Ten Things You Can Do To Be a Better Leader

Guest post by: Clive Hook
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Five Fundamental Questions for Leaders: Question Five - Who Listens When You Speak? - By Clive Hook

1 Firstly be clear that your role is to bring about change, to have things be in a new state not to maintain thestatus quo. The change is your responsibility. You will ultimately measure your success as a leader by the amount of lasting change that you have successfully implemented.

2 Define and make public what will exist when your job as leader is complete. Recognise that this may change but this is what you want to achieve given what you know at the moment. Unless people know what you want to achieve they can't choose whether or not to follow.

3 Remind yourself daily that the only thing that defines a leader is whether or not people choose to follow. Vision, charisma, power all mean nothing unless people have enough confidence in your ability to get to a place they haven't been before. The moment they stop following, you stop leading.

4 Write down the answer to the question "Why should anyone be led by you?" This is an important question and deserves time and careful consideration. This is not about your achievements or your prowess - in fact it's not even about you it's whytheyshould be led by you.

5 Write down your personal values -- the things you stand for -- and refine the list to your most important "top five". These may or may not align with the organisational values but they must be the things that you truly believe in and are willing to fight to uphold.

6 Every week, and preferably every day, list what you've done. Job 1 is your basic job description. Job 2 is finding a better way of doing Job1. Your Job 2 list is, in fact, what the organisation is employing you to do as a leader. If your Job 1 dominates you're not doing the right thing.

7 Find a way of recording what you've learned that helps you be a better leader. This learning could be a realisation of a way of working that you decide to change or a more formal piece of learning. If you don't learn and adapt you'll be out of a job.

8 Develop ways of communicating the big picture and progress measures to help people see where they are on the journey towards your desired end result. There will always be some doubts, rumours and miscommunication. The more they hear it directly from you the less likely the message will be lost.

9 Make it really clear to people whether or not they have a say or vote in processes and outcomes. Is this a decision you have already made. Do you want information so that you can make a better decision or are you giving them a share in the decision-making role?

10 Help people understand the need for change and encourage them to question and challenge as a way of working out for themselves if they want to be part of it. At the same time do not accept passengers or prisoners. If you can't change the people - change the people.

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Five Fundamental Questions for Leaders: Question Five - Who Listens When You Speak? - By Clive Hook

About the Author: Clive Hook

RSS for Clive's articles - Visit Clive's website
Clive is co-founder of ClearWorth - a company specialising in the design, development and delivery of bespoke learning, coaching, workshops and courses for senior managers, leaders and influencers and their teams. Clive lives in the UK and France and works all over the world from Ohio to Oman, Windsor to Warri Chatham to Chengdu, Helsinki to Hydrabad and Calgary to Kuala Lumpur. He specialises in the development of persuasion, influencing and negotiation skills and has a particular interest in their use within differing cultures. Clive's interest in leadership, teams and groups and his wide knowledge of conversational skills has spurred the development of a new approach which helps teams and leaders focus on what is really important through incisive questioning and intelligent conversations.
Click here to visit Clive's website.

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