If you care about developing yourself as a leader, if you want more effective leadership skills, what should you do? What is the best approach?
Many books have been written about leadership. Hundreds of them are in print right now. There are also many articles and videos available on this topic. You’ll also find some training programs, both online and on-site, and many are very well produced.
But to help you navigate through all of these resources, consider the following: There is a big difference between KNOWING something and DOING something. In the end, what you know is far less important than what you do with the knowledge. When you are with people, do you apply what you have learned? If you don’t put knowledge into action, it won’t do you much good.
In practical terms, the best books, videos, and training programs do a few things. First, they present a model of effective leadership—they show you what you should be doing at work. The problem is that not all do. They can contain a lot of good information about leadership principles. Hope the treatment is interesting. You can gain some self-confidence; It’s always good to know what his strengths and weaknesses are. But what you really need to know is what you should be doing to get the best out of your people. Ideally, you get to know a model of how to deal with people. If the resource doesn’t provide you with this, you’re probably wasting your time on it.
But knowing what to do — having good models for effective leadership — is just the beginning.
One training course—even a two-week course, which is rare—is not enough to familiarize you with effective leadership skills enough that you would not hesitate to use them on people. The reason for this is that these courses cover a lot of topics and there is not much time for practice in class. It takes time to master a skill to the point where you would instinctively use it in the real world of work. That’s because the brain cells involved in the skill need time to make connections and form a network that makes the skill efficient and comfortable. You need to keep applying what you’ve learned to rewire your brain for the skill. How long depends on how many occasions you use to apply it. The idea is to turn effective leadership into a work habit, and that can take months or even a year.
This is how you develop a habit, skill, or pattern of behavior. There is no shortcut. You have to do the work. And that can only happen in the workplace.
When it comes to developing effective leadership skills, experience really is the best teacher. A smart leader is guided by their interactions with people. For example, someone might say, “I don’t like it when you talk to me like that.” Or something might go wrong in your group. Maybe you try things and they don’t work. Each of these cases is an experience you can learn from.
So if you take up suggestions about what you can do as a leader, try them and learn from the experiences. If you do this day after day, year after year, you will participate in the best leadership development program there is.
Thanks to Dennis E Coates Ph.D. | #Effective #Leadership #Skills #Leaders #Learn #Job