Leaders aren’t the exclusive group of people that some may think they are. You may have the ability to lead a group of people, but the trick is realising and using the skills you possess in order to go about it the right way.
My coaching allows everyone to realise that they have it within themselves to become leaders. One of the things that puts some people off is the psychological and emotional process that they have to go through in order to become one. They have to be open to see parts of themselves that they might be uncomfortable with, and they have to be willing to learn a lot about what they are capable of.
What I identified is that there are three key leadership skills:
Empowering – delivering outcomes through your people rather than doing so yourself.
Exemplifying – knowing what you stand for as a leader and being a role model for your people.
Engaging – motivating and inspiring your stakeholders to co-create the desired outcomes with you.
You may not necessarily see yourself as empowering, exemplifying or engaging at all, but this is how powerful the leadership journey is. You can develop these skills for leadership – you just need to allow yourself to find out how.
The type of leader you become can vary depending on the type of person you are. Realising what your strengths, passions and values are is what gives you your own unique leadership brand. You may draw upon some skills that make you better equipped, but the type of leader you are is unique to you.
There are many different leadership and management skills and styles being practised in organisations all over the world. One of the things that I encourage is to leave the traditional “command and control” approach alone. This demand for compliance alienates people and causes an unhappy environment. Most modern organisations have more of a focus on people and instead require a more humble, inclusive style with a need for being a visionary leader.
Becoming a visionary leader allows you to engage people with your ideas and aims. There is room for setting targets and pace, but when you combine this with a participative and empathic working environment, people will be inspired, responsive and want to collaborate.
The leaders whom I coach all have different personalities and behaviours, but what I help them to develop is a way of creating enduring success through participation, developing people for the long term and communicating with them. What this requires of the leader, above everything else, is self-awareness and self management.
And believe it or not, all these skills can be learnt.
You may look at yourself and think that you have a short temper, little patience or a desire to work on your own – but if you want to change these traits, you can. You just need to identify what you want to achieve as a leader and with my coaching, we will establish a way of getting there.
Developing leadership skills is a very humbling, encouraging and motivating thing to do. Your focus moves from yourself and on to other people. You become a nurturer, a developer and a teacher. You build trust, inspire others and create a path to a shared vision.
