Are you looking to become a leader of some sort?
Or have you recently started on a leadership role?
Are you either doubting yourself or feel overwhelmed by it all?

It takes time and effort to be a Leader, there is no short cut. If you are new to the block, then you should read on to realise some perspectives that will support your leadership journey.

Self-Management

Before you can lead others, you need to be able to lead yourself first. That means, you are having control of your emotional states, thoughts, and behaviours such that they benefit you and others. Your ability, as a leader, to manage emotional reactions, focus your attention, make conscious decisions and other executive functions, is crucial. It helps a lot when you can be composed and think rationally amidst chaos and pressure.

Speaking of which, Emotional Intelligence is indispensable in leadership. It means to reflectively regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth. Imagine being able to feel every state cleanly, choosing to stay in that state or consciously move to another state. This is what emotional freedom is all about.

Thankfully, there are several techniques you can use to manage yourself. Next, let’s look at how you can manage others.

Nurturing versus Commanding

As a leader, you should take care when managing your people. There is a vast difference between simply giving instructions to be followed and guiding your people to reach an outcome.
Most importantly, when things do not match up to your expectations, as they sometimes will not, being quick to reprimand isn’t a smart thing. Other than to deprive the spirit and destroy the morale, it won’t support a person’s development and growth.

Being a leader gives you the power to excel in providing your people the inspiration to build capacity and better themselves. Leadership is about connecting with your people. Connecting with your people is about supporting them. Supporting is about being courageous as a leader to flex your nurturing mindset.

After all, your people are your prime resource; without your people, what is the point of your leadership?

Leveraging Beliefs and Values

In order to connect with your people at a deep level, you need an understanding of what is important to them and what they believe in. People’s motives and actions are driven by their beliefs and values. It benefits you to take time and effort to get to know what the values and beliefs of your people are. These will vary among your people, and the key is to find that common denominator that drives them all.

Thru connecting with your people at a deep level, you are enabled to create synergy to achieve your vision; a vision that would be receptively shared by your people as well. When you leverage values and beliefs to facilitate a change for your people, you can align them to common goals, setting your people up to go towards the vision they want, rather than away from an outcome they don’t want.

“Selling” Your Vision

Which brings us next to how you sell your vision to your people, such that they can see your point of view and agree with your imagination and plan for the future. After all, as the African proverb goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Hence, as a leader, you must bring your people along with you on your journey.

It matters how craftily you express another viewpoint so people will listen to you. Everyone sees things from a different perspective. Thus, expressing a different point of view can lead to conflict if not carefully managed, especially if the other person’s opinions have a lot of deep connection attached to them. This emphasizes my earlier point on knowing your people’s values and beliefs.

It takes care and effort as a leader, a bit of patience too, as you will need to pace your people before you gradually lead them. What you want is to express your viewpoint while maintaining rapport by acknowledging another person’s right to hold a different view. Persuasion skills and influencing techniques will certainly help a lot here.

Become the Leader

Leadership is no easy feat. Having said that, it is a skill that can be learned and mastered. If you are new to the Leadership role, and you are struggling and feeling disheartened? You can stay where you are and get what you already have in your career, or you can learn and master the useful skills now and start succeeding as a leader.

Express your interest now for the Leadership course that I’m developing for new Leaders on the block and for those just starting on a leadership role; you may drop me a note via the Contact Form. In the course, I teach the details of how to achieve what I wrote about above and beyond. There are a lot of knowledge to cover, and I can’t cover all the details in a blog.

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