Wednesday 4 August 2010

7 steps to building personal leadership with confidence

1. Become aware of personality differences to get best out of self and others
– understand your personality in the context of others (MBTI Step II) and how different types exhibit different preferences in how they work and communicate. Identify how your preferences help or hinder you in achieving your goals and develop more effective ways of working.

2. Become Emotionally Intelligent
- tap into own emotions and recognise the impact of emotions on behaviour. Develop skills in managing your emotions to be in a resourceful state and get the best out of self, whatever the situation. Fine tune your awareness of others and develop skills in managing relationships.

3. Become clear on what you stand for
- clarify the Values and Beliefs that you use as a frame of reference to run your world, challenge your attitudes and assumptions to be sure that they support you and don’t block you from success, identify your basic philosophy, ideals and personal success factors.

4. Become a skilled communicator and confident in public speaking
- develop the skills to influence and persuade effectively, taking your listeners with you, inspiring and motivating for action. Become a powerful presenter, confident in speaking in front of audiences.

5. Become an effective decision-maker
- develop a pro-active approach to dealing with problems and making timely and well-informed decisions involving the relevant parties to gain optimum commitment. Develop creative thinking capabilities to enhance both the experience of problem-solving and the quality of the final decision. Develop effective methods of evaluating and mitigating risks.

6. Build cohesive and motivated followers
- understand culture and how to create the optimum working environment, representing the company values in action. Involve and engage with followers and stakeholders to build effective working relationships. Understand and influence team dynamics to generate effective working groups.

7. Lead the change
- understand individual change behaviours and how to lead and support others in improvement and growth. Develop your coaching skills in working with the individual as well as a coaching leadership style in working with people in the organisation. Understand change at team / organisational level and how to set the organisation up for successful and sustained change, through taking a systems thinking approach.