Leadership IS influence.
If you engage actively in these three things, you can increase your influence and your leadership aptitude.
- Know yourself and your team. You must play to your strengths as well as your team’s strengths. Making sure to address and develop weak areas to minimize or eliminate shortcomings in a business environment. If you know yourself well you can lead others to success. If you know your team well, then you can drive them to greatness, and they will feel confident and help to build your vision along the way.
- Be an open and authentic positive influence. Leadership is influence, it’s not a title. Leadership is similar but not the same as a management role. The reason is because influence can come from anyone at any level and in any role. Therefore leadership can come from any level in an organization. Leadership has to do with lifting other people up and working towards a common goal. When you work together and especially when you achieve together it builds greater influence.
*** The cleanest and best leadership comes when those around you are influenced by who you are and your life in a positive way. “Who you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying.” Ralph Waldo Emerson - Active Listening. Leadership has three key factors: to listen, to inspire and to empower. Over time, I’ve had to learn to do a much better job of listening – actively listening – meaning I am making sure I really understand the other person’s point of view. I’m not listening to respond, but listening to understand. I learn from them, and I use that as leverage to grow, and inspire the people I am working with.
Leaders have clarity of purpose and they communicate well to get their ideas across to others. They have confidence, not arrogance. They are confident in themselves, their abilities and how they can groom others to have a high level of confidence. And they have the courage to tackle the unknown. They can leap and lead in the darkness, knowing that they can shine their own light to see enough to guide other people no matter what.
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