What makes a strong and effective leader? For most individuals, the most vital leadership qualities of an effective leader include conscientiousness, intelligence, adaptability, and assertiveness.
But effective leaders should also be inspiring, empowering, transformative, and positive. They value those who follow them and inspire them to become better at what they do. Here’s what you could do to channel these crucial leadership traits and become a more effective and transformational leader.
Determine Your Specific Leadership Style
Identify your strengths, weaknesses, and areas that you need to improve on. You can evaluate your leadership skills by taking a quiz to determine your leadership style. Your results will give you an idea of your leadership style.
Once you’ve determined, for example, that you have a facilitative style of leadership, research the primary traits of your leadership style. Then, decide whether these traits are hindering or helping you lead effectively. If you need to work on specific traits, find ways to improve them.
Be A Role Model
Effective leadership also involves idealized influence. Put simply, you should model specific qualities you’d like your team to have. Effective leaders are capable of fostering a particular belief and transmitting inspiration to those that they lead. In turn, the team will admire the leaders and try to emulate the qualities of their leaders.
Rouse Creativity
People usually need encouragement to unleash their creativity. You should provide ample support and new challenges to encourage their creativity. A simple way to encourage creativity is to provide challenges, ensuring that the goals of the challenges must be met with creative and out-of-the-box thinking. This way, you get them to stretch their perceived limits but not to the point that they get discouraged.
Master The Art of Communicating and Listening Effectively
Your leadership will become effective when you can communicate your vision to your team in a sincere manner whether verbally and nonverbally. In turn, your team will feel motivated and inspired by your vision. By keeping all communication lines open, you can make sure that your team feels free to contribute their ideas and receive recognition for their efforts and achievements.
Model Passion
Effective leaders don’t just focus on getting their team to complete tasks. They also have a real enthusiasm and passion for all their projects. You could develop this vital leadership trait by coming up with various ways to express your passion for an undertaking. You should also let your team know that you value their progress and appreciate their contributions.
Motivate Your Team
Being motivational is no easy feat, but you don’t also have to deliver inspirational speeches to motivate your team. You can instead show your team that you are genuinely passionate about their goals and ideas, make them feel included (within reason) at every stage of a project, and offer rewards, praise, and recognition for their accomplishments.
Encourage Your Team to Contribute
Ensure that your team knows that you’re open to their ideas. Those who encourage involvement and collaboration are usually known as participative or democratic leaders. Although they still have control over final decisions, they do their best to encourage their team to come up with their own plans and ideas.
Give Recognition and Rewards
This is one of the simplest and effective ways to help your team feel happy and appreciated. Keep in mind that happy and appreciated individuals are more productive at work as well.
As you strive to develop these key leadership qualities, you should likewise look to your team for inspiration and feedback. Keep in mind the things that have worked for you previously and always watch out for innovative ways to motivate, inspire, reward, and appreciate your team.
