Five Steps to Develop Your Leadership Skills
Step One: Grow your Self-Awareness
The starting point in developing as a leader is to become self-aware. Leadership is profoundly about how one impacts on people. It is about what they think of you, how you affect them, the extent to which they respect you and what you stand for, and whether you touch their hearts in some way. The most powerful way to develop your self-awareness is to get some feedback. There are some wonderful online instruments available that will enable people who are important in your leadershp world to give you frank feedback. One such instrument is “Feedback Rocket”, which enables your peers, team members (to whom you provide leadership), and seniors to give you feedback on such dimensions as how visionary you are, how you empower people (or not), your leadership strengths and weaknesses – and you are able to compare this feedback with how you perceive yourself. Of course, the more similarities there are between you perceptions of yourself and how you are perceived by others, the more self-aware you would appear to be.
Step Two: Set Goals
Reflect on your feedback. Do people perceive you in the way you would like them to perceive you? There is no point in debating the merits of the feedback. That is just defensive and self-defeating. The feedback is the feedback. You asked for it – so take it. If the feedback is that your meetings are long, rambling and deathly boring, then they are! If the feedback is that you are like a bear with a sore head around month end and people would rather poke a sharp stick in their eye than come to work when you are like this, well then… The only questions worth asking are: Is this the kind of feedback I would have wanted and would feel proud of? If not, who do I need to become in order to have people see me as a good leader? Once you have the answer to the second question, you can set very clear goals on the competencies you need to develop. These goals need to clearly describe what you want to achieve in a way that would be easy to see if you had achieved it or not. For example, “The meetings I lead will be pacey, purposeful and useful to everyone attending those meetings. They will start and finish on time, and the agenda will be covered and decisions taken that the whole team can commit to. I will know this based on feedback from the team.” If you want more information on setting goals, google “SMART goals”. Decide with which goal you are going to start. You cannot focus on a shopping list of goals, so pick the one that will make the biggest impact in the shortest possible time. Quick wins are good for getting us going. As you achieve each goal, so you can decide on the next goal you will work on.
Step Three: Get Some Assistance
Achieving your leadership development goals will require that you acquire some knowledge and some skills. Decide where best you can acquire these. Do you need to do some internet research? Would you be better off finding some good books? Would it be useful to attend a training course? Perhaps working with a leadership coach is the best route for you. Whichever route you decide to take, you will need input. This input should give you new knowledge, tools you can use, and should preferably provide you with an opportunity to experiment with or try out your new skills. Then decide what you are actually going to do differently from a behavioural point of view and decide when you are going to start.
Step Four: Experiment and Reflect
It is critical that you experiment with doing things differently. We learn when we take action, reflect on the action and its impact and then take new action. So go and do what you said you would do. Once you have tried the new behaviour, think about what worked, what didn’t work, what you have learned through this experiment, and what you will do differently next time – and then continue your experiment.
Step Five: Get feedback
If your goal was to make sure that the meetings you lead are pacey, purposeful and useful to attendees, then who is best placed to assess how you are doing? The people who attend your meetings can tell you if you have succeeded – so ask them. It is useful to ask what is working, what isn’t working, what do I need to do differently. The same is true of every aspect of leadership. The best people to give you feedback on how you are doing are your followers. You boss is absolutely not the best person to assess how you are growing as a leader – after all, how often do you have to exercise leadership with your boss? Asking your team for feedback is a sign of strength and courage – it is never a sign of weakness.
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Step One: Grow your Self-Awareness
The starting point in developing as a leader is to become self-aware. Leadership is profoundly about how one impacts on people. It is about what they think of you, how you affect them, the extent to which they respect you and what you stand for, and whether you touch their hearts in some way. The most powerful way to develop your self-awareness is to get some feedback. There are some wonderful online instruments available that will enable people who are important in your leadershp world to give you frank feedback. One such instrument is “Feedback Rocket”, which enables your peers, team members (to whom you provide leadership), and seniors to give you feedback on such dimensions as how visionary you are, how you empower people (or not), your leadership strengths and weaknesses – and you are able to compare this feedback with how you perceive yourself. Of course, the more similarities there are between you perceptions of yourself and how you are perceived by others, the more self-aware you would appear to be.
Step Two: Set Goals
Reflect on your feedback. Do people perceive you in the way you would like them to perceive you? There is no point in debating the merits of the feedback. That is just defensive and self-defeating. The feedback is the feedback. You asked for it – so take it. If the feedback is that your meetings are long, rambling and deathly boring, then they are! If the feedback is that you are like a bear with a sore head around month end and people would rather poke a sharp stick in their eye than come to work when you are like this, well then… The only questions worth asking are: Is this the kind of feedback I would have wanted and would feel proud of? If not, who do I need to become in order to have people see me as a good leader? Once you have the answer to the second question, you can set very clear goals on the competencies you need to develop. These goals need to clearly describe what you want to achieve in a way that would be easy to see if you had achieved it or not. For example, “The meetings I lead will be pacey, purposeful and useful to everyone attending those meetings. They will start and finish on time, and the agenda will be covered and decisions taken that the whole team can commit to. I will know this based on feedback from the team.” If you want more information on setting goals, google “SMART goals”. Decide with which goal you are going to start. You cannot focus on a shopping list of goals, so pick the one that will make the biggest impact in the shortest possible time. Quick wins are good for getting us going. As you achieve each goal, so you can decide on the next goal you will work on.
Step Three: Get Some Assistance
Achieving your leadership development goals will require that you acquire some knowledge and some skills. Decide where best you can acquire these. Do you need to do some internet research? Would you be better off finding some good books? Would it be useful to attend a training course? Perhaps working with a leadership coach is the best route for you. Whichever route you decide to take, you will need input. This input should give you new knowledge, tools you can use, and should preferably provide you with an opportunity to experiment with or try out your new skills. Then decide what you are actually going to do differently from a behavioural point of view and decide when you are going to start.
Step Four: Experiment and Reflect
It is critical that you experiment with doing things differently. We learn when we take action, reflect on the action and its impact and then take new action. So go and do what you said you would do. Once you have tried the new behaviour, think about what worked, what didn’t work, what you have learned through this experiment, and what you will do differently next time – and then continue your experiment.
Step Five: Get feedback
If your goal was to make sure that the meetings you lead are pacey, purposeful and useful to attendees, then who is best placed to assess how you are doing? The people who attend your meetings can tell you if you have succeeded – so ask them. It is useful to ask what is working, what isn’t working, what do I need to do differently. The same is true of every aspect of leadership. The best people to give you feedback on how you are doing are your followers. You boss is absolutely not the best person to assess how you are growing as a leader – after all, how often do you have to exercise leadership with your boss? Asking your team for feedback is a sign of strength and courage – it is never a sign of weakness.
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