Goals As A Leader
Guest Blog by Sean Stevenson – Latest Revision March 11th, 2021
Sean has many amazing articles that we will continue to feature within our community. Please check out Sean’s other articles and website here.
Goals As A Leader In Modern Times
Every leader should strive to deliver value to his or her team. This means:
Setting an example and encouraging personal development for everyone.
Creating attainable goals that promote efficiency and productivity.
Striving to improve relationships.
Promoting communication between different individuals and groups.
Whether you are a supervisor, a business owner, or a manager, there are always leadership skills you can actively develop. This will make you far more effective at leveraging the collective efforts of your organization.
To ensure your own leadership development, it is highly advisable that you set a series of personal goals. These will give you some guidelines that can best define how you should move forward.
Keeping yourself accountable to these leadership goals will require that you face down your own weaknesses. Moreover, it is most ideal to record your results.
Example
If you aren’t good with talking to people, try to calmly gravitate towards a conversation that you find agreeable. Don’t force anything, just try to spend time gently conversing with others.
By actively engaging yourself in a situation that forces you to face your discomfort of being social, you can remove the mental blocks that were in your way. Eventually, you’ll come to realize, “This isn’t so bad,” and you’ll likely want to engage with others more often.
Leadership Goals To Pursue
A surprising number of people have the potential to be leaders. However, it takes a strong will and perseverance to fully develop leadership skills.
To develop your own leadership abilities, try the following:
Become A Mentor
A surprisingly simple way to break through to someone, is to offer them mentorship.
Ask yourself, have you ever found someone openly discussing their problems at work with you? Maybe they have some personal issues that they face and need to vent once in a while?
These individuals are actively seeking mentorship. While it may not be obvious initially, it’s what they often really need.
Your goal as a leader should be to always offer mentorship to those in need. Start by setting one-on-one meetings with your team members. Discuss them and their goals during each meeting. Then, try to explore ways in which they would be comfortable growing. There is never a wrong answer, whether it be education, new tasks in the workplace, or simply developing their already existing skills.
Your goal should always be to help them find ways of reaching new heights. Their goals require feedback and openness. Ideally, you’ll want to offer them continuous feedback and helpful advice as they progress.
Moreover, you can also hold team meetings where everyone can share their vision. Some may be more reserved than others, yet it will still be therapeutic for everyone to share in common goals.
The bottom line is to show your people that you are a helpful resource. Be a mentor that galvanizes others to succeed, and you will profit immensely in turn.
Learn To Listen (Carefully!)
One of the most important goals as a leader that you can possibly have, is to be an effective listener.
Most people today are far too concerned with speaking their mind. They do so without realizing it, in fact.
A leader differentiates themselves by actively listening to the concerns of others. This allows them to facilitate communication or address concerns much faster.
Being able to accept information in a neutral manner, allows you to be objective. If your team is communicating a lot of negativity, then you can easily find the root cause by carefully listening to their concerns. From there, addressing issues becomes second nature.
This also has the added effect of building your credibility and trust with the team. When people realize you’re someone that really cares about the organization as a whole, they tend to come to you first for a solution to any outstanding issues.
Create an environment of all of your own, where people know they will be heard, and you will have gained a powerful position. From this point on, you can promote productivity in a natural way. By encouraging those you breed familiarity and trust with, you can set powerful new precedents.
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.”
-Peter Drucker
Goals As A Leader – Be Constructively Honest
The most successful organizations on earth are not afraid to encourage accountability and transparency. Employee growth can only ever occur through honest feedback.
If someone is struggling, then they need to be given assistance. In no way is this shameful or callous. In fact, it’s the best thing that could happen.
A goal for a leader should always be to learn how to best approach others with constructive criticism. It can be a light-hearted gesture of solidarity, simply by stating, “I used to do the same thing you’re doing right now.”
This builds a sense of camaraderie where a more successful team leader can offer a struggling employee some useful information. The intent should always be to create a positive sense of opportunity and potential for personal growth.
