Becoming A Highly Effective Leader

Being a great leader takes hard work and dedication, but most of the necessary skills can be learned if you're willing to put in the time and effort. Here are 9 ways to help transform any manager into becoming a better and more effective leader.

Know Yourself/Be Authentic

Employees don't respect phonies and being respected by your employees is something a leader can never lose. If he does watch productivity and quality fall like granite.  Authenticity on the other hand allows you to better connect and build trust with your team and coworkers. It also allows people to better understand who you are and what you expect from them.

Work with an Outside Professional Coach 

A coach typically works with highly motivated men and woman who believe they have more to offer themselves and their organization, who have a strong sense of their objectives and recognizes the need to measure their progress and success.  Coaching is a powerful process that enables the client to reveal and illuminate their authentic leadership style via a sharp focus on who they are at their core. 

Coaching is a highly confidential, trusting and open process that empowers a client to:

·       Increase their Self-Awareness.

·       Which facilitates greater Conscious Decision-Making.

·       Then forwards their decisions into focused and organized Action.

·       And ties in the key component of Accountability to measure progress.

Become a Better Listener

As Stephen R. Covey once said, "Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." Most of us have dealt with colleagues or managers who don't hear a word they have heard or may think they know it all. For anyone in business, feeling like your voice isn't being heard is a motivational killer. Here's how you can learn to become a better listener.

• Stop thinking that you have the best or a better answer. When you do this you start thinking about your answer and not theirs. Keep an open mind and listen.
• Remind yourself how important it is for an employee or a colleague to know how much you value what they have to say.
• Don't Interrupt. Sometimes we may know or think we know what someone else is going to say before they finish the sentence. Let them finish it anyway. Let those around you express themselves completely, and then pause before responding. Don't cut people off.
• Engage them by asking open ended questions, like, "Tell me more about the reporting package," and allow them to elaborate on the topic.
• And of course make eye-contact, lean-in and ignore the distractions around you. If you can't fully focus then move the conversation somewhere more quiet and appropriate.

Develop Your Communication Skills

You can't be a great leader if you can't articulate your point effectively to people. If you are constantly using negative reinforcement or you don't illustrate the importance and relevance of what your team is doing and how it fits into the big picture then you aren't leading right and you will find your team member turnover increasing.

Communicating to your team the importance of their positions and roles and how they fit into the big picture is another way to motivate and empower employees. While our natural inclination as leaders may be to shield our employees from the all the internal politicking that goes on in most companies, we can in fact empower people and promote bonding by letting them in on some of managements internal discussions and becoming part of the decision process.

Empower Your Team

Create a Safe-to-Speak-Out environment in your company or team. This concept comes back to adjusting your corporate culture for empowerment. Employees need to and should feel encouraged to understand that if they have issues or concerns they won't be laughed out of the room or simply ignored by addressing them.

Be Consistent and Honest

Part of being consistent and honorable is managing by the age-old adage, lead by example. Your workers will emulate what you do and put out there for others to emulate. Being a consistent and honest leader lets those who work for you and around you know what to expect in any given situation. This in turn gives them a baseline for better decision making when you aren't around.

  

Don't Micro-Manage

"If a leader is micro-managing they will fail because it is impossible to focus on the bigger picture and to micro-manage at the same time. You are either in the weeds of detail or you are managing a department. Also if you have an employee that needs to be micro-managed you should be contemplating how your success can be limited by this relationship. If you don’t want to drive your talent out the door, don’t micro-manage.

Surround Yourself With People Smarter Than You

Always being the smartest person in the room is hard to maintain in the world of technology, there is so much moving at a break-neck pace. There aren't enough hours in the day to know and keep up with it all. This means you need to build your team with people who complement your skill set.

Always Be Learning

If you aren't regularly educating yourself in your market and specialty, you will quickly be left behind. Take stock of your skills, decide where you need work and go after it. Whatever it is, don't wait. People often say lead by example. Many of your coworkers will take their cues from you. If they see that you take learning seriously they are more likely to as well.

What do you think of these conclusions on becoming an effective leader? How would you begin to break through your thoughts, emotions and actions to becoming a better leader? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.

In Latin, Aperio means to reveal, uncover, to make clear. Coaching is a powerful process that enables the client to reveal and illuminate their authentic style via a sharp focus on who they are at their core.