4 Ways to Become an Accomplished Leader

By Zoe Price:

Becoming an accomplished leader is something that takes time, dedication and focus. It doesn’t happen overnight with most leaders developing into the role over time as they experiment with different leadership approaches, finding what works in their industry and what doesn’t and finally, coming up with a clear method to be an effective boss to the staff under them.

Here are 4 ways to develop as a leader over time.

Develop Your Own Style of Leadership

We each have our own personal style which should be folded into how we are as a leader. Your personal strengths will certainly come to the forefront, but you should work on your deficiencies more too. If you’re a serious person at work, then that may come across poorly to subordinates who respond better to a more personable approach. After all, they’re a knowledge worker, not at boot camp!

Consider asking your management peers what they see as your best leadership abilities and where you might be lacking. If you can persuade them to be candid, then it could be quite enlightening and improve how you progress in a management position. Where you feel that you’re lacking in some key areas, taking effective leadership management training is a good idea to round out the rough edges and learn some new ways of approaching problems that didn’t occur to you before.

Empower Team Members to Be Solution-focused

Empowering other people to come up with their own solutions to problems avoids them always looking to you for advice. While leaders must lead, you also should want to develop a strong team who are creative thinkers and come up with innovative solutions to problems.

It’s entirely possible that junior staff members could think of improvements to existing systems and processes. The reason is simple: they’re working with these systems all day and you’re dealing with management decision-making and strategic planning. Reward team members who show initiative in wanting to be solution-focused.

Accept Blame for Mistakes

There’s nothing more annoying than a boss who won’t admit when they’ve made a mistake. Quite often their staff know who messed up and won’t have much respect when the leader doesn’t put their hands up and say, “Sorry, that was me.”

It’s important that staff can see that people at higher levels own up to their mistakes. They’re expected to do so themselves, so it will always seem unfair when the manager gets off scot-free. It comes down to behaving how you wish others will and then expecting them to follow your lead. It’s the only way to be.

Quick Analysis & Rapid Action

One of the traits that top managers demonstrate is the ability to analyze a situation quickly and understand the key points. From there, they develop an actionable plan beginning from where the business is and then set off executing it. Getting stuck in analysis paralysis is common because of a problem with either procrastination, needing to have 100 percent of the information before making any decision or a lack of confidence.

True leaders learn as they go what’s the right way to act. There are certain traits that people being managed expect to see in their leaders, like quick decision-making and the ability to craft realistic plans of action. Letting their staff have some autonomy about how they complete their tasks is also useful to empower the team and maintain a good morale as long as the overall direction is given by their boss.

Zoe Price

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