Anna Maria Richards
What comes to your mind when you hear of leaders? Someone who bosses around their subordinates and puts work burden on them? If this is what came to your mind, you have been under the wrong leader. But if you think of someone who guides and manages their subordinates and helps them out, you have the correct meaning of the leader because leaders are supposed to guide you, not boss you now and then.
If you want to be a leader who is appreciated by their subordinates and has a life filled with success, you have to work on these leadership qualities.
Communication
Communication is a primary component of any professional skill. It doesn’t only mean face-to-face communication. Notices, letters, emails, and messages are also important forms of communication.
If you can convey your messages to others properly, you can create a better understanding among your employees. Conversely, conveying wrong messages creates misunderstandings.
Understand Your Employees
Being a leader, you will be managing a team of a few or a lot of people. Since you will be working with and assigning tasks to several team members, it will be better for you as a leader to understand the strengths and weaknesses of employees. Knowing about their capabilities, the work can be allotted accordingly. If you do not know what your team can and cannot do, it is difficult to get the results you want.
Motivation to Grow
Now you have come to a position where you lead a team. Leaders need to motivate team members to enhance their fields properly.
Often teams will face rejection and downs. You have to motivate them to keep them productive at work. You should encourage them from time to time to keep their morale high. You can motivate them to take any relevant short courses that can help them to enhance their skills, It will help them and the team in the longer run.
Make Your Team Comfortable
You have the best employees on your team, but that doesn’t mean they will be able to do all the assigned tasks without any help or any mistakes. Even the best out of the best person makes mistakes.
While performing any task, team members will need the necessary guidance. It is your responsibility to fulfill their requirements. Also, make a friendly environment where your employees don’t have to gather the courage to talk to you and regret their decisions.
Your employees must feel free to contact you. Be honest with them. Guide them, don’t give orders to them.
Feedback
Have you ever bought anything online? Did someone tell you, or did you just search it out? How did you get to the decision to buy it? Why were there reviews written?
Product reviews aren’t just the feeling of customers about the product. If you pay attention, you will find out reviews help in many other ways. Telling other customers whether to buy it or not. Telling the brand or company to improve the product. Those reviews are feedback.
The same happens in any project. Every project needs to have feedback, to analyze whether the project objectives have been achieved. Every task assigned to the team members will be handed back to you. As a leader, you must give feedback on their work. This way, they will get to know your perspective on their work. Also, let them give feedback on each others’ performance. As a result, employees will be aware of their capabilities.
Responsibility
Will all the work you are handling end the way it was planned? Not necessarily. Some will be successful even after diverting from the actual plan, and some projects might end up as failures even after having a solid structured plan.
No matter the result, you will have to be responsible for it as a leader. If you blame others for the project’s failure, no one would like you to lead the team; and no one will want to work with you. The respect you have for a leader’s position, you will lose that too.
Creative Flow
There are multiple ways to do any task. The same goes for the project you have to deal with. Lots of solutions will be proposed to complete tasks, and backup plans will be discussed if something goes wrong.
Your team will come up with lots of different and innovative ideas. Being a leader must also be able to think creatively. Don’t solely depend on your team.
There will be times when things won’t go well; you have to deal with it instead of leaving it behind. Leaders should think critically and come up with solutions.
Commitment Towards Work
Allocating tasks to the employees and expecting them to be committed to them and not following the same is something you should never do as a leader. Just like your employees are dedicated to their work, leaders also have to be committed to completing tasks on time.
Also, if employees have been promised a bonus, reward, or a party, the leader must do what they have said. Backing off on your words will break the trust of employees.
Blending with the Situation
The time you spend planning for the project will sometimes go in vain. Something might get changed in between. But no matter what situations come up, you must be ready to deal with them.
It will be your responsibility to take the actions immediately and continue work accordingly to complete the task within the given time frame.
Listen to Others
Do you want to be a leader known as someone who just gives orders? Probably not. Along with handing over the task, you also have to listen to them; it can be their ideas, issues, suggestions, etc.
Remember, any project needs to have effective communication. If you don’t listen to what the other party has to say and you are the only one who speaks, how will the communication be done effectively? Listening to others will help you know what others think about the situation, and you will have a broader knowledge of their perspective.
Parting Thought
Leadership is not just about leading but about leading effectively. This article has discussed 10 qualities that make a promising and successful leader. We hope you will follow and achieve the title of a good leader. Happy Leading!
