3. Your First Step to Becoming a Strong?Leader

People do not follow an uncommitted leader. Commitment can be displayed in a full range of matters including the work hours you choose to maintain, how you work to improve your abilities, or what you do for your fellow workers at a personal sacrifice. — Stephen Gregg — Chairman and CEO of Ethix Corp.

Learning is a never-ending process, as a leader you have to keep yourself learning and developing personal skills. Constant learning allows leaders to anticipate problems and avoid overusing their strengths. It also allows them to identify how they can balance or at least neutralise their abilities so that overuse does not harm their standing among peers and subordinates. One should proceed to develop his/her skills gradually, rather than proceeding in a go. You will find many people complaining while learning something new, or developing skills, that this task is very difficult and I can never do it. Just in case, one has begun with a tedious task and could not perform well, that does not mean that the next step would be similar to the previous one. You can take the next step right if you move ahead with planning and managing by taking one step at a time, and you will see the progress.

One Guruji in his ashram in the Himalayas, told his student, “You know there is my mentor staying one mile away from our ashram, you go and invite him for dinner, remember, he is very new to this place, he doesn’t know how to reach our ashram, you bring him along with you.” The student replied Guruji, “How will I go in the dark?” Guruji gave him the lantern. The student said, “this lantern is throwing light only ten yards away, and your mentor whom you are asking me to invite for dinner staying one mile away. How can I use this to go one mile?” Guruji said, “it is throwing light ten yards away, right? So, you can walk ten yards and when you got ten yards away, it will show you another ten yards light, then you walk that much, it will show another ten yards and you will keep walking, if you wait until you see the entire mile, you will keep waiting.” And it ends here. This is like the person who waited for all the traffic lights to turn green before he would start from his house, he will keep on waiting and will not even start from his place. Taking small steps will lead you to bigger results, just focus on how you can take the next step.

There are many ways that make a great leader, but it is very easy to be focused on one goal. These are the key steps you can follow to develop your leadership skills:

Be Honest: Practice what you preach to become a successful leader in your personal life and at the workplace. Your team will be a reflection of the values you uphold. So, it is important, to be honest, and genuine in your role. Many leaders develop a list of core beliefs and values that they strive to deliver to their team and that makes them stand out from the crowd.

Prioritize Tasks: There is a strong focus on task management to develop leadership skills. The best way to complete all of your tasks is to prioritize their importance and delegate them to the team. Identify the strength of each team member to ensure that the work assigned to them matches their areas of interest so that they can deliver to the best of their efficiency. This will increase the quality of the work delivered and the productivity of the overall team.

Communicate Constantly: Communication skills are essential if you want to become a successful leader. You will have a clear view of what you are trying to achieve but your team will not be able to share in this common goal if you do not communicate it effectively. Ensure that you speak with your team frequently. Good communication skills aid in the development of greater understanding and beliefs among individuals, inspiring them to adhere to the concepts and ideals instilled in them by their leader.

Have Confidence in yourself: Many leaders face situations where they doubt their abilities and in such a case they are unable to deliver what is expected of them.?, and it is important to maintain confidence in leadership skills. A strong and long-lasting relationship with team members and associates can be built by a confident leader. They form fruitful and beneficial interactions. A self-assured leader is compassionate and manages disagreements effectively. As a result, such self-assured leaders feel good about themselves and generate a positive work environment. Your team members will look towards you for direction. In order to become a successful leader, you will need to learn to stay calm in high-pressure situations and not lose sight of your goals.

Commit yourself: Everyone wants to follow a committed leader. If you are not committed to your goals, you will not be a leader. A famous quote from Dale Carnegie, “If you are not in the process of becoming the person you want to be, you are automatically engaged in becoming the person you don’t want to be.” Commitment is a quality of leadership that motivates and attracts others. It demonstrates that the leader is committed to the cause and believes in it.

Attitude: Our attitude is our most important asset. A leader’s attitude is caught by his or her followers more quickly than his or her actions. “Difficult doesn’t mean impossible. It simply means that you have to work hard — Anonymous.” A great leader doesn’t see difficulty as a problem he always finds ways to overcome it by fetching solutions. You have to keep working on your thoughts, you are responsible to have a great attitude and maintaining it. Good leaders aren’t scared to make decisions, even if they’re difficult to make. They avoid postponing decisions or allowing their personal opinions to influence them. They examine things attentively, conduct thorough studies, consider all options, and make a choice that they stick to. This will have a direct impact on team behaviour. Success begins in the mind, you have to keep your thoughts positive and have a clear picture and road map for your success. A leader has an attitude that makes him/her different from his followers. As you move forward on the success journey, you need to remember that what happens in you is more important than what happens to you. You can control your attitudes as you travel on the journey, but you have no control over the actions of others. You can choose what to put on your calendar, but you can’t control today’s circumstances. Unfortunately, the majority of the fear and stress that people experience in life is from things they can do nothing about. Don’t let that happen to you. Focus on the things you can do something about today. The best example is a lion, who is the king of the animal kingdom. He is not taller than a giraffe, he is not larger than an elephant and he is not the strongest or smartest, or the most intelligent animal in the forest. Still, each animal is afraid of him and considers him the king. What makes these massive animals respect such a small cat, the attitude is the difference. The way he masters his attitude is called a king of the jungle who rules the animals despite their size or shape. An army of sheep led by a lion can always defeat. In an army of lions led by sheep, the lion will also think of himself as sheep. Because leadership can transform cowards into violent warriors the right kind of leadership can transform timid into bold people. Leadership is that powerful, it can walk into a camp of depressed people in twenty minutes they are turned into unbelievable, powerful armies because leadership determines everything. Attitude makes the difference. We don’t want to lead by fear, but it does respect for you to become a leader. What made the lion so special, is when he sees an elephant, the thing that comes to his mind is one word, lunch. I could eat this thing and he acts the way he thinks. Attitude is a product of belief; you cannot have an attitude beyond your belief.

This learning is taken from the book “The Ultimate Leadership in You” by Sreekanth Ganeshi. This book is available in Amazon https://amzn.eu/d/bKrWjqG

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