5. Five Ways to Develop Your Leadership Skills

As a leader, you should always challenge people to move out of their comfort zone, but never out of their strength zone — John C Maxwell.

Leadership is a critical management function that assists an organisation in directing its resources toward achieving its objectives and increasing its efficacy. Influential leaders are individuals who understand how to motivate and guide an organization’s personnel to achieve success and have a positive impact on others. Regardless of your job title, learning about the value of leadership can help you make a meaningful contribution to the organization’s goals. The value of leadership is discussed in this book, as well as why organisations require competent leaders and a few attributes of a strong leader. These five ways will help you to become an effective leader, and every team would like to have you in a leader’s position. All you have to do is practice these five steps in your daily routine. Anything you want to achieve bigger in life, certain habits or paths or techniques need to be followed. Once you become a master of these steps you will become a better personality, leading becomes your most powerful tool. Where you are now today for achieving your goals and team’s goals, do you have a clear road map for your success, and identify your key constraints what are the challenges you and your team have to go through to achieve your goal. The five ways to develop your leadership skills are as follows:

1. Be an Active Learner:

Learning new skills is one of the most important activities for personal productivity of all. Learn what skills you need to learn, so that you can do your work in an excellent way of doing. The better you become at learning a required skill, the more likely you are to just plunge in and get it done. If you procrastinate learning, you get a feeling of inadequacy, a lack of confidence, or an inability in a key area of the task. If you are feeling weak or deficient in a single area it is enough to discourage you from starting the job at all, leading to low confidence and morale.

Upgrade your skills continuously in your key result areas. Remember, you may be the expert in your area of knowledge and skills but it will become obsolete at a rapid rate. Because it is the law of nature that to remain prosperous and growing, one needs to accept the changes and mould according to them.

A basketball coach Pat Riley said, “Any time you stop striving to get better, you’re bound to get worse.”

One of the most helpful of all the time management techniques is for you to get better at your key tasks. Personal and professional improvement is one of the best time savers. The better you become at a key task, the more you get motivated to launch into it. When you know that you can do a job well, you are very eager to take on more difficult tasks and get the job done fast and better than under any other circumstance. One piece of information or one additional skill can make an enormous difference in your abilities to do the job well. Identify the most important things you do and then make a plan to continually upgrade your skills in those areas. The best news is that you can learn whatever skills you need to be more productive and more effective. Refuse to allow a weakness or a lack of ability in any area to hold you back. Everything is learnable. And what others have learned, you can also learn as well. You can become proficient with a computer. You can become a terrific negotiator or a super salesperson. You can learn to speak in public. You can learn to write effectively. These are all skills you can acquire as soon as you decide to and make them a priority. Master these three steps to be an effective learner.

1. Read books related to your field for at least one hour every day. Wake up a little earlier in the morning and read for thirty to sixty minutes, a book or magazine that contains information that can help you be more effective and productive at what you do.
2. Take every course and seminar available on the key skills that can help you. Attend the conventions and business meetings of your profession or occupation. Go to the sessions and workshops. Sit up front and take notes. Purchase the audio recordings of the programs. Dedicate yourself to becoming one of the most knowledgeable and competent people in your field.
3. Listen to audio programs in your car. The average care owner travels 500 to 1000 hours each year while driving from one place to another. Turn driving time into learning time. You can become one of the smartest, most capable, and highest-paid people in your field simply by listening to educational audio programs as you drive from one place to another.

The more you learn and know, the more confident and motivated you will feel. The better you become, the more capable you will be of doing even more in your team.

1. Plan Your Day in Advance:

You might have heard the question, “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is “One bite at a time!” How do you do your biggest toughest task? In the same way, you break it down into pieces, with specific step-by-step activities and then you start with the most priority job. Your ability to make good plans before your act is a measure of your overall competence and increasing your productivity. The better the plan you have the easier it is for you to achieve your most important goals and then to keep going.

Have you ever thought about investing a small amount of money and expecting a bigger return? Here is the formula each second you invest will get you extraordinary achievements. The answer is planning! Yes, you heard it right! Planning your every day in advance will make you an ordinary to an extraordinary leader. It increases your productivity, time, mental, emotional, and physical energy. This small investment of time will save you up to two hours a day. Once you know how helpful planning can increase your productivity and performance you will be eager to practice it every day, and it is amazing how few people practice it every single day. And planning is really quite simple to do. All you need is a piece of paper and pen; sit down and make a list of everything you have to do before you begin. With this planning, every day saves two hours of time. Always work from a list. When something new comes up, add it to the list before you do it. You can increase your productivity and output by 25% or more by working consistently from a list.

