How to be a Good Leader

How to be a good leader

Now, I want to share some tips of how to be a good leader. 

Know yourself. Before you lead people, you have to know yourself first. What type of leader are you? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Accept the facts that are inherent to you. Before anyone else can accept you, you need to accept and be comfortable with yourself first. How can others accept you if you are not comfortable with yourself? 

Everyone is a leader. Try to take a look to your life's journey, to every milestone in your life. You need to realize that to get to the point that you are right now, you have to lead yourself to this point. You are on point A in your life now, why aren’t you at point B now? Many people out there have bad experiences in life, but they still manage to reach success points in various aspects of life. They lead themselves for not drowning in misery and chose to rise and shine. I bet you are no different with these people.

Recognize your characteristics as a leader. Also, identify the leadership characteristics of others, be it your subordinates, your colleagues, or your boss. By identifying these characteristics, you will know how you and other people work and organize the work. In that way, you then know how to interact, communicate, work together, and influence them. There are many references of leadership characteristics that can be used. One is the MBTI. You can explore more about MBTI personality characterization mypersonality.info.

MBTI

In charge of a team, focus on the potential, not the negative side. When faced with an issue, people tend to look at the negative side. In fact, we can transform our perspective that focuses on the potential that can still be developed. That way, our view has fueled ourselves to continue to make improvements.

Be open and adaptable. Life is a series of change. We will always find ourselves in a new place. Coupled with the demands of the global industry now, we must be able to work with individuals, teams, and workplace with different characteristics, culture, and rules. A good leader must be aware of this.

Establish open communication and assertive. Read my another post, Combining Different Communication Styles to Build Effective Communication Skills

PDCA Cycle

PDCA. In performing tasks or delegating tasks, always use the principles of Plan-Do-Check-Action. Every action must be equipped with a well-developed plan in order to design an optimum strategy (effective and efficient). Do not forget to evaluate your initial strategy once it’s performed. Are the results in line with expectations? If not, feel free to modify your original plan. Do not be stubborn to continue to implement the original plan but was clearly less satisfactory. 

Use holistic thinking, instead of sectoral. In reality, leaders often faced with several choices in decision making. Often, we are tempted to make decisions about providing direct or immediate gain to ourselves. However, there is one thing to note. Make sure you take that decision based on a holistic view. An option may seem advantageous straight to us, but when we see an issue globally, we may miss the greater opportunity gain. Leaders must be observant to this. Decisions that are based on holistic view may seem not as appealing as sectoral option, but apparently it is providing greater benefits, not just to your own team, but also to the whole system you belong to.