FOCUS on Leadership: Top Tips to Grow into a Great One for Life

There are many professionals who offer leadership development services. The topic came up in conversation with a colleague last week. He answered, “because so many people need it.”

That gave me a great pause. It’s so true. Multiple examples flashed across my mind (business and personal) to support his belief. The ones where people are emotionally charged or have an agenda to fulfill. Their body positioning reflects the intensity of the conversation. Their language and tone level changes when one senses to be losing the verbal “battle” to another. Or the more manipulative, passive aggressive style when the recipient gets blindsided only to realize it later. It could easily be around the Thanksgiving table or the boardroom.

There is a better way to handle such circumstances...strengthen that muscle.

The topic of Leadership usually coincides with how to best behave to elevate your professional rank and earnings. ?Leadership is not solely applicable on the job. It is an important component in your everyday life.

For any individual, Leadership is an assembly of soft skills that you cannot simply learn from a class or reading a book. Once learned, practiced, ingrained, and customized to you, it becomes a vital universal, transferrable skill that is more connected to how you handle yourself and people in every situation, regardless of your occupation, role, or industry (yours or theirs).

Evolving and embodying leadership traits will promise staying cutting edge for career and business advancement and success in life long-term. When you demonstrate high standards of quality for excellent work and can inspire the same in others, it results in massive benefits that employers’ thirst for and your customers/clients actively seek.

It’s not just getting the job done on time or in budget. The modern workplace and business persona is more about collaboration with others, understanding perspectives, managing conflicts, building healthy working relationships, and highly functional, diverse, cross-trained teams.

Great leaders are inspiring, forward thinking while keeping the current day in FOCUS, communicating clearly and often, consistently saying what they mean and meaning what they say. They have the courage and commitment to stand up for themselves and protect the well-being of others.

Allowing or ignoring what’s uncomfortable or unfair will never help you to obtain peace of mind professionally. Ironically, your home life will be more enjoyable and less stressful utilizing this same leadership-based approach. ?

Here’s a few ways to get started in bolstering your own leadership capabilities.

Motivate your kids to clean their room or a staff member to do a stretch assignment by offering a tangible reward or increased responsibility.

Being open to conversations to discuss challenges, assist in problem solving, or designate milestones to achieve are priceless confidence builders. Finding solutions or always having the right answers is rarely a straight line. Don’t fear using creative thinking.

Side Note: When Psychological Safety, Confidence, and Self-Esteem coexist, they grow together to drive creative thinking, satisfaction, and performance levels. Watch what doesn’t happen when the reverse of any of those are commonplace.

Look for what people are doing well for positive reinforcement and TELL THEM to support loyalty and productivity improvement. Sending good energy vibes hugely overcomes any negative ones. Show empathy, not judgement, especially when arguments arise. Be approachable, honest, and trustworthy by staying with integrity.

Take the opportunity to delegate tasks. That will help to reveal an individual’s strengths or weaknesses. You can witness the gap and work toward bridging it with expectations, re-directing, and suggesting training or other resources.

Leaders model influence when accepting full responsibility for successes or disappointments. Never deflect ownership by blaming others or outside circumstances. That’s like regressing to tattle telling in grade school.

Leaders make prompt and effective decisions, manage timelines for deliverables and realistic schedules for work completion. Be adaptable to changes and quick pivots. No one enjoys working for (or stays with) an indecisive, self-doubting, double-talking boss.

When demonstrating your leadership skills, FOCUS on pulling from your tangible experiences so far. Your approach and the requirements to maximize professionalism aren’t limited to one or a few skills. It will vary from business to business, team to team, and each individual! As you incorporate these multiple soft skills simultaneously and seamlessly, your leadership will have a more powerful impact over time.

Be patient with yourself, you will fall short periodically. Reassess, apologize if applicable, and adjust the approach accordingly. Just stick to the process.

Qualifications, the hard technical based skills, will come and go. Being able to lead well consistently never goes out of style or loses its value.

Today would have been my beloved Grandmom Spina’s 123rd birthday. She was born in Italy and immigrated with her parents via Ellis Island, New York City when just a young child. The lengthy journey on a crowded, unsophisticated boat must have been difficult. Landing in bustling NYC to a strange language, sights, and sounds after living on a farm surely was frightening. She looked to her parents for guidance, protection, and reassurance. They had the responsibility to keep her physically, emotionally, and psychologically safe.

Great Leaders understand the need to handle circumstances in the same light. They are the absolute best kind of parent (or grandparent) when they exhibit putting others first, sense the unspoken, be sensitive to the individual’s particular needs, encourage going beyond the nest, and be the pillar even in the face of fear or uncertainty. You and they will grow in excellence for it.

You already have heard about every leadership trait discussed here. The challenge is playing all of them with perfect timing to different audiences, like a symphony, without hitting the wrong note. If it was easy and widespread, this topic would be in the rear-view mirror. Instead, it’s front and center.

Legacy is not what you do for yourself, it’s the indelible writing you leave in the hearts of others. Mind your words and deeds, pay attention to those age-old Golden Rules.

Don’t just be good. FOCUS on becoming your BEST.

?P.S. Happy Heavenly Birthday, Grandmom!

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