Formulate your list the night before for the workday ahead. Move everything that you have not yet accomplished onto your list for the coming day, and then add everything that you have to do the next day. You should create a master list on which you write down everything you can think of that you want to do some time in the future. In this place, you capture every idea and every new task or responsibility that comes up. You should have a monthly list that you make at the end of the month for the month ahead. This may contain items transferred from your master list. Then sort it out by monthly, weekly, and your daily list. These are the specific activities that you are going to accomplish the following day. This discipline of systematic time planning can be very helpful to you. This habit of planning in the coming week will increase your productivity dramatically. Stick on to the list until the task is completed as you work through the day, tick off the items on your list as you complete them.

As you work through your lists, you will feel more and more effective and powerful. You will be naturally motivated to do even more. You will think better and more creatively, and you will get more and better insights that enable you to do your work even faster. When you plan each day in advance, you will find it much easier to get going. The work will go faster and smoother than ever before. You will feel more powerful and competent. You will get your work done faster than you ever thought possible.

Preparing for a leadership post usually entails organising and arranging activities so that your team can finish tasks on time. You can create high-functioning teams by properly applying your leadership power. Leadership development typically entails completing a study on various leadership styles, such as autocratic or democratic, as well as improving the skills and knowledge necessary to make well-informed judgments that help the business run smoothly. As a leader, you’re usually responsible for setting a vision and objective, organising work, inspiring the team and followers, and evaluating results. Eventually, you and your team will become unstoppable.

1. Creating Positive Change:

The ultimate test of leadership is the ability to create positive change is the true test of leadership. This has happened in India, when a television advertisement goes like this in the market many shopkeepers were running different types of businesses, there was a fruit juice shop on the roadside corner. That was a very busy market due to Diwali being around the corner. All the shops were getting decorated to celebrate Diwali. “This Diwali our lane should be the topper in celebration and decoration,” said Prakash, to Salim. Prakash was a restaurant owner, Salim replied, “Prakash I am sure this Diwali all our businesses will shine.” Well said! Prakash replied. Salim said, “I feel sad for Patel uncle, the juice shop owner. What happened? Asked Prakash. That building getting demolished,” said Salim. By the time Prakash reached, Patel was murmuring, “Why did they have to revamp the building this very year?” “Uncle, it’s just a matter of a few months, once the new building is ready, you’ll be back,” said Prakash. “A few months? Now I have to shift my shop to the small lane next to the flour mill, no customers will be going to come there,” Said, Patel with anger. “Uncle let me help you,” said Prakash. “Let it be, I’ll figure out my own miserable life,” replied Patel. A menu card slipped from Patel’s baggage, it was a juice flavor menu, Prakash took it, and was wondering about how to help this man. In the evening his restaurant staff was talking with each other in some discussion another staff member said, “Just use a lamp to light another”. And Prakash heard, “Use a lamp to light another”. Prakash got an idea, he gathered all shop owners in the market and shared his idea, “Every shop should have a Patel juice shop pamphlet offering them delicious juices.” On the other side, Patel was worrying about his new shop who will come here to have juice, suddenly customers started coming to Patel juice shop, in few minutes the got too much crowded. One student was holding a pamphlet, Patel saw that and asked to let him see what it is. The student handed over the pamphlet to Patel, and he got shocked. He went to the market every shop has pasted this pamphlet, in the crowded shop his juice was getting served. Patel was unable to control his emotions. In the evening, all the shop owners were gathered to celebrate Diwali. Patel came there and asked, “Whose idea was this?” Prakash, “it’s me, I just thought that to help you.” Patel said, “On all these days I was running this business alone, I didn’t expect that I will get a team like this.” Prakash has the good leadership skills, with his idea he created positive change in Patel’s life. A leader’s responsibility is to take the team together and help them to reach their potential. Prakash took initiative to create positive change within the team and help one another, “Just use a lamp to light another,” the same rule is applied to our life as well. We have to use our knowledge and intelligence to change others life bring light into their life.

