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In this continuation from part 2, we discuss how to develop your leadership style and what areas you should focus on now.

Developing your leadership style is an essential step in your leadership journey. Central to this is your ability to adapt and adopt elements of different leadership styles to make them work for you.

Once you have defined your leadership skills, strengths, and weaknesses, how do you translate it into a leadership style that will help boost your team’s productivity and maintain morale?

We have based some suggestions on what the successful leaders we work with use to develop their leadership styles.

Developing Your Leadership Style

Some qualities set individuals apart; the same is true of leaders. Great leaders have a specialist skillset. But remember, great leaders are not made overnight; they grow and develop by consistently building their capability.

Build Your Resilience Muscle

Resilience is something we all have a capability to develop consistently; especially now when we are surrounded by change at every corner. Resilience centres on the ability to adapt to change in the face of adversity, crisis, uncertainty or disappointment. It provides flexibility in your mindset to switch plans and adjust focus. It is this ‘toughness’ that allows individuals to take difficulties in their stride and deal with challenging situations.

Looking at challenges from a positive angle will help you build your energy levels – crucial when building resilience. And those who are more positive in life generally tend to have a lower level of stress and make better decisions, according to John Hopkins Medicine.

Make sure to surround yourself with positive people, too – this will lift your mood. Finally, allowing yourself some ‘me’ time will help increase your positivity and resilience levels. Exercise such as a walk in the fresh air every day, or a lunchtime yoga session, meditation or just spending time with friends and family can all help build the neuron store in your brain.

Learn How To Lead Through Change

Mark Zuckerberg said, “In a world that’s changing quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

He was right, too. Leadership isn’t a static undertaking. At some point in your leadership career, you will need to manage a team through a period of change.

This will require you to take risks; whether the change involves internal factors such as a new direction or reorganisation, or external changes brought about by market forces or global situations such as the pandemic we have all experienced this year.

The one constant in life is change, and how you embrace that challenge, acknowledge, and run positively with change will determine your strength as a leader.

Managed well, change can throw open new opportunities. Success relies on the ability to be agile and adapt to different circumstances. Your leadership can make all the difference to your company’s ability to do this.

Your team will, no doubt, be unsettled during times of uncertainty. Retaining a degree of calm and not allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by the situation will enable you to diffuse that calm through your team, and therefore prevent overwhelm.

Think of change as a necessary part of development, and consequently, success. Adapt and adjust to make the most of possibilities offered and turn the unknown into a positive where surprisingly new achievements can happen.

Set Your Goals

Innovating and reacting to change is part of a businesses’ growth and is a necessary part of development. So, it’s vital to deploy your strategy to manage challenges, while considering that you need a solid business plan that indicates where you are making adjustments and setting relevant goals.

As a leader, you will need to ensure everyone is on board with the strategic plan and its ultimate objective – alignment across the is key to success. And remember that the commitment of other senior managers is crucial to the process.

Tap into creativity and engage your team as part of the process to establish goals and to allow buy-in to take place. Creating a sense of purpose will also inspire your team. Instilling passion and purpose will help you develop a clear and compelling understanding of ‘why’ – the key to defining purpose.

So, ensure your objectives are:-

• Significant
• Concrete
• Inspirational
• Achievable
• Specific – time-bound
• Aggressive but realistic
• Measurable and verifiable

By establishing a collective commitment to achieving these goals, you are more likely to get the key results you seek. Setting goals in this way can also increase performance – specific objectives that are challenging, yet achievable, are more likely to inspire your team and give them something to work towards collaboratively.

Again, in challenging times, ‘pulling together’ creates a sense of camaraderie and gives a degree of autonomy to each team member. Having some control over the situation is critical in maintaining wellbeing and mental health during times of change.

Article 4, the last of this series, is coming soon…For more information on our services please click here. A member of our team will be more than happy to answer any queries you may have.