6 Thing To Do Before Being A Leader
Being a Good Leader Takes Skill So Before You Become One You Need To Prepare
To become a leader you must lead.
But maybe that’s easier said than done, especially if you`ve never led before.
The great thing though is that you can learn these leadership skills. And once you learn them, it is best to put them into place in your life or work straight away.
Here are ten skills that you can learn that will develop you into a great leader especially if you’ve never led before:
1. Ask Yourself Why You Lead in the First Place:
To be successful as a leader you need to establish your motivation behind why you want to lead in the first place.
Good leaders lead well over time. Followers of leaders will trust their leader if things are well run over a longer time frame. Before you lead people you need to ask yourself why you deserve that respect. Because from the off as a leader you will be in the limelight and others will question what you do.
Your long-term motivation and intention to lead will help sustain your leadership in the longer run.
2. Find a Mentor:
Before you begin to lead it’s important to know who your leaders are.
When under pressure as a leader who is starting out it’s more than likely that you’ll default back to what you already know. Those who have been your leaders in the past will likely influence your initial habits when you start being a leader. Even if you hated the way you were led and don’t want to lead like this in your own leadership your experiences of being under their guidance will impact the leader you’ll start out being.
By finding a mentor that can help you become aware of your beginning habits as a leader you’ll learn clarity in the way you want to behave as a leader in the longer term.
3. Personal Reflection:
When you begin to lead it’s important to start recording your progress so that you learn from how you perform.
By learning from how you lead you will improve and become better quicker. As you can reflect back on what you`ve written or recorded about your leadership you can tweak things so that when you have a situation that arises in the future that is similar to the one that you’ve had in the past, you can alter the way you treat that situation or repeat what worked well in the past.
By doing this, you can address your pitfalls as a leader and improve yourself in their future as well.
4. Respect is Vital:
You can be a leader in name but if you’re not respected by your followers then you won’t be considered a good leader.
Not just that, but you’ll find that you’re under pressure from those that follow you. This pressure can then influence how you make decisions as a leader. Although many good leaders can be forgiven for making one bad decision, leaders who are not respected in the first place will be harshly judged and this can be the beginning of the end for those that start out in leadership.
So earning respect is vital as a leader and understanding that this takes time to attain will be more fruitful to followers’ perceptions of you long into the future.
5.Take Ownership Of Your Role:
Many leaders who land in the role of being a manager either don’t want to be there or are not sure of their ability to lead effectively.
You need to be prepared to become a leader and part of that preparation is to take ownership of your role. People will look at you as a leader and expect you to make a decision on each and every little issue. Although you don’t need to make a decision straight away, you will have to guide followers once the decision has been made. Good leaders are ones that stand behind their decisions and guide others to understand them as they saw it in the first place.
By taking ownership of your decision making as a leader you’ll make those under your guidance have more confidence in the decisions that you make.
6.Welcome Personal Growth:
Your leadership journey will change the way you think.
You need to be open to this process. By being open you are going to become a better leader now and in the future. Many people get promoted to leadership positions and have a set mind regarding how leaders should be. But followers can see that they have a limited ability or attitude towards growth and this can hinder how people who follow them then view them.
Being open to grow and transform the way you are and how you lead will inspire others to become better followers and leaders in the future also.
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