2. Connect with Your People:

Connecting with your team and people have more impact on your influence. Connecting means not just only professionally, but also visually, verbally, intellectually, and emotionally. The more you do to go beyond words, the greater the chance you will connect with people. Connection means the words, tone of voice, and body language. If you believe communication is all about words, you’re totally missing the track and you will always have a hard time connecting with others. While in an office meeting if you are not preparing PPT then go through each slide and understand your audience, if they are technical, talk more about technical things, when your audience both technical and non-technical like the client, stakeholders they don’t talk about more technical things. The below-mentioned TEA formula will help you connect effectively with your team.

Thought: Can you able to add your thoughts to it.

Emotion: Whether you are able to connect with them emotionally. What changes it will bring? How it will benefit the project?

Action: When the audience is connected talk about efforts, what action you took, and how it bought results.

Connecting increases your influence in every situation. The smaller the group the more important it is to connect. You will become a more effective leader when you focus on others, expanding your connection beyond your words. Make your communication simple, capture people’s interest, and inspire them if you follow this simple rule, you will be able to connect with people at all levels.

Any message you try to convey must contain a piece of you. You can’t just deliver words. You can’t merely convey information. You need to be more than just a messenger. You must be the message you want to deliver. Otherwise, you won’t have credibility and you won’t connect. If you want to increase your ability to connect with people visually then take to heart the following advice.

Eliminate Personal Distractions: It always goes without saying, but the first place to start when connecting visually is to increase the chances that people are paying attention to the right things and the right clothing for your situation, then that’s a good start. Countless numbers of people have lost sales opportunities and ruined job interviews because their appearance didn’t match the situation. Expand your facial expression. Pay attention to your surroundings, when meeting in a restaurant don’t sit on the walkway, or high music or television playing area. Select the corner seat this is will keep the other person focused on your topic. Maintain an open posture, if you are speaking on stage with a small or large group audience, let your whole body be visible to the audience, remove the distraction between you and the audience, expand your range of expression, and don’t speak in the same tone at all the points. Your voice tonality is highly focused. The art of communicating beyond words requires the ability to bring all four of those factors together with the right words with the right emotion while being intellectually convincing and making the right visual impression. And all this needs to be done with the right tone of voice, the right facial expression, and positive body language.

1. Improve Your Family Life and Relationships:

Family and relationships are the most important factors in human life. Men will compare themselves with others men in terms of their ability to earn and provide necessities for their families, such as home, clothes, expensive watches, and other material objects.

But in women’s cases, they are different. Their quantity of success and happiness is based on the quality of their relationships, especially with their husband and children. They continually work to do everything possible to improve the quality of their relationships and their home life. For both men and women, family and children are the most important factors in their lives. Men however become so busy working to provide for their families that they lose sight of this fact. Women rarely do. Because family and relationships are so important to the mental, emotional, and physical health of everyone in the family. Learning each other’s love language will increase your quality of family life for long-term happiness.

The book The five love languages by Gary Chapman gives five techniques to improve our quality of relationships.

Word of Affirmation: Words of appreciation are powerful communication of love. They are best expressed in a simple, straightforward statement of affirmations such as:

“You look gorgeous in this dress.”

Quality Time: Quality time means giving each other uninterrupted attention to your spouse. It doesn’t mean sitting on the couch watching television together. When you spend time that way, television has your attention, not your spouse. Turn off the television, look at each other and talk. Give each other uninterrupted attention like taking a walk or going out to eat and looking at each other and talking.

Receiving Gifts: It doesn’t mean giving expensive gifts every day. It means if the physical presence of your spouse is important to you, express it to your spouse, and don’t expect to read your mind. Sending flowers or phone calls during your break time, or a message saying I Love You. This keeps your relationship healthy.

Acts of Service: Helping your spouse with household chores. Such as cooking a meal, setting a table, washing dishes, vacuuming, dusting bookcases, etc. if this is your spouse’s primary love language, please do it. If you don’t find time to do things hire someone to do it. It also helps her to reduce workload for her.

Physical Touch: This mean keeping your hand around the neck while talking or sitting next to your spouse, holding her hand while walking and having sexual intercourse, etc will keep your family and relationship long-term happy.

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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