We all want to be a better leader, and there is so much leadership development literature out there sometimes you can sometimes get lost in the complexity of it all.
There are some time tested and universal tenets to leadership. In this article, I am sharing some of them in a rough guideline to help leaders self-reflect.
Business leaders have a lot on their plate. They have to juggle many factors that may contribute to their success and keep finding new ways of staying relevant in the market.
For this reason, it’s easy to get caught up in everything that’s happening around them and forget to focus some attention inwards. And yet, it’s the very act of doing so that can often make a difference between success and failure.
Even though there are many people in an organisation who contribute to business success, it all starts with effective leadership. Reflecting on the way you’re leading and motivating people can give you answers to many questions that you may have forgotten to ask.
It’s necessary that you do this on a regular basis. The modern business environment is too hectic to get complacent. If you truly want to secure your spot on the market, you need to work from the inside out.
This isn’t always easy to do. The questions that you need to ask yourself aren’t always obvious, and their impact can be hard to identify.
In essence, it all boils down to your strengths and weaknesses. This is the starting point from which you have to work towards self-reflection. To get started, here are 7 questions that you need to ask yourself:
1. What Kind of an Example Are You Setting?
Leaders need to show that they’re able to respect their own values first.
Your employees look up to you. If you set rules, you need to act according to those rules before you can expect other people to. Everything from the way you talk to your actions needs to set the right example.
If you expect open discussions, you need to encourage them by being open yourself. If you value punctuality, you must never be late for meetings. Pretty much everything that you want to build within an organisation needs to start with you.
Think about whether you’re doing the things that you want others to do. Every time the answer is ‘no’, try to change your behaviour. This will make it easier for your employees to act the same way, which can go a long way towards building a strong company culture.
2. How Well Do You Know Your Employees?
A business leader needs a deep understanding of every person in ther team to achieve success. This is the hardest when it comes to employees, as they’re so much more than a resource.
For your people to produce great results, their long term career objectives need to align to the work they are doing and the role they perform for the organisation. You can’t make sure this happens if you don’t know what makes your employees tick.
If you’re already putting in the effort to get to know them, that’s great! And you should keep getting better at it. If not, you’d have to start doing this as soon as possible, as it can be the root cause of many issues that affect your company.
Think about each of your key employees and see how much you actually know about them. There are probably questions that you’d like answers to, so make sure to spend time with your people as much as you can.
3. How Do You Impact the Company Atmosphere?
There are a huge number of people who think that they have the worst boss in the world. Even if they enjoy coming to work, they may not enjoy interacting with the boss.
You see, the company culture can be great with or without you. With or without the leader, people can build a climate that they truly enjoy. What you want to ensure is that you’re a part it, and everything you do should reflect that.
This doesn’t mean for you to become everyone’s favourite person. This is impossible on its own. Instead, you just have to take a close look at how your actions impact the culture as a whole.
What helps here is to not do it on your own. Once you ask yourself this, do the same with your employees. More often than not, the way leaders see themselves isn’t the same other people’s picture of them. This brings us to the next important question.
4. Do You Encourage Honesty?
Whether you want to admit it or not, we all have our moments of vanity. This doesn’t mean that it’s anybody’s trait, but there are some situations where our ego inflates a bit.
Make no mistake that the people around you will notice this, much like you notice it in others. Giving and receiving praise is easy, but how well do you handle negative feedback? This includes the feedback that you give and receive.
You need to make sure everyone within a company feels safe to be as open as they want when it comes to issues that arise. Failing to do this can result in a fake atmosphere that kills productivity and motivation.
Not allowing someone to be open shows that you don’t respect their opinion enough. Since respect is a two-way street, it’s hugely important to make sure you know how to handle criticism on both ends.
This strengthens relationships within a company and makes people feel valued. Even if you don’t agree with someone’s opinion, you need to hear it with an open mind and handle it with respect.
5. Do You Trust Your Employees?
Unless they’re absolute beginners that require special attention, nobody wants you to micromanage them. Many leaders mistakenly believe that this can get the job done better.
In fact, the very opposite is true. When you micromanage, you’re putting constraints on people and choking their creativity and freedom. Moreover, you’re sending a message that you don’t trust them enough to do a good job on their own.
If you don’t trust your employees enough, you’ll have to do something about it. This drains your energy and agitates the people around you. Nobody benefits here.
A much healthier approach would be to set rules while still leaving your employees with enough flexibility. This can boost their productivity and allow you to devote time and energy to the more important tasks.
6. How Do You Handle Failure?
For the longest time, people have frowned upon failure. They’ve seen it as a sign of weakness and incompetence. If this is what you believe, you need to change your perception immediately.
Look up any successful person’s success story, you’ll see that they never fail to mention failures along the way. There is no great success without a few mistakes.
Failure isn’t the issue – it’s the way you respond to it. Without knowing how to pick yourself up, your work life will be full of stress and you’ll keep beating yourself up over every mistake. This is no way to run a business.
Embrace failure as a lesson in initiating changes. Learn from it and move on.
It’s important that you teach those around you to do the same. Once you eliminate the fear of failure, your whole team can be unstoppable.
7. How Can You Grow?
This is probably the single most important question that you need to ask yourself regularly. It prevents you from getting complacent and keeps you on the lookout for fresh ideas and solutions.
It might sound like a vague question, but it’s more concrete than you might think. Make a list of all the important aspects of your leadership. Every once in a while, try to grade yourself on a scale of 1-10.
Whenever you believe the grade could be higher, just think about what you can do to improve it. With time and practice, this will become second nature.
The Takeaway
Much like your business needs to grow continuously, you need to personally as well. These questions will not only help you find better ways of leading your employees, but they will also allow you to get to know yourself better.
Since business leaders often have a blurry line between their personal and professional life, this will let you handle most of life’s issues in a much better way.
Use the above questions as a rough guideline to self-reflection. Of course, you’re free to come up with more questions of your own. What matters is that you ask them regularly, be honest, and keep finding ways to improve upon the answers.
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