4 Keys To Improve Your Leadership

I’ve made a selection of 4 keys to improve your leadership according to experts in the field. These are my choices, you might find some of them not so good, and that’s the beauty of it. Leadership has to do with yourself, with what resonates with you, I hope that at least one of these keys can help you become a better leader. Hang on to your seat beacause, YOU ARE A LEADER, even if you don’t hold a “leadership position”. You probably are a father, a brother, a son, or someone who’s looked upon, so you should lead.

Ok, here are my 4 keys to improve your leadership:

1. Have Good Leadership Habits.
2. Don’t Worry About Your Position, Is Your Attitude
3. You’re Not Alone, Foster Team Work
4. Become A Constant Learner, Keep Improving

1. Have Good Leadership Habits
I think we all can agree on this one, our lives are commanded by our habits. It is estimated that as much as 90% of what we do is made in “auto-pilot”. So if we want to improve our leadership style, we must focus on improving our habits, and by the way, our lives will improve too. Easy to say, hard to do. To improve our habits, we have to commit ourselves to constant and permanent self-observation. I once heard the saying “what’s measured, improves”. I totally agree with that.
A good book to improve your habits is What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, by Marshall Goldsmith.
In the Nytimes, they’ve just published the following article: Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?

2. *Don’t Worry About Your Position , Is Your Attitude*
I have to admit that until I read 360 leadership I thought about leadership more in terms of position than anything else. But after reading that book I realized that leadership can and should be exerted from wherever you are. Of course, is necessary to understand that leading “downwards” is different from “sideways” and “upward”, that your upper management, your colleagues and your subordinates, all of them require a different way to be lead. But, you need and must lead them. Bottom line: Leadership is an attitude, not a position.

A good book to have as a reference is The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization, by John Maxwell.

3. *You Are Not Alone , Foster Teamwork*
A leader, has nothing to do alone. I know you have to lead yourself before leading others, but that’s not my point here. I’m talking about leading in organizations that face small, mid-sized, big and huge projects. No matter the size of the project, teams are required to work on them. For a team to work at its best, leaders should know, and understand team dynamics and team members. A good leader can make a team give its best and that could be the difference between success and failure in a particular project.

There are some fine books about teams and team working but I find The Leadership Challenge is a great reference to understand the relationship between Leadership and Teams.

4. Become A Constant Learner, Keep Improving
Keeping a fresh mind is your responsibility, unless you’re a 5 year old, and your mom/dad gets you to your classroom every day. But even in that case, I’m 100% sure the young boy or girl, is constantly striving to learn more about the world that sorrounds him/her. He/she wants to explore and have a better understanding of everything. Well, leading has to do with keeping up with things, learning about the new technologies, or at least being aware of them. A 5 year old, is the perfect example of the attitude towards the world we should have, we should be looking for opportunities of getting into new fields, into new activities, doing so will help us to better understand our world, our peers, and our realities. And that, of course, will help us to be good leaders.

The only reference I have is your mind, you know better than me, what turns you on, what resonates with you: photography, music, cars, relationships, pets, woodwork,… endless list. Pick a Video, DVD, book, magazine, tape, mp3 file, a tool, or anything that you’re interested into and start to learn, or improve in that, but do something besides your regular activities. Open your mind.

Last, but not least. Be Alert, Be A Leader