How to Become a Great Leader That People Want to Follow
There is a 93% chance that your team would rate you in the bottom 10th percent of productivity in the office. That is if you're an uninspiring leader.
If you want to know where you stand in your office, you need to know how to be a great leader. You can learn everything you need to know about how to become a great leader by reading this article.
Avoid being an uninspiring, unproductive leader by taking all of our practices back to the office. Your employees will be beyond excited, and you'll be more respected than ever.
1. Start With Understanding Yourself
Before you start making the necessary changes for yourself and your team, you need to understand how you fit in the team. In other words, you need to understand your personality.
You may be wondering how you could understand yourself any better than you already do. However, you may be surprised to hear the results of a leadership personality test. Many people who do choose to take personality tests end up with a different result than they were initially expecting.
Once you take a personality test or two, you can truly understand how you handle different situations in the office. From this, you can change your outlook and allocate responsibilities equally and equitably.
You may be a communicator who thought they were a problem-solver. In this example, you may begin giving problems to others and taking on communication tasks for yourself.
Having your employees take these examinations can help you know which tasks would be best given to whom.
2. Gather Everyone and Ask For Ideas
You should always encourage your staff to be creative and open with their ideas. After you have taken those personality assessments, you can better decide where your help is most needed.
However, you need to see where people want your help first. Ask your employees how their current projects are doing and how you can help support them in completing those projects.
You should also make sure to ask for everyone's input in what your company has done so far. Ask if there are things they'd like to add or get rid of. If they do have great ideas, credit them with those ideas, and ask if they would like to take over approved projects by themselves.
Make sure that you're leading your staff towards creative, effective solutions that would lead to great outcomes for your company.
3. Do the Work Yourself
Stop sending your employees off to do everything for themselves. You should encourage hard work, but you shouldn't use your employees to avoid doing the work yourself.
Make sure that you're holding yourself accountable and completing just as much work as everyone else in the office. If your position is managerial or supervisory, make sure that you're diving into your work. Your main responsibility may be organizing employees, but you should make sure that you're doing more than organizing them into spreadsheets.
Dive into your and your employees' work. Show them you care, and you'll earn their respect in no time.
4. Spread Positivity
If you're upset whenever you're working, your employees will be able to tell. Show that you're excited about the work you and your team are doing.
If you aren't positive or happy about your job, you should ask yourself how you can change this. Do you need a company retreat, casual Fridays, or something else to make work more bearable?
Check-in on your employees periodically and make sure they're happy with what they're doing. If they aren't happy, experiment with how you can change their working environment to please their needs.
Your workers need a break from time to time. Turn your office into a place of growth, positivity, and empowerment.
5. Communicate Always
You may have heard that communication is the key to success. This is 100% true.
No one wants to work with or for someone who doesn't communicate. As a leader, you need to show others that you are clear and concise in your communication. Otherwise, you may not earn the respect that you're looking for.
The best thing that you can do is send out a regular form of communication regularly. We suggest checking in with your team at least once a day.
You may only need to send one mass email a week, but you should still make sure you're checking outside of that email. If you work in an office, take time to walk around and ask how everyone is doing with their current assignment(s).
If you want to know how much communicating you need to do, try this repetitive trick:
Tell your audience what you want to tell them.
Remind them what you told them.
Ask them what they heard.
Tell them again.
This style of speaking is repetitive but effective.
6. Don't Forget to Listen
While you're doing all of this communicating, you need to be listening too. Those you're leading don't want to feel like they're simply being spoken to. They need a leader that will listen.
If you aren't listening, you'll miss out on hearing if they need your help with something or have a complaint. Therefore, you'll miss out on things that you could improve.
You could also miss out on hearing any ideas that others have. If you're ignoring these, you will come off as rude.
The bottom line is that you cannot be an effective leader if the only person you're hearing is yourself.
By listening to others, you'll learn how you can improve and help solve difficult situations. This will reduce work-related stress. If you're a leader in a work environment, this could make a huge difference in how much progress you make.
Keep your ears open for new ideas and difficult challenges. You never know what you could pick up by simply hearing what others have to say.
7. Encourage Participation
A leader is supposed to bring people together. To do this, you have to encourage participation from those you're leading.
If you can't bring people together, then you can't lead a group.
By encouraging participation, you'll have a great team that will get tons of work done quickly and efficiently. You don't want anyone left out of the working team.
You may have people that don't want to participate with the rest of the team. You need to talk to these individuals and figure out why they don't want to be a part of the team. They could not get along with others or simply be lazy.
You can't fix laziness, but you can change their tasks to something more enjoyable and exciting for them personally. If nothing seems to be working, that person may not be a good fit for the team.
The best way to bring the team together is to give everyone a personalized part on the team.
8. Recognize Hard Work
You've established yourself as a leader in your group. You have all of your team members specialized where they work best. You're communicating, listening, and working hard.
However, you're still missing something very important if this is all you do.
You need to recognize everyone's hard work and give those hard workers recognition. You may want to consider having a built-in rewards system for your team so that they will be more likely to complete tasks and work harder.
You should also consider that some employees prefer to be given praise in different ways. Some may like public praise, while others want to be praised in private. Some prefer physical gifts, while others prefer non-tangible ones.
You may want to ask what your team members' preferences are before beginning a project. This way, you're showing them that you want to praise them as is comfortable and best for them.
It will also save an embarrassing moment for a shy team member who may be praised in front of the whole group.
9. Keep Trying New Things
You never want to get bored with doing the same old thing every time you go to do a project with your team. You need to keep trying new approaches to see how you like different styles.
You may find that you like a style of leadership and progress that you have never previously tried.
Keep your team in the loop as well. Ask them if they have any ideas for new things to try. One of them may have the best idea you've ever heard. They just need a chance to share it with you.
By staying relevant, you're keeping your team upbeat and excited about everything to come. A boring routine will only give you the label of an uninspiring leader.
10. Count On Us
If you're leading a small business, you should be relying on us for all of your coaching needs. Our team will constantly remind you of these and more techniques on how to become a great leader.
If you haven't worked with us or any business coach in the past, schedule a discovery call today. Running a business is no different than a sport or an academic subject. You need a coach or a tutor to look at what you're doing and help you improve your strategy.