28
Sep 2015
Defining Your Role as a Leader
There are a lot of aspects of leadership I end up discussing with people as I work with them on becoming stronger and more effective leaders. Some new leaders need some help developing their soft skills like communication and public speaking, some need help developing tools and systems for managing all the information inputs and outputs they need to deal with and some are looking to further define the mission and
24
Sep 2015
Achieving Goals Using a Development Plan
As leaders, we have a lot of hopes and dreams for making our lives better and building a better world. It’s difficult to fit everything in that we want to achieve and sometimes it’s overwhelming to figure out what it is specifically that we want. Creating a development plan can help you think through what goals are really important to you and to articulate them clearly. It will also give
As we frequently talk about with our clients and in our posts, personal and professional development are key to growing into strong leaders ready for the challenges of tomorrow. Approaching development from the perspective of a student of leadership as an art and science is an effective way to absorb new ideas and incorporate them into your leadership philosophy and style. This kind of development can be difficult to do on
21
Sep 2015
Setting Effective Goals
We’ve all got dreams and ambitions, but one of the most important (and often overlooked) aspects of achieving what we want is setting effective goals before we start out on our journey to reach them. By taking time to clearly define our goals, we make it easier to build a plan of action to follow to get to our destination. Setting clear, measurable and achievable goals is a critical skill
17
Sep 2015
Developing Skills – 5 Ways You can Level Up!
Making a commitment to continuous self-improvement is one of the biggest keys to becoming a great leader. Great leaders treat leadership as a discipline to be studied and reflected upon throughout their careers and lives. In the past we’ve discussed some of the more personal aspects of your leadership philosophy and style such as vision, core values and key leadership traits, but skills are little more straightforward and we can
14
Sep 2015
Leadership Skills – How to Assess and Build Them
Developing strong skills that support your leadership philosophy and style is a little more straightforward than some of the deep personal reflection we’ve been doing, but just as important. Your leadership skills are a key piece to exemplifying the leadership traits and core values that you identified to be important to your success. Leadership skills are different from your leadership traits because skills are more of an intellectual pursuit while traits
When it comes to developing your own personal leadership style there are two common approaches. The first is to default to your natural personality in all situations and let your current mood have a big influence over your decisions and actions. The disadvantage of this approach to developing a leadership style is that it often results in inconsistent decisions and knee-jerk reactions that are frequently out of alignment with the
07
Sep 2015
Leadership Traits
Every leader has their own unique leadership philosophy and style that is partially defined by the leadership traits the exhibit. We all have a combination of positive traits that make us successful as leaders and negative traits that might be a barrier to successfully leading others. Great leaders are conscious of their leadership traits and continue to develop themselves to make their strong, positive traits stronger and improve upon or
For decades people have talked about authenticity as a key trait for successful leaders, but it can be difficult to know if we are acting authentically. There are a lot of surveys and resources out on the internet that you can use to assess your authenticity, but before you go spend money on something like that, let’s consider what makes someone authentic. A simple definition I like to use for