7 Tips to Become a Great Leader
- Know who you are.
Take yourself on a voyage of self-discovery. Understand why you have become the person that you are, with your quirks, irritations, hot buttons, weaknesses, strengths, passions, thoughts, and behaviours. Sailing these often stormy seas, realising what the inner you is really like, and comparing this to the way that you project yourself on the outside to the world, gives you a significant leg up to understanding the people that you are leading. They are doing exactly the same as you.
- Know who you are not.
The voyage of self-discovery that you have been on, tells you who you have become. How much of this is the real you? Throughout your life until now, you have been bombarded and your mind has been infiltrated by the opinions, values and beliefs of other people. From those close to you, to teachers and leaders in your youth, to a hodge podge of all sorts via the media and social media. How many of these values and beliefs are actually yours? Analyse them, sift through them, trash them, create new ones; weed and prune the garden and the shrubbery – wow, what a sight to see, hello the real me.
- Trim the sails.
Interestingly, if you look for a definition of this term, what comes up is this one:
“to change your behaviour to deal with a difficult situation, for example by limiting your demands, needs, or expectations.”
But in sailing, the meaning is:
“to adjust a ship’s sails to take full advantage of prevailing winds.”
In my view these two are not the same thing, and in the context in which I am using it, the first one is certainly not true.
You have reached the point of ultimate self-discovery, and with all of this knowledge you now trim your sails to embark upon a new life and lifestyle. There is no need to limit any of your demands, needs, or expectations – of yourself. These new discoveries about yourself are the prevailing winds. Take full advantage of them and put them into your daily routine and lifestyle, and practice them day in and day out until perfect. This is self-mastery. Now you can lead from the front, setting the example with confidence in all possible ways.
- Know what you are not.
Doing an MBA course, you are split into teams and tasked with business projects. The team is carefully structured to include at least one person each who’s area of expertise in business is say sales, IT, marketing, accounting, management, advertising, auditing, compliance etc.
As a leader you will have qualifications and experience, but you are not the undisputed expert on every subject under the sun. Know what your specific area of expertise is, be prepared to allow this to loiter in the shadows if there is someone else on your team who is equally well skilled, even to the extent perhaps of being chairman of the meetings, and move on to point number 4 below.
- Pass the open book exam.
Ask any student whether they would rather write an open or closed book exam and the vast majority will go for the latter. An open book exam is really hard. It means that you can have all your text books open beside you when you write the exam. The problem is that then you are no longer asked specific questions that you have learned by rote as it stands in the text book, and can hopefully be dredged up from memory. Now the questions are no longer specific to the text, but require that you have a deeper understanding of the subject, so that you know what they are referring to. Then you have to find the chapter and page where that subject was discussed in your book, read the discussion, and transpose this into your answer. Or, you could know all of the subject matter really well, the entire book, and so be able to provide your answer from understanding, not memory.
How well do you know your people? For each task and project, do you understand them well enough to know how and where to pull in their input, on which subjects, and the level to which they can be empowered?
- There is no Ballon D-or in Leadership.
When success happens, it is because of a combination of your and the entire team’s efforts. No single person gets to hold aloft a trophy, especially not you. Naturally it is you who will be called upon to accept the plaudits of the success, and give the victory speech, which could be something like this one:
“It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.” (Who said this: easy to find, don’t want to spoil your fun ????)
- Get over yourself, it’s not about you.
This point could be considered to be both a summary and a conclusion to the above 5 points. Without people there’s nothing to lead. On your own, you are nothing. Without people, good people, committed, dedicated, enthusiastic, happy, and involved people, there can be no success. Leadership is all about the individual process that you go through, as described above, so as to be able to allow the people that you are leading to come out and into their own.
Job Done!
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