Guide for Senior-Executive-Level
Contributed by Center for Creative Leadership Unlocking Your Leadership Potential
Do you feel pressure from above and blame from below? The constant tug you feel when leading from the middle of an organization can seem relentless. How do you cope with feeling pulled in every direction? Do you have the skills, competencies, and perspectives needed to lead effectively and advance your career?
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To unlock your leadership potential and make the most of the opportunities you encounter, you’ll need to excel in 3 important arenas:
LEARNING TO LEAD YOURSELF 1. Become more self-aware. It’s easy to think of leadership as outward facing. But your leadership effectiveness can be suppressed or amplified by what you understand about yourself. With so much going on around us in the workplace and in our private lives, it can be hard to stop and take stock. 2. Focus on personal resilience. It is inevitable that you will face challenges and setbacks throughout your career - especially in today’s volatile and uncertain world. With resilience, though, you have deep personal reserves that keep you centered and able to cope with whatever comes your way. So how do you build resilience? Begin by focusing on simple steps that can improve your physical and mental well-being. 3. Improve your learning agility. Effective leaders routinely look for new and challenging experiences and absorb lots of essential lessons along the way. If they find their old ways of doing things don’t work, they simply stop and analyze what they can do differently, experiment, and try new strategies. |
LEARNING TO LEAD OTHERS
To succeed, you’ll need to let go of old, well-established patterns. Rather than getting involved in every detail of every project, it’s time to shift your focus to collaboration, coalition-building, and unleashing the potential in other people. Taking a more collaborative approach is especially important in today’s decentralised workplaces, where you are likely to need support from others who aren’t even on your team. A “command and control” approach clearly won’t work. 4. Work on your communication skills. Leaders who communicate effectively are able to listen well and consider the perspectives of others. They convey their ideas and emotions with clarity, authenticity, and passion. They also are flexible - able to adapt their communication style based on who they are speaking to and the context. 5. Develop your skill at influencing others. Great leaders know how to capture hearts and minds. Rather than “commanding” others to fall in line, they take the time to understand the interests and motivations of others. They treat people fairly, give them opportunities to learn and grow, and make them feel valued. LEARNING TO LEAD WITHIN A SYSTEM
When you take time to understand the many systems at play in your organization, you can navigate more easily. You know what kind of support you are going to need for important initiatives and who needs to be involved early on. You can quickly navigate around potential roadblocks and find opportunities to collaborate. 6. Learn to think and act more systemically. How do you build your system leadership skills? Look for opportunities to broaden your point of view. Most importantly, build a network with individuals from across the organization who can help you see issues and opportunities from a new perspective. |