Being a leader doesn’t mean bossing people around. As a leader, you’re responsible for motivating, educating, and making sure your employees add value to your organization. This requires you to connect with your team, to create an environment that encourages creativity, to understand your own strengths and weaknesses as well as your teams, and accept feedback about your performance as a leader.
Have you ever noticed that some people are horrible bosses, and others seem to rally the team flawlessly with endless creativity?
Working towards developing necessary leadership qualities will require you to pay attention to many things, care about team members, and find ways to inspire and motivate them.
Here are 8 measures that you can begin implementing that will help you to become a leader that people want to follow,
1. Open communication
You’ll need to be approachable. If you’re constantly barking orders and not listening to your employees you’re not going to have good communications. You want your team members to be encouraged, feel safe to give you feedback, and know they are being heard and respected. Communication is the key to a team that can work together, especially through challenges.
2. Encourage personal and professional growth
Investing in the success and growth of your employees is part of being an effective leader. This could be empowering them towards the interactive media arts degree or giving them opportunities that challenge them to grow. When you believe in your employees and express this not only with words that motivate and inspire them but with actions, you’ll be amazed at how they respond.
3. Don’t be afraid to try new things
Don’t be scared to fail. Giving them a safe place will encourage your team members to play an active role in planning and coming up with ideas without fear. When failure isn’t looked at as something bad, it will improve productivity, creativity, commitment, and problem-solving.
4. Always keep a positive attitude
One bad apple will spoil the entire batch. Things happen, situations, and obstacles arise, but you’ll keep your team members encouraged and inspired to face these challenges with hope if you have an optimistic attitude. Flying off the handle and tossing blame around will create a hostile environment that kills creativity and workflow.
5. Set clear employee goals and expectations
Set clear goals and provide them with your expectations. Be sure that you explain the importance of the project and how it’s going to impact the organization. Knowing this gives them motivation and excitement about being included in something that will make a difference.
6. Give praise and recognition
We all want to feel appreciated for our hard work and contributions. And by offering recognition and praise to the individual accomplishments of your team members or team as a whole, you’ll find that they perform better.
7. Delegation is essential
We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and knowing your team is a huge part of properly delegating tasks and trusting them with a particular task that you believe they are best suited to handle empowers them. It also helps to build trust.
8. Be passionate
Energy is contagious and one of the best motivators, and if you’re passionate about what you do, it creates a stress-free work environment. When you speak with passion and excitement, it’s difficult for others not to be excited as well. This is how you build momentum, engage your team and make even the impossible seem obtainable. Your passion will unite the group, push the boundaries, and they’ll be inspired to crush every single goal you set in front of them.
Just because some people are natural born leaders with a gift of understanding, compassion, and lack the fear of failure that comes easily doesn’t mean that you cannot be a great leader. But maybe they just make it look natural.
Most people have to develop these traits and learn how to be great leaders. Many learn from personal experiences, listening to endless podcasts, reading book after book, and going to seminars.
It takes time to develop strong leadership skills. Give yourself the grace to make mistakes, always be honest with your team and ask for feedback without response. Before you know it, you’ll have an impressive track record.
Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash.