You have ambition, and there's an opportunity in your organization to move up and lead a team. But are you truly prepared for leadership? More importantly, what kind of leader do you want to be? Will you emulate Mr. Burns, or will you opt for a more engaging approach? While certain personality traits may naturally facilitate leadership, it's essential to remember that leadership can be learned. Let's explore how you can become the kind of boss that everyone desires in their workplace:
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Inspire
Inspiration is a key factor in keeping your team motivated and maintaining high performance.
Inspirational leaders have the ability to motivate their teams, encourage them to embrace new challenges, and achieve greater results.
Research conducted by Bain & Company, in which 2,000 people were asked about their inspiring bosses, found that out of 33 potential traits, being "focused" was enough to significantly increase the chances of being an inspiring leader. Being focused entails maintaining a calm demeanor in stressful situations, displaying empathy, active listening, and conveying that sense of calm to the entire team.
What else can you do to be inspiring? Involve your team in the company's achievements, cultivate equity, thank them honestly and with enthusiasm for the work they do, praise the effort they put into each task; and, if the energy drops, identify that they need a break and provide a quick response. Even if you see them as heroes, they are also human!
With a motivated team, the new objectives will be faced with more enthusiasm and the problems that may arise will be solved more effectively.
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Get to know the know-how of the organization
To effectively lead a team, it's crucial to thoroughly understand and align with the organization´s culture, needs, and objectives. Your leadership should mirror the values, strategy, and culture of your company. Your actions and behavior should be consistent with the type of organization you aim to cultivate. Build a personal brand that adds value and is supported by your professional environment.
To excel in management, it's essential to adopt a systemic thinking approach, which means having a holistic view of all the components that make up the organization. This perspective will help you prioritize tasks, ensuring alignment with the goals of the entire workforce.
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Get commitment and results!
There is no greater motivation for your team than seeing you working alongside them and giving your best. Demonstrating your commitment to your job and the organization will instill that same strong work ethic in your staff. Likewise, it will earn you respect. Once you've gained their respect, your team will be more inclined to perform at their best with enthusiasm.
It will also help you setting goals of different degrees of difficulty and set some common objectives to the whole team. In this way, they will use their best skills together and reinforce teamwork. It will be much more fun for them and you, as the leader, will make everyone feel valued.
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Train
To be that wonderful leader that you want to be (and that you are going to be), it is essential that you be attentive to the strengths and weaknesses of each person that makes up your team. Give them time to develop new skills and increase their productivity.
Training your employees is not only beneficial for them and for job performance, you will also be helping to make the organizational culture more attractive to employees and to those who want to work in the company. Who doesn't like to improve?
In addition, surely you will also learn with them.
What do you think of these tips? They are useful, right? But, oh, don't you feel something is missing? That touch of ours that life gives us, without which we would not be so happy:
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Ask for feedback!
Oh, now we really feel much better, we were going to have a knot in our chest if we didn't talk about our potion, as magical as it is accessible to all organizations.
Everything we have discussed so far is meaningless if you still resist listening and communicating. If you don't allow your team to give feedback or make comments, your concerns, your good ideas will be kept and problems will be kept quiet that will end up exploding when it is too late; that is, you will lose growth opportunities. However, if you seek feedback and are receptive, you will be more respected and, of course, find more commitment.
Also, nobody better than employees to tell their boss how to improve their leadership over the team!
The training of the professionals in your charge, the achievement of objectives and the creation of a productive work environment depend directly on how you communicate and if you allow them to do so openly. So to get rid of the last vestige of Mr. Burns: launch continuous performance evaluations, based on transparency and with an agile system that facilitates its management and long live communication!
Download a free Leadership assessment template