Being a leader can be innate to some people. But, without leadership development these skills may not be enhanced, thus, the true potentials of the leader may not come out.
These days, leadership development is usually categorized into two including individual leadership development and group leadership development. The first one usually focuses on the specific leