As a leader, your most important role is to provide clear direction to your employees. A leader must ensure that their team members understand what their individual goal and the team goal is and how to work towards achieving them.
To develop yourself to become a better leader, it is essential that you understand what your leadership styles are and how you can use these to better yourself and your team.
Leaders who want to improve themselves, are encouraged to look at the qualities that they would like to see in their team members, once these are established then these can be worked on to make the required improvements.
Top Qualities of a good leader
- Being self-aware
- Strong focus on developing their team members
- Encouragement of strategic thinking and innovation
- Ethical and fair
Hardest tasks to do as a leader
- Handling conflict amongst employees
- Favouritism
- Discrimination and Prejudice
- Authority
- Consensus
Best ways to be an effective leader
- Set the example – Leaders must ensure that they lead by example, they must do what they say, not be a “do as I say” person. A good leader must be prepared to do any task they expect their team to do.
- Be approachable and have humanity – Leaders who are humble and approachable to their teams are the ones who succeed in the role. Employees respond well to a leader who is humble but has the power to change things.
- Be a good communicator – A good leader must have good communication skills, this involves knowing how to talk to their team members, as one style of communication does not suit all, different people have different styles and need to be communicated to differently.
- Stick to boundaries – A good leader will help their employees to do their job effectively, but also, they need to ensure they know when employees are overstepping the boundaries and how to deal with employees who do.
- Learn from your mistakes – Always striving to improve is a good way to become a better leader, its ok to make mistakes as long as you learn from those mistakes and don’t make them a second time.
- Ask for feedback – Asking for feedback from colleagues and peers is a good way to find out how people perceive you, how they feel you are doing as a leader and your leadership styles. Taking onboard the feedback and recognising changes that need to be made can help you be a better leader.
- Recognise success – Everyone likes to feel appreciated in their job, therefore leaders must ensure that they provide feedback to employees when they have done a good job, a simple thank you goes a long way to help employees feel appreciated.
- Do not micromanage- It is vital that leaders trust their employees and do not micromanage them, as micromanaging can demotivate employees. Leaders can check in with employees to see how they are getting on and how things are going, however micromanaging employees can lead to employees feeling patronised and not trusted.