People always respond to positive outlooks, even in the worst of situations.
Try to reinforce and reaffirm the good characteristics of your employees. However, don’t shy away from also offering constructive criticism when needed. This will allow you to build powerful relationships in the workplace, while also optimizing productivity.
Create A Stronger Decision-Making Framework
A goal for every leader is being able to make better decisions on the fly.
Whether by writing out lists for yourself, or developing a framework for decision making, you can always develop a more sophisticated process.
The irony of making smarter decisions more quickly, is that the process itself becomes cumulative. Just as I created a “drawing board” or “decision web” as a visual aid for my own use, I quickly realized some of the flaws in my own process by simply looking at it.
Taking the time to develop your own perspective and diligence, is a reward in itself. You’ll quickly find you didn’t have all the answers you thought you did. Further, these “gaps” you find in your own logic, will soon become opportunities for furthering your own growth potential.
Goals as a leader must always include self-improvement. One of the best of these that you can hope to pursue, is learning to develop a better framework for your own capacity.
Adapt Constantly
Change is inevitable. Fighting it is impossible.
Rather than struggle against a rapidly flowing tide, learn to harness the positivity of change. There is no better goal as a leader that you can have. Being able to pivot your own mindset, and your own resources, will allow you to maintain flexibility in any business scenario.
Moreover, in a globalized economy, new opportunities are rampant for individuals who can prove themselves capable at adapting to change. The same goes for any business model.
By embracing change you will only improve your personal growth, along with the development of your organization.
Master Time Management
It’s beyond any reasonable doubt that time management is the quintessential goal of many leaders. Being able to juggle multiple projects simultaneously is one of the best ways to maximize the use of your time. Moreover, others will certainly follow such a stalwart example.
By setting such a high standard, you can be certain that word will get around. Your team will notice your impressive efforts. People will try to emulate you. It’s all part of the human condition and is in fact a wonderful thing.
Ideally, get both a digital and hardcopy of your daily planner. That way you’ll always have a copy handy, and can record important notes or events.
The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”
-Michael Altshuler
Improve Upon Your Motivation
A huge component of our capacity as leaders, is our own motivation to do what is most important for both ourselves and our organization. The key to understanding these dynamics, is by first exploring what is most important to you. Ask yourself:
Why do I get up in the morning?
Who am I happiest to see as I come into work?
What exciting changes are happening right now in my professional life?
Where will I be in a few years?
How can I develop myself into a fuller and better version of who I am today?
Questions like these help define the advantages and possibilities of your own position. Understanding how to best leverage your professional life will keep you in a state of prosperity.
There will always be challenges on the road ahead -of that there is no question. However, it is always a most fitting goal of any leader, to take a moment to appreciate the tasks and opportunities that yet lay before them.
More than likely, it will help you keep both your perspective, and your motivation going forward.
Find The Best And Fastest Route
Goals as a leader can vary wildly. However, one that does not, is our hopeful quest to find the best and fastest route to accomplishing our tasks.
Efficient processes require a leader to innovate. Developing new procedures so that your teams can get more done with less time, is a huge asset to everyone involved.
Oftentimes, the best solutions can be right in front of us. Whether it is a highly skilled employee who can take on more arduous tasks, or a smarter piece of software that can deliver heightened analytics.
There is always a solution for those who venture to find the better path!
Goals As A Leader – Responsibility
The highest goal of a leader is to always shoulder the burden of responsibility.
Whether it’s a situation that has gone awry, or a business decision that has failed, a leader must always be prepared to mediate the outcome.
Often this requires a great deal of humility and patience. However, we must always recall that the positive outcomes make these ordeals worth it.
It is your duty as a leader to accept the consequences and to find the appropriate solutions. Every unexpected challenge should be viewed as an opportunity for you to learn and to grow.
In taking on these responsibilities, you will inevitably develop yourself into a great leader. The best of which always took matters into their own hands for the sake of the greater organization they served.
