Our series sought to highlight leadership roles and traits you want to emulate to improve your business. The previous posts shared ideas from leadership experts, other business men, and my own ideas. We’ve also highlighted links, books, and articles to help you understand sound principles and practices of leadership. We discussed a lot of information and analyzed many concepts. This post summarizes them and outlines next steps to help you improve your leadership skills.
Pulling it All Together
We outlined the roles of leadership. Leaders:
- Establish a clear vision for the organization
- Align staff, clients, suppliers and others to the common vision
- Empower the people outlined above to achieve the vision
- Implement changes to the organization to move towards the vision
- Ensure employees access skills, tools, & resources required to succeed
- Protect and defend the organization from internal and external threats
We also described the traits of a leader. A leader must be a:
- Creative and symbolic visionary
- Effective influencer
- Confident, optimistic, and a strong pillar
- Empowering motivator
- Facilitating mediator
- Moral and ethical compass
- Change agent
To these traditional roles and traits we added that leaders must:
- Make it fun to work (Like Old Fezziwig)
- Trust—not mistrust—their workforce
- Lead, but not micromanage, their staff
- Delegate outcomes and management
- Respect and manage fear and doubt
Practice Until it Comes Naturally
Researchers discovered that while some people seem to naturally possess these skills. You may also learn and acquire them. The best methods for learning these skills include:
- Read, study, and practice them from books, articles, and studies
- Ask a mentor to help you develop and practice the skills. You may find mentors at
- Chamber of Commerce
- Small Business Development Centers
- Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE)
- Centers for Entrepreneurship at colleges or universities
- Paid leadership consultants
- Friends and family that possess leadership skills
- Practice 1 skill for a month until that skill becomes a habit, then begin another
- Remember to use each skill
Tuesday we will share some business successes to inspire you to grow your business
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