Become a leader worth following

This informal CPD article, ‘Become a leader worth following’, was provided by GiANT, a global media and content development company specializing in leader transformation. They are helping create organizations everyone wants to work for.

Become a leader worth following

“Leaders aren’t born they are made.” This famous quote by Vince Lombardi is based on the belief that leadership comes through determination, experience, hard work, and importantly a very good understanding of oneself. There are lots of people who are promoted into leadership roles as they have the technical skills that are required but may not have been provided with any leadership skills so they struggle in their new roles. The same can apply to business owners, who start a business because of a passion for selling cars for example, and then become overwhelmed with the other responsibilities that come along with this.

The truth of it is until we understand ourselves better so we are able to lead ourselves we cannot expect to successfully lead others. Self-Awareness is the ability to know how we are feeling at any given time, why we are feeling a particular way, and an awareness of how those feelings can positively or negatively impact our environment. Building our competency in this area benefits every aspect of our lives, it helps us to see ourselves objectively, understand our values and when we are out of alignment, understand our triggers so we can make better choices, and appreciate that every day is a learning day.

Leadership in a Team

From a team perspective, it fosters a growth mind-set, if a leader can be emphatic, have confidence in saying they don’t have all the solutions, and don’t always get things right everyone wins. Being able to hear all the voices of a team, to understand their triggers so you are able to authentically provide the right level of support and challenge helps build trust and increases productivity.

Imagine a scenario where you have just come out of a very intensive meeting that did not go as planned. The figures you had presented were out of date and the client was left unimpressed. You had delegated the task of preparing the report to a new team member at 4 pm the evening before as you were running out the door. After the meeting, you went over to their desk and let them know how disappointed you were with them and how they had let you down. All other team members can hear you and without saying another word you walk out, and like a battery losing its power the level of trust between you and the team goes into decline.

Understanding ourselves and our teams better could have led to a couple of better outcomes. Firstly, we would have a better understanding of our team so we could initially identify if it was the right challenge for the new team member and if so, provide the required level of support that was needed.

Secondly, even if this had resulted in the same outcome, we would have been able to stand back and give ourselves the time and space to process what had happened before speaking to the team member. We would have chosen a more appropriate place to have the discussion and approached the conversation from a place of curiosity and learning while being accountable for our own actions or inactions.

We are all human so there will be times when our emotions get the better of us and we may still react the same way but by developing our own self-awareness the difference will be that afterward, we will be able to go back to our team with the magic words, “I apologise”.

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