Just because you’ve got a title it doesn’t make you an effective leader. You’ve got to actually develop the skills and the relationships that come with becoming an effective leader.
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I’m going to give you four essential skills for beginning or aspiring leaders. If you’re just starting out on your leadership journey there’s a whole bunch of leadership books out there. Not all advice is right for the place you’re at in your leadership and sometimes it can be hard to sift through the information to get to hat you need to know. I just want to give you four tips that you can focus on that will fast track your leadership and make you a more effective leader as you’re getting started.
Here’s the reality when you’re getting started as a leader you usually have very little influence. That means you have very little ability to influence the people around you. You’re usually trading on your position. If you’ve been given a position as a leader it doesn’t mean people will automatically begin following you. You have to build trust and relationships, to have some kind of influence with the team. And that takes time. The title alone is not enough to make you a leader. That’s the beginning level of leadership. So here are four things that you need to focus on to do this in an effective way.
1. Build Positive & Effective Relationships
The first one is this; I talk about this a lot you’ve probably heard me talk about it but I can’t say it enough. You need to start by building positive and effective relationships with your team, superiors, and colleagues. You’re essentially leading up, sideways, and down. All directions need positive effective relationships. So the number one thing you need to do when you start out as a leader is: get to know the people that you work with. Get to know the people that you lead. Spend time getting to know them personally. Spend time getting to know what their challenges are. Spend time getting to know what their fears, hopes, and dreams are. Understand who they are and what makes them tick.
Understand them as people. That is going to then give you an insight into what their needs are. Once start feeling the needs of people around you whether you are their leader or whether you are their subordinate, you can then start filling their needs. When the people you are trying to influence understand that you care for them and are willing to work for their benefit, they will give you opportunities to influence them and to lead them more effectively. So build relationships!
If you don’t know how to build relationships effectively that’s where you start, You must learn the art of a relationship building. I’ve got a bunch of content on my page about building relationships and even in my leading for success mastery course. So if you need some resource head on over to check that out.
2. Be Self Aware
The second skill is self-awareness. If you are not a self-aware leader that means you don’t know what it’s like to be on the other side of you. You don’t know your flaws. You don’t have an awareness of who you are as a leader. You need to focus on that, you can never lead other people if you can’t lead yourself. If you don’t know what your failures are, weaknesses or your blind spots, then you are never going to lead other people effectively.
Start focusing on your own personal growth. Start focusing on getting upskilled in the areas that you know you have blind spots in. Develop a self-awareness so that it never comes as a surprise if somebody comes to you and says hey I don’t like what you’re doing, I don’t like your attitude or you need a character adjustment. That should never come as a surprise to you. As a leader, you should always be aware of your own deficiencies and your own needs for self-improvement long before anyone highlights it as a problem.
If somebody’s highlighting it, it’s too late. Become self-aware, learn what makes you tick and do something about it proactively.
You can read more on this in my post #1 Relationship Holding You Back
3. Communication
The third thing is communication. You need to learn how to communicate with different people effectively. When you lead, you’re going to be leading different personalities. You have a particular personality yourself and each personality type needs a different mode of communication to get through to them. When you’re dealing with a dominant personality type you need to be able to speak very directly, factually, and with little emotion. When you’re speaking with an inspirational or influential person you need to be able to build a relationship with them. They’re all about the relationship, you need to ask them what’s going on in their personal world. If you haven’t figured it out yet I’m using the disc model, D-I-S-C… So If you’re dealing with somebody who’s Social they care about the emotions. They care about the heart, what makes people tick, and If people are ok. So if you are not aware of how they feel then you won’t be able to communicate effectively. Then there’s the cautious person. The “C” personality type is all about the details. You need to be able to communicate details clearly and succinctly so that they understand exactly where you stand and where you are going.
Communication is key especially when you’re casting vision or expressing your expectations. If you can’t communicate a job clearly and effectively so that people understand you, then take it in and act upon it then you will find your leadership is frustrated. Nine times out of ten when I work with leaders who are having frustrations with their team, it’s usually because they don’t know how to communicate with their team. So you must learn how to communicate effectively.
4. Integrity
The last thing is integrity. Leadership expert John Maxwell says this “Charisma will get you in the door but integrity will keep you in the room”. If you don’t have integrity or operate with honesty, truthfulness and trust then your leadership journey will be very short-lived. You will not last as a leader and you will not be able to upskill or upscale as a leader if you don’t operate with integrity. Sooner or later cutting corners and being deceptive or dishonest will catch up with you. It will sabotage and undercut your leadership. It will undercut the trust with your team and that will undercut your ability to influence them. Always operate with integrity and honesty. Be a transparent and open leader.
Don’t be a leader that has secrets. Don’t be a leader that operates in the shadows or operates deceptively or manipulatively. That is always going to undermine your leadership in the long term. So be a leader of integrity. Work on your character if that’s an issue. Read more about integrity here.
That’s four skills for a beginning or aspiring leader that you can start implementing immediately. 1. Learn to build relationships first. Build good relationships with everybody that you are in contact with. 2. Develop self-awareness. Know what you are like as a leader what your weaknesses are and start your journey of personal growth. 3. Communication. Learn to communicate with different personality styles and learn to communicate clearly and succinctly for whatever you are trying to get done. 4. Integrity. Make sure that you operate with the utmost integrity and honesty at all times.
If you want to find out more about how you can do this I recommend that you check out my website, LeadCommunicateGrow.com. Have a look at some free webinar LEAD Like a Boss. I go in-depth on a lot of this content and you can also check out the interviews I’ve done recently especially one with Dr Jeff Rickenbach. He is a psychologist and expert in personality disorder. He talks about how to communicate with different personalities so I know that that’s going to be really helpful for you.
Don’t forget to let us know what you thought in the comments and if you have a topic you’d like us to cover next time we’d love to hear from you.
If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.
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