How To Improve Your Leadership Skills? 10 Proven Ways

You must be familiar with something often regarded as “born leaders” assigned to managers or leaders who are exceptionally great at leadership skills.

But it also takes away the most crucial fact- that leadership is still a skill you can learn, practice, and get better at.

In fact, if you harness the true leadership style within you, what comes to you naturally, and focus on the leadership skills and other soft skills along with your competence area with a growth mindset, you are indeed a good leader already.

And soon you will be regarded as a “great leader”! So, if leadership is a skill indeed, how do you improve it?

Here are the ten best ways to improve your leadership skills.

Always Be Ready To Learn

Being willing to learn, and being someone who is ready to learn, is one of the essential aspects of growth when it comes to leadership skills or any skills for that matter.

You need to be open to learning more and more whenever and from wherever you can. You need to address the fact that just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean you are good at everything.

Because leadership skills aren’t about one particular skill. It is the end of the day, a combination of skills such as motivation, delegation, patience, communication, and many more.

Clearly, if you are a leader, a manager, or a senior person in your office or workspace, you certainly have the capabilities; that’s why you are promoted or given the opportunity in the first place.

All you have to do is leave room for learning, so you can grow and develop consistently as a leader.

Many leaders become rigid in themselves, leaving them not learning over time, eventually making them limited and less competent in their leadership skills.

Practicing Discipline

A good leader cannot sustain longer without discipline. You need to develop an intentional well-thought discipline for yourself.

Because leaders or anyone mostly knows what to do to grow and be better but mostly fails because of not having discipline or some kind of system in the right place.

This discipline needs to be for both your personal and professional life because they are interconnected to each other as well.

To become an effective leader, you need to inspire discipline among your team, but for that, you need to be in order.

A well-disciplined workplace tends to achieve more as they are productive and organized and stick to the plan rather than being aimless, mindless, and non-intentional about their time.

Bringing discipline to your life and your team members prevents any missing deadlines, incompetence, project failures, or inefficiencies that might cost your project success.

Focusing On Your Personal Growth & Development

Growing as a leader becomes even more critical because you need to lead by example, to be better than others in a way that you can show them.

That makes learning and personal growth an even higher priority.
And for that, you must have some plan on how you consistently grow your skills, not just leadership skills but also soft skills or even your area of competence.

It doesn’t matter how busy you are or consumed by your work, and you need to find time regularly to learn.

This can be automated or more organized as you can always do some sort of professional training regarding leadership, saving you a lot of time to figure this out yourself.

The idea is to have a goal towards improving your personal development.

And that begins by utilizing your time smartly; rather than wasting it on mindless social media scrolling, you can read a book, blog, or video on leadership or other relevant skills.

It all starts with creating a plan,; when you do, you are at least most likely to stick with it.


Ways To Improve Leadership Skills

Taking The Initiative

Taking the initiative is what makes leadership grow and be challenged, so a leader rises evolves, and becomes better.

As managers or employees are assigned tasks only that they can do, leaders themselves need to be one to push their limits and ask for more.

Leaders also get their projects per their capabilities, and people usually do not experiment; they give projects to people they can do or what they think they can deal with.

So they won’t be the ones to give you projects that necessarily challenge you or put you out of your comfort range.

In fact, chances are they are going to give you the things you are already great at, so your effort will be minimal.

And even though you have given projects that are somewhat challenging to you, it won’t be enough or not in the required direction.

You need to volunteer to take on more responsibilities, asking for more work or more significant projects that go beyond your current position or abilities.

And then, you can focus on learning required skills or relevant skills that aren’t in your primary knowledge area.

Make sure you step out of your comfort zone and consistently challenge yourself to be a better leader, always learning and more skilled.

Be An Inspiring Leader

Leadership isn’t about monitoring and managing only. In fact, it is pretty far from the full definition and involves more nuance than that.

And one of the essential aspects of being a leader, which is often overlooked, is inspiring people in your team.

It is essential that your team members look upto you; for that, you need to be worth it and inspire them as well.

You must remember that when you are a leader, you are also part of the team, and you must motivate your team when needed.

And in general, you need to be inspiring, positive and impactful, lead by example and create an environment or a relationship where they are highly motivated to do things.

You cannot be passive in leadership or just someone who tells things to do. You need to be the voice of encouragement, a light of guidance, a friend sometimes, and even a bit strict and enforcer when required.

Being Able To Think Critically

Critical thinking is an essential skill for effective leadership. It is something that keeps you on top of things and gives you the clarity to see things better.

Critically thinking, whether it is a current issue at a project or a goal to achieve and even everything that is going on around you, helps you see things clearly, find solutions and prevent any problems from happening in the future.

It also lets you be aware of the current situation in the company or during a project and become more proactive.

Leaders with the ability to think critically are also good at recognizing potential opportunities and using the available resources creatively to achieve goals.

They are better at identifying risks and potential disasters. They don’t wait for things to happen and then react; instead, they predict it and already have multiple solutions to deal with it.

Knowing Conflict Resolution

One of the common challenges leaders always faces is conflicts within the team, which is bound to happen.

A leader can control how to resolve a conflict of all sorts, whether it is opinion-based or different in creative solutions or even interpersonal disputes.

Managers need to understand how to assess the situation, read the room and people, create communication bridges or fill the gaps and help to reach a solution that everyone agrees.

It can take some time to diffuse the rising tension in the situation, moving more on the practical side or talking to both involved parties separately to understand their problem.

Conflict resolution is a skill that comes from a lot of practice, but it is essential to focus on learning it and finding new ways to resolve conflict.

Be A Good Listener

Quite an underrated quality or skill of an effective leader that is not recognized or discussed enough has to be the ability to listen more and more.

It is also the bedrock of good communication, which is paramount for leadership to establish, and develop trust among the team members and carry out common goals.

Listening explicitly makes a leader so receptive and knowledgeable about the people, the situation, and everything that they can make better decisions.

Most of the problems come from people not listening to each other, so they don’t know what the other person wants, and misunderstanding or lack of communication arises.

Leaders and managers need to get better at listening to their teammates or anyone, like customers or clients, so they understand their feedback, problems, desires, and anything that requires attention.

Listening resolves quite a problem when it comes to dealing with conflict or developing a relationship in a business.

Learn How To Delegate

It is essential that leaders must learn how to delegate their work properly and have enough sense to choose the right people for a particular task.

Moreover, they must also be able to restrain themselves from meddling with the work delegated to others while doing it.

A good leader does not micro-manage. Instead, they choose the right people for these kinds of tasks and empower them, facilitate them and direct them to do.

The most they can involve themselves is being a helper, instructor, or guide, and that too only when delegation needs it.

Delegation is a skill in itself that also gets better by experience or just doing it more often. It is something that allows leaders to focus on more things.

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