Every great leader you know has leadership habits that have allowed them to evolve from a good leader, to one that makes an impact on the people and organizations they lead.
A few of these habits may even pop into your mind immediately when you think of these people. What made them successful? Were they creative? Were they empathetic? Did they work longer and harder than anyone else?
For each leader, what makes them successful might be different, but there are a few key leadership habits that, if you put them in place now, will have a huge impact on your professional and personal development.
These habits aren’t simple. They aren’t “quick fixes”. They’re consistent and calculated strategies that over time will lead to significant change in both your thinking and your ability to lead.
Leadership Habits for Executives
So, what exactly are the 3 leadership habits you need to focus on? They’re as follows..
- Confidence in Yourself
- Trusting Your Team
- Leading by Example
These 3 habits will not only help you grow into the person or leader you’d like to be, but they’ll also help your team grow.
Great leaders will enhance their team’s ability, so let’s look at how each of these can do exactly that, and more!
Confidence in Yourself
At times, when we think of confidence, we can get it mixed up with arrogance. Arrogant leaders think they know more than everyone else. They believe their ideas are the best of the bunch and no one else’s are worth the time of day.
A confident leader on the other hand, evolves from trust (which we’ll dive into more in the next section). These leaders know that success is a team game, but also that doubt is a killer of creativity.
When a leader is confident in themselves, they inject that confidence throughout the rest of their team or organization. Their clients will also sense that confidence and develop trust more quickly.
A confident leader is one that keeps their eye on the big picture and knows that the decisions they make are the best ones possible with the knowledge they have at the current time.
Furthermore, confident leaders will admit when they’re wrong or they’ve made a mistake. Because they have confidence in themselves, they understand that mistakes are part of the learning process and are to be expected instead of frowned upon.
When was the last time you worked with a leader that wasn’t confident in their abilities? What did that look like?
Be confident in yourself as both a professional and as a leader, and before you know it, you’ll reap the rewards.
Trusting Your Team
Another important habit for leaders to develop is trust in their team. I touched on this briefly above, but trust is the foundation of any successful partnership, whether that be one between an organization and a client, or one between team members.
Trusting your team achieves several things. It frees up time for both you and your coworkers, it allows individuals to be more creative and test the boundaries of their work, and it creates a clear channel of communication where individuals aren’t nervous about bringing up their true thoughts.
When a leader trusts their team, everyone benefits.
Another key benefit of trust is growth. When you trust your team as a leader, you allow them to learn from their mistakes because you trust that they’ll realize what went wrong and prevent it from happening again.
This may sound like it would cost your team or yourself time, but would you rather make a mistake once and have someone else fix it on your behalf, which may lead to it occurring again in the future, or would you rather find the solution on your own, with the guidance of your team or leader, to ensure you know what to watch for in the future?
Invest the time now, and benefit from it later.
Leading By Example
The final leadership habit you should focus on is leading by example. This one is self-explanatory, but at the same time, can be the most challenging one to truly follow through on.
When you lead by example, you showcase the skills, habits, and beliefs in your own day-to-day that you want the rest of your team to adhere to or develop.
If you want them to work hard, you need to work harder.
If you want them to believe in themselves and trust their coworkers, you need to believe in yourself and them, and trust your team.
Everything trickles downwards. If you’ve ever worked with a leader that creates stress within their team, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
At times, as leaders we can think that we need to showcase our frustration to ensure everyone on our team understands the severity of certain situations. But the reality is that a great leader separates their emotions from the task at hand, creates belief within their team and uses every chance they get to instill an environment of growth.
To put it simply, if you’re looking to lead a team of highly creative, positive, and hard-working individuals, it starts with you.
So, how are you going to start?
If you’re looking to improve your leadership skills and grow into the leader we both know you can be, please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.
Or, if you’d prefer to meet me face-to-face, I offer free 25-minute consultations calls. Let’s discover together what you will need to move forward.
