Do you aspire to be a strong leader, respected in your field? Maybe you want to inspire your team and lead them to great success.
Consider adding these leadership characteristics to your managing style toolbox.
Tip #1 - Know Your Leadership Style
There is no one size fits all to leadership. The style that will work for you is the one that comes naturally. Take some quiet time and reflect on your skills, your strengths, and your weaknesses. What do you enjoy about leadership? What do you find difficult or shy away from doing? There are plenty of resources on the internet, like quizzes, to help you work out where your talents lie and give you insight into your management style.
Tip #2 - Choose to be a Positive Role Model
Whether you like it or not, your team member will echo your management style. A positive role model influentially demonstrates a strong orientation toward goal achievements, while encouraging the hearts of those they lead.
Inspect what you expect. Team members live up to your expectations and follow your example regarding work practices, professional relationships, and motivation. Choose to be a leader that models the way, inspires vision—and enable others to act by providing them with the necessary tools to effectively and efficiently perform at their highest and best.
"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way." - John C. Maxwell
Tip #3 - Encourage Creativity
Leaders get better results from their team members if they encourage creative thinking. Challenging the process can prove to be a great benefit. You will get more innovative approaches if you encourage staff to challenge the status quo and think outside the box.
Practice active listening and collaborative problem-solving. Respect the opinions of others. Share and celebrate successes and foster creative thinking. Let your team know that you value their ideas and collective input by including them in on the decision making process.
Tip #4 - Be Passionate
Enthusiasm is contagious. Share your passions with your team members and show them that you care about the projects you're working on. Get them to look beyond the immediate tasks to see what impacts the project intends to achieve. Make their work meaningful beyond just hitting targets.
Tip #5 - Be Positive
True leaders stay positive, no matter what the circumstances. Positive leaders strive to manage and persevere even in the midst of adversity. It’s a given that there will be hiccups, setbacks, even failures that you will have to navigate with your team. All eyes are on you. Their motivation and confidence rely upon you taking an optimistic, constructive perspective no matter what.
Take a sandwich approach: (top layer)—recognize successes, improvements, no matter how seemingly insignificant; (middle layer)—acknowledge opportunity areas—gather feedback—assign tasks—focus upon the big picture; (bottom layer)—positively inspire your team to act by creating a plan of action to overcome setbacks—using failures to learn, adapt, and move forward.
With you to inspire them, your team will stay energized and laser focused upon the tasks at hand!
-Coach Jo