What It Takes to Become A Leader In Today’s World

Things have changed dramatically over the past couple of years in how you lead your team. The dynamics have changed with technology taking over and much of the workforce leaving the market through the pandemic. Times are changing and you have to adapt quickly because the culture of our country is changing rapidly.

Since the pandemic it has changed the behavior of the market and how we do things in society as a whole. If you want to excel and separate yourself to attract more talent, helping your team grow and acting as a leader is more effective. When you’re searching for a great opportunity to grow substantially, leadership and a vision for the future are big factors.

I’ve talked to many different people that work for different companies and it all starts at the top. There are a couple different styles of leaders. I have seen leaders who want to maintain their companies with minimal growth and I have seen leaders who are very aggressive to grow and build out larger teams. Both styles have pros and cons but if you want to maintain success in your company you can never stop growing. The moment you stop building and growing is the moment you will start shrinking. Just as you lose money by keeping money in your savings account, not growing your business is a lost opportunity cost.

Leadership

First and foremost, a leader doesn’t have to be someone in charge. Leadership is more of a role instead of a position. A leader is defined as someone who leads, influences or inspires a group of people or organization. Now that isn’t to say it can’t be someone of authority, but that anyone can hold this role regardless of their status. If there’s an employee who inspires other team members and they want to follow them, they are a leader. A leader primarily sets the tone or a standard of a result and understands that each person may accomplish that goal in a different way but the result is the same.

Characteristics of Leaders

Leaders hold certain characteristics. Everyone, regardless of whether they’re a leader or not, should be working on these certain characteristics.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is made up of a couple of components. This includes self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Each of these factors are all within emotional intelligence.

Self-awareness — You must know what your greatest strengths and weaknesses are. Once you have a list for each, you should focus primarily on your strengths so you can create the highest level of success. As a leader you shouldn’t suffer and handicap your results. You don’t have the skills to carry out your weaknesses. You will grow much faster if you find a partner or add someone to your team that can perform the tasks you are weak at.

Self-management — Staying positive is the best antidote. You should focus on the most logical steps forward to create further success. If you get caught up making emotional decisions you will slow yourself and your team down. Investing and running a business has its obstacles so mental toughness is extremely important.

Social Awareness — A leader who excels in social awareness practices empathy. They strive to understand their colleagues’ feelings and perspectives. This enables them to communicate and collaborate more effectively with their peers. By communicating empathetically, you’ll be able to understand and better support your team. Sometimes you have to put yourself in your team’s shoes to understand where they are coming from to help them succeed more.

Relationship Management — This is the influence you have on others whether through inspiration, coaching or mentoring, or your ability for conflict resolution. Leaders know and understand that an issue brought to them about another employee should be addressed and looked into. It’s best to address a possible issue now then to ignore it until it gets out of hand. Keeping your team happy means avoiding possible turnover, low morale, addressing issues and inspiring them to be the best they can be.

Communication

Communication is a huge part of leadership and business. As a leader you must know how to communicate in person and through phone, email, text and to a large group of people. You have to know how to communicate effectively.

Delegation

Being able to delegate tasks efficiently is an important characteristic for a leader to hold. As a leader, you can’t do everything yourself. It’s not a weakness delegating tasks for you to be able to focus on the more important roles, it’s a strength being able to execute efficiently on delegation. Once you can delegate to clear some of the tasks off your list, it will allow you to make very important decisions on the direction you believe the company needs to move in to build more success. As a leader, you should delegate tasks properly based on the skillset of the employees around you. Giving someone a task they don’t know how to do (aside from learning new skills) is a waste of time if another employee already knows how to do it. This can be challenging but you should strive to make your system as efficient as possible.

There are certain skills within delegation that leaders should be aware of. This includes:

• Defining expectations
• Matching the task correctly to your team
• Team work
• Time management
• Accepting feedback from your team
• Trustworthy

If you’re a trustworthy leader, your team will be comfortable coming to you with any questions, comments or concerns. Employees must trust and respect you in order for you to carry this trait. In my opinion, you can’t have one without the other. If employees trust you, then they most likely respect you. If employees don’t trust you, odds are they don’t respect you either. You have to be honest and open to gain trust and respect from your team.

Lead your team down a path to success…

When you lead your team and want to scale your efforts, keep these leadership traits in mind as you grow and learn what system works for you:

• Leaders are open minded, find solutions to problems and find competent people that can execute effectively on tasks.
• They reward their team and encourage continued growth and development.
• Leaders take full responsibility for their team and take the blame for mistakes.
• They welcome feedback and want to work to find the most efficient method to success.
• Leaders create a happy work environment where their team can prosper in.

If you’re a leader and want to improve your skills, it’s an active mindset shift you need to focus on while going through your day. At first certain things may seem difficult, but once you truly start getting into the routine and see the improvement of your team, it will all be worth it in the end. Your company will increase its speed and everyone will be more successful.

Matt Green

Learn more about leadership with the rest of my blog or check out my social media!

The original article was published here on Matt’s website.