We all have heard the adage, “Honesty is the best policy.” When it comes to leadership skills we can safely say that it is the only policy. Honesty is one of the most important qualities to succeed as a leader. It’s crucial for building trust in your team and keeping them engaged in your mission.
The truth is that it’s difficult to lead others if they don’t trust each other or if they think that the person leading them has ulterior motives. Honesty is the building block to create transparency, loyalty, and improved performance. Moreover, being honest with yourself and others is crucial for success because it allows you to make decisions based on reality, rather than on what you want to believe or hope is true.
Be an Enabler
Successful leaders are people who help others to succeed. They follow the servant leadership style; where their focus is on serving their team, not themselves. They are focused on empowering the team with tools, knowledge, and a thriving work ecosystem to help them perform their best and grow collectively and individually.
They champion collaboration, build bridges, and cultivate cooperation and goodwill with others in the organization. An enabling leader removes obstacles to their team’s success and also stands up for their team. They do not have big egos, and neither are in it the game of glory, in fact, they have the humility to step back and let the team shine.
A good leader helps others grow, learn and develop as individuals so they can become more effective at work or in life.
Conclusion
Leadership is hard work. Being an effective and successful leader is intentional. It takes time and practice to learn how to be an effective and inspiring leader who others will follow—and even then? You’ll never stop learning new ways to improve yourself as a leader. The only way forward is through constant self-reflection and improvement. Focus on building the above traits and get started with your journey to be an effective and successful leader.
If you are looking for dependable partners who can help you build and sharpen your leadership capabilities to accelerate your career, simply reach out to our team of leadership experts at GlobalGyan. We will enable you to lead with confidence.
