More likely than not, you’re a business leader because you chose to be one. Every day, more people are choosing to be their own employers, to start their own businesses, and to become business leaders on their own terms. On one hand, this means you get to make the choices that determine your fate. On the other hand, it usually means you miss out on the decades of experience gathering it takes to reach the top.
That isn’t to say you aren’t a good leader — rather, you might not be as well-rounded as those following you might hope. If you want to improve the balance of your leadership by broadening your experience, this guide is for you.
Recognize Your Strengths
You didn’t get to a leadership position without being good at something. You have strengths — but do you know what they are?
Your strengths bring you success, but for you to effectively leverage your strengths to benefit your team and business, you need to understand them fully. If self-observation and introspection are not your strengths, here are a few ways to determine what your strengths are:
- Pay attention to your excitement levels. People tend to like performing the tasks they are good at. When you feel your excitement start to rise, you might be preparing to engage some of your strengths.
- Recall your previous roles. Different strengths are tested in different tasks. You might harbor some strengths that you don’t currently utilize fully. You should think on previous responsibilities you enjoyed or succeeded at to identify other strengths.
- Be creative in your descriptions. It’s easy to use trite language when talking about strengths. Instead of describing yourself as “passionate” and “hard-working,” you should try to explain your strengths in unique terms.
- Ask your colleagues for help. By far, the best way to identify your strengths is to ask others. You should choose 10 to 20 trustworthy colleagues who are willing to give you feedback on your strengths. Then, you should look for patterns in their responses to create a realistic self-portrait.
Once you know your strengths, then you can begin applying them to your life and career to ensure proactive, positive change.
Strengthen Your Weaknesses
Even Achilles had weak ankles. You are not without your faults, and the more you try to bury them, the more they will haunt your career and your leadership abilities. Before you can feel comfortable utilizing your strengths, you must recognize your weaknesses and strive to improve them.
For new and untested leaders, this often means hitting the books. Business school is an ideal environment for developing a firm foundation in all skills critical for business leadership. You can maintain your current leadership position and gain solid credentials that make for a well-rounded leader by earning an AACSB-accredited online MBA. Online MBA programs are flexible, affordable, and powerful tools for addressing any business-related deficiencies in your ability to lead.
Once you develop a strong business background, you can address other minor weaknesses that may impact your leadership capabilities, such as:
- Arrogance
- Hypocrisy
- Complacency
- Over-optimism
- Over-pessimism
- Desperation
You can try to identify these issues using the same methods as you used to identify your strengths — and as with your strengths, asking for others’ opinions is typically the best tactic. However, you should prepare yourself for criticism; it is easy to react defensively or dismissively to others’ negative opinions of you. Instead, you should reflect on their comments and decide how you can alter your behavior and eliminate your weaknesses.
Be More Human
Though most of your efforts focus on the business’s bottom line, you cannot forget what forges the business’s future: people. You and your employees are human, not numbers or machines, and it is vital that you show humanity in your treatment of your workforce. As much as you use your head and your hands to make decisions and improve the business, you must use your heart to interact with your team. Showing emotion in successes and failures, you can better engage with your employees, which will ultimately result in higher productivity and better-quality work.
Already, we rely on devices and software to perform many tasks once dependent on human effort. Soon, even business leaders could be replaced by robots. However, if you establish your humanity as fundamentally important to the functioning of your business, you and your workforce will benefit from it.
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