3 Powerful Strategies for Executives to Continually Reinvent Themselves as Leaders

We live in a fast-changing world where the people that will succeed and make an impact are those that constantly evolve and adapt in order to unlock the opportunities and meet the challenges that our technologically-driven world regularly throws at us.

This process of reinvention becomes even more important if an individual occupies a leadership role in organization. This is because it is the responsibility of leaders to scan the horizon, identify the direction in which things are headed and prepare their teams for the future, making sure they are ready to not only tackle the challenges that will eventually come their way but that they will succeed and thrive.

More so, it often falls on leaders to objectively evaluate their organization’s strength and weaknesses as well as successes and failures so as to determine what needs to be shaken up in order to push the organisation further towards new frontiers of achievements.

Unlike in the past generations when a leader could rely on a few consistent set of skills to provide effective leadership over the long haul, today’s leaders must constantly revisit their skills, re-evaluate their capabilities and pivot in order to avoid becoming trapped in routines which do not engender progress for their organizations and the people that work for them.

Consider employing the following strategies in your efforts to constantly reinvent yourself as a leader:

1. Constantly Audit Your Leadership

The most effective leaders are self-aware enough to constantly evaluate themselves to uncover gaps in their leadership so that they can work on them and improve. They spend time to honestly and objectively look at themselves and judge where they are falling short. They neither kid themselves nor hide under excuses to explain away areas of weaknesses and failings that they could eradicate.

There are three key areas of leadership that you should constantly look to evaluate to see how you are coming along. These are:

Your Leadership Style – There is a variety of opinions on how many leadership styles there are but generally, everyone seems to agree on four, which are: directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. While every leader has a dominant leadership style, the other leadership styles are never completely absent. Whatever your dominant leadership style is, it is important for you to always be aware that different situations require different leadership styles. In certain circumstances, coaching will be appropriate. In other situations, you may need to set clear goals and make plans and then delegate the job to your subordinates for them to execute. Yet in other situations, you may have to closely direct someone in order for them to get the job done right. And yet, in some other situation, all that will be needed from you might just be the support needed to get the job done.

Your Strength and Weaknesses – It is very important that as a leader, you recognize your strength so that you can leverage them to achieve better results. It is also important that you are aware of your weaknesses so that you can work to improve on or even overcome them. Constantly working to leverage your strength and improve your weaknesses ultimately makes you a better-rounded leader.  

Your Communication – Effective communication is an important tool in the leader’s repertoire. You need effective communication to convey your vision and give instructions and feedback to your team. You also need effective communication, in the form of listening skills, to receive ideas from your team members. In fact, according to Sir Richard Branson,  the best business advice is: listen more than you talk. 

Steps to Take to Audit Your Leadership

In evaluating your leadership, it is good to first look at yourself objectively and make a fair determination of those areas where you think you need to make improvement; but it should not end there. Because no matter how good you are at self-evaluation, there are always going to be so many aspects of yourself that you will miss due to self-blindness. As a result, it is wise to employ the following strategies to get feedback about your leadership:

Seek Feedback from Your Subordinates and Peers – When you offer a service, about the best method you employ to find out how well you are doing is to get feedback from your customers, the people that use you service. In like manner, it is just common sense that when you want to find out how you are doing as a leader, you should ask for feedback from the people that are directly impacted by your leadership – your direct reports and peers. Obviously, for your direct reports, you will need to create an environment that allows them to feel comfortable enough to give criticism – where they feel so – without fear of retaliation from you. So maybe you could ask them to send in their feedback anonymously or you may use a third party you trust to collect the information.    

Seek the Insight of Your Supervisors and Mentors – Beside feedback from your subordinates and peers, you should also seek input from your supervisors and mentors. Given their experience and the fact that they have sat in the chair you are presently sitting in, they may have tremendous insight regarding what skills are needed to excel in the role. They will easily identify what you are lacking and need to improve upon.  

Get Information From a Personality Test or an Assessment – What I have found is that when people rise to a certain level on the corporate ladder they stop subjecting themselves to personality tests and assessments – such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and 360 Feedback, probably because they imagine that the tests are no longer relevant to them. The truth is that there are tests for every level of corporate existence; you only need to find the right ones for you. And when you have found them, carry them out on yourself to find out which area of your leadership could use some improvement. 

2. Continually Expand Your Knowledge Base

To constantly reinvent yourself as a leader, you must be open to the idea that no matter how many years of experience you have in your field, there is still stuff you can learn.

In a 2017 Inc. video, Simon Sinek, author of ‘‘Leaders Eat Last’’ and ‘‘Start With a Why’’ said that “great leaders are those who consider themselves students regardless of their status.”

He went further to say: ‘‘I’ve met some really, really senior, really, really remarkable people, and all they wanna do is read about leadership, talk about leadership, watch interviews about leadership— they have an insatiable curiosity to continually improve their leadership skills. In other words, they understand it’s not some rank they’ve achieved, but rather, it’s a skill they need to perfect for the rest of their lives’’.

And according to Glenn Llopis, CEO, Glenn Llopis Group, a workforce development and business strategy consulting firm, ‘‘Successful leaders ask questions and seek counsel all the time. From the outside, they appear to know-it-all – yet on the inside, they have a deep thirst for knowledge and constantly are on the look-out to learn new things because of their commitment to making themselves better through the wisdom of others’’.

As Sinek said, you can learn new things from a variety of people including your subordinates, peers and clients. All these people can be an immense resource for inspiration and creativity. It will be a shame to believe that you already know all that there is to know because in truth, there is an entire universe of knowledge you are not yet acquainted with.

3. Maintain a Healthy Curiosity About New Technologies

Our world today is being driven by technology and I don’t think anyone will dispute this. Since the last 25 years, technologies have been developed that has radically changed the way we live and do business. And over the next few years, new technologies will be developed that will yet again shift the goals post in terms of how things are done.

While younger people tend to be up-to-date and comfortable with using the latest technology, executives usually have to learn and adapt, probably because younger people are usually more curious, more willing to experimenting and more open to learning new things. 

As an executive, it is vital that you maintain a welcoming spirit towards new technologies and take time to learn them. You don’t have to become a technology nerd or insist on mastering the intricacies of every new invention. You just need to understand enough of each invention that will facilitate your work and help you achieve better results.

But you do need an open mind and a willingness to learn. You should always endeavour to find out from your people what new technologies are at play and which ones you need to learn to enhance your effectiveness. And if you need to employ reverse mentoring by learning how to use some new technology from a younger, tech-savvy millennial employee, by all means do it.

Conclusion

As an executive who is a leader in your organisation, it is obvious that you are gifted with many talents and skills. Without possessing a degree of leadership skills, it is unlikely that you would have risen to the height you have attained. However, given the pace of change in our world, the leadership skills that have enabled you succeed up to this point may not always serve you. To maintain your edge and keep your leadership sharp, you must always look inward and evaluate the quality of leadership you provide as well as your current leadership skills with a view of constantly reinventing yourself so that you will remain relevant over the long haul.