At the heart of successful leadership is the ability to build stronger, more empathetic relationships. The first step to achieving this is by looking inward and exploring what makes us the leaders we are and the leaders we want to be. Only then can we truly start observing our teams objectively and identify what is needed to motivate and inspire their collective minds.
Self-motivation ultimately leads to accountability, which is the moment individuals start working as part of a team, for the team. As leaders, to ensure we remain a driving force for this cohesiveness within our teams, we need to continuously seek better and more efficient ways of empowering and inspiring others.
Here are my top five leadership tips for 2022:
- Develop your Emotional Intelligence competencies. Amongst other things, these include our sense of self-awareness, self-regulation of our emotional framework and of course, social awareness. Get to know the people that you are working with. Understanding who your team members are will afford you the opportunity to better enhance your relationships and develop your team’s competencies and their growth journey.
- Understand the power of perception and how it defines your reality as a leader. Explore how you are being perceived by your team members. Similarly, analyse how you are perceiving others and investigate how accurate you are in that perception.
- Explore and understand the psychological schemas and biases that affect team integration cohesiveness - both at an individual level and as a collective. People drive organisation and as long as we are dealing with human beings, we are dealing with thoughts and feelings based on a multitude of extrinsic and instinct influences.
- Give your team a voice. Giving your team members a voice creates a sense of ownership and accountability, which is vital in increasing the wisdom of the collective and what I like to refer to as Teamship Intelligence.
- Remain teachable as leaders - always. If you are growing, then your team is growing. If you can adopt an executive coaching leadership style you can become highly effective in the development of yourself, your team and, of course, towards the organisation's vision mission and objectives.
In my experience, the most effective way to achieve all the above is to explore your leadership scope with an executive coach. Often, the perspective gained from a neutral third party is exactly what is needed to put leaders on the right trajectory by giving them the skills needed to lead in a better and bolder manner.
