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Behind every successful business there is a strong leader, with the willingness to think outside the box and drive the company forward with innovative ideas. While the irony of the first sentence is not lost, it is worth nothing that business leaders often tend to forget the success behind their company and the leadership skills they adopted to ensure their rise in the industry.
Those who remember the values that resulted in their growth continue growing, while businesses that lose their values overtime often stagnate or face a decline in their performance. Let’s take this opportunity to discuss how you can sharpen your leadership skills that will enable you to grow your business and become a leader that others aspire to emulate in their practice.
Communication skills and staying updated
Communication is one of the important aspect of a leader’s ability to smoothly manage a business and achieve their desired goals. There are two different aspects of communications that leaders need to focus on. Firstly, their speech.
Having a clear way of speaking, choosing words precisely to get the message across is the fundamental skill that business leaders need to have. This involves one on one conversations, meetings with different teams or departments at a company and client management. This is a skill that distinguishes a leader from someone who isn’t one. Clarity in though and speech are indicators of expertise and confidence which are important leadership traits.
To sharpen this skill, one should always dedicate time to learning. The ability to be confident and speak with clarity requires knowledge and expertise in the field. For leaders, it is always important to stay on top of developments in their fields and fields related to their work. This allows them to make informed decisions and place themselves ahead of their peers, many of whom might not be updated on the modern trends.
For example, for someone in the technology industry, lacking behind in their information on modern technological integrations can result in their business model or business processes to become outdated. As a leader, gaining knowledge should be a priority, which would enable you to make the best decisions for your business.
The second type of communication is to stay in touch with your peers or your team.
A leader should never be unaware of what is happening in different departments at their workplace. This is where the quality of listening and empathy comes in.
Discuss the pain points of your colleagues and peers, listen to the problems they are facing and stay in touch with the progress on different projects that are happening. Often times, leaders lose touch with the different departments and fail to understand the situation of the company or projects. For this, leaders should ideally work on being approachable and empathetic. While it is hard to keep tabs on everything, being relatable and approachable allows people to come to you and update you on these struggles.
Adaptability based on circumstances
In the business world, a lot of things don’t go as planned. From bad quarters from a revenue stand-point to unsatisfied clients, challenges are a part of the everyday cycle. As a leader, it is important to be adaptable and flexible based on different circumstances.
In the case of stagnating revenue and growth, the need for changing the way operations are done might be the best way to go. Here, leaders should not resist change. Rather, they should be the ones most willing to change things up and innovate to solve the problem. Facing a challenge head-on is a defining feature of a leader, someone who takes a step forward when confronted by a problem.
Take this for example; if the quality of leads generated is going down, there are two options. Either it is to criticize the team for inadequate performance without changing anything about the lead generation process; or it is to discuss with them the potential reasons as to why this might be happening and work to solve those issues.
The latter action defines a leader. Leaders should always look outwards if the answers aren’t found at home. If the solution to such problem is hard to find, one should learn to look at the competitive market and understand how other companies or businesses deal with such problems. Conduct a trial and error to figure out the roots of the problem and apply different methodologies to solve the issue.
The need of a growth mindset
A leader’s mindset is an open one. Learning to become a better version of yourself is an essential part of becoming a leader. No one is exempted from the natural phenomenon of humans being flawed. A leader’s mindset should be one that open to criticism and aspire to grow as an individual. This self-assessment allows you to always keep yourself in check. There are multiple ways that business leaders can inculcate this habit within their personality.
First, let others discuss any disagreements they might have with your actions, in a healthy manner. Understanding why people think of you a certain way is an important tool to understanding your flaws. Talk to those close to you, take their assessments of your actions seriously and work on flaws that they might point out.
Second is self-reflection. At the end of each day, it is important to self-evaluate your decisions both in your personal life and professional life. This can be done in a form of a journal entry or just a conversation with yourself. This is important in understanding two things. It helps you rationalize situations that might have resulted in a more emotional response when you were in the situation and it helps you think of alternative ways that you could have employed to deal with those issues.
The idea is simple, the mindset you should try and cultivate through these activities is one that accepts that you can make mistakes. As a leader, it is essential to understand your limitations and know that you can make mistakes and own up to them. Being stubborn is a thorn in the side of all leaders, eventually becoming the reason for their failure in the long run.
Learn from established leaders
If you want to be a successful leader, you need to keep learning. You don't always want to re-invent the wheel. Get inspired by what other leaders do. Learning from established leaders will help you overcome leadership challenges and help you make your business a success.
As someone aspiring to grow your business, leaders should have an ideal journey for their company. These are businesses whose leaders have revolutionized the way business is done in the modern world. Taking inspiration from established leaders, how they manage their company, how they conduct themselves in meetings or networking events is a great educational tool that aspiring leaders should be aware of. These established leaders are case studies for what has worked in the past, what is working in the present and what these leaders are doing to ensure their continual success in the future.
Take inspiration from role models to better organize yourself and strategize your business. This does not mean that you have to copy their exact framework. Every person has their own strengths and weaknesses and a unique creative touch to how they do things in their field. Take these role models and learn from them specific values and traits that help them implement their strategies in a competitive environment.
This could include the work ethic they employ for themselves and their colleagues, the culture they represent and propagate at work. Moreover, the way they groom themselves and have groomed themselves from when they started to the present day. Understanding this will give you great insight on how you can implement traits that drove their success to your own business and personality.
This will help you evolve with time, especially every time you face a work-life problem. As aspiring leaders trying to refine these skills and traits, you can watch interviews of established leaders and learn from the advices they give, utilizing these expertise to change things that might be holding you back now or might hold you back in the future.
You don't have to take inspiration only from big, famous leaders. You may also learn from coaches and successful business people. As an example, a successful business coach can play a crucial role in establishing & developing your business.
Empower your team to take initiative
In a business, it’s impossible to be a one man team that does everything. You need to learn how to delegate responsibility but it is also important to create a culture that encourages individuals to take necessary initiatives themselves. It is important to be a team player, understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses and work with them in a manner that helps them overcome these issues. This sort of confidence building amongst peers is a great motivator for employees. It allows them to self-actualize and take responsibility for important tasks.
This is a direct consequence of how you deal with your colleagues or teams under you. Assisting them when they’re unable to complete a task and discussing the challenges they faced is an important part of team building and teamwork. As a leader, build that trust with the people around you or under you, which helps them be more open about their struggles. Once you do this, there’s a greater chance that they will self-evaluate much more and work on their weaknesses more diligently, when they see you as the leader doing the same for yourself and for them. A thriving workplace culture can lead to improved performance and better results.
Final Thoughts About Sharpening Your Leadership Skills to Grow your Business
There are multiple ways you can further your education to run your business. A leader is not just someone who makes the decision, a leader delegates, a leader mediates and ensures that resources that are working have a swift experience and are able to overcome their individual weaknesses as a team. These skills allow you to take a responsible position in the hierarchy but also allows for a better work environment in which resources can feel welcomed and motivated to work harder and take more responsibility than they would at a regressive work place.
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