…first learn what it means!
If you are new to leadership or have been a leader for a little while, you can improve your skills by investing some time in developing your own definition of leadership. Of course, there are lots of fine definitions brought to us by clever people, but it is only when you work on building your own definition that it really starts to sink in and make a difference.
The difference, as well as the benefits, comes from learning what actions you can take which will be viewed as good leadership, and which behaviours may land you in trouble with your followers. Working on autopilot whennew to the role of leader is not a good option.
Rather than share with you what experts think, I will give you a little exercise to help you start to figure it out for yourself and accelerate the right behaviours into your work as a leader.
- Find a place where you can work on this for 30 minutes without being disturbed. Yes, switch the phone off too!
- Make a list of five leaders whom you admire. They can be from your own business, or outside of work. The only criterion for this exercise is that you have some idea of how they behave with their followers.
For each leader you have chosen…
- Write down, in a single sentence, why you think they are a good leader.
- Now become more specific, make a list (for each one) of five behaviours which make a great contribution to their role as a leader. What do they actually say and do? Find examples of things you have heard them say, or seen them do.
- Going a little deeper, can you write down any beliefs that they may hold about leadership? Beliefs are usually what drives the behaviour, so you might like to think about why they use the behaviours you identified earlier.
Now, scan your list of 25 behaviours (okay, there may be some overlap, but cope with it)…
- Pick out the ones which you think are the best. If you were creating the perfect leader, which of the behaviours would be essential?
Now for the tricky part…
- In your role, which of the behaviours would be most likely to give people the impression that you are a great leader? Note these down.
- Be honest, can you think of behaviours which would definitely make people think you are a bad leader? Yes, write these down too!
- Finally, can you write down your own definition of good leadership? This may take a little longer, so perhaps come back to it in a few days.
This sort of exercise is never a single event. The first time you run through these questions, it will get you thinking. If you are serious about becoming a better leader, at odd times the exercise will come back to mind. Or, you will notice another leader doing something and it will remind you of leadership behaviours. That is the natural process of learning.
The implication of this is that you ought to plan to repeat this exercise several times over a couple of months. Each time you do it, your answers will get stronger, your definition clearer and, automatically, your behaviour will start to gravitate towards great leadership.
The Gautrey Influence Blog
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