As Donald H. McGannon said ‘Leadership is an action, not a position.’, and that is absolutely true, rarely ever, the manager who is just bragging about his position, is a really good leader according to his co-workers.
So what it takes to be an excellent Leader? What skills are crucial in order to become one? I have read lots of articles about the leadership in the past, but now I decided to talk about 5 skills that are most important ones based on my own experience, as well as what great leaders around the world say.
Leading by example
I always emphasize the importance of leading by example, because let’s be honest, who is going to do their best if his leader is sitting in the office all day long. The answer is simple: no one.
The key is to show an excellent example, rather than a negative one, believe me, or not, the second one will be harder to change later.
If you do the job/task yourself, at the same time giving all the support to your colleague that he would be capable to try it next time on his own, it will bring great results, and the teammate will be more willing to do it as best as he can.
Passion
Passion plays a very powerful role in our career. As I said once in my interview, that there is no better employee than the one with passion in his field, and the reason is that the one with passion will be motivated, willing to learn new things, and always strive for improvement.
Knowing how to inspire your co-workers to feel passionate about what they are doing is taking your passion to the next level.
Finding ways to ignite passion in your team will bring amazing results in your overall organization performance. If you ask me, where should I start, I would say first get to know your team members: what motivates them? What is the main struggle for them? What areas they are good at? And so on.
Positive attitude
As they say in the movie ‘Remember the Titans’: Attitude reflects our leadership. A negative attitude will not bring great results, especially if you are the leader of the team.
And I am not talking only about the attitude towards your job, but the attitude towards your team, challenges, life. People tend to catch your attitude quicker than the words you are saying, it is the same when you start talking negatively about the workload, your colleague will quickly join your negativity party by adding more things that he is not happy about.
But what if you talk positively that you have a great team and this challenge is nothing we can not handle. It will set your colleague to think positively about the everyday challenges.
Growing your skills
As John F. Kennedy said ‘Leadership and Learning are indispensable to each other’. It is all about constant expansion of your skills, knowledge and willingness to improve.
These days it is vital to keep up with such a rapidly changing world of technology. As a leader, you have to be open to new ideas and knowledge.
Feedback
I have no doubts, that we all know more or less how to praise our teammate on the excellent work they did. But what about giving constructive feedback rather than criticize? I think most of us need to improve in this area.
How to give feedback that would encourage your colleague to improve? We all need feedback, even great leaders because it encourages us to improve.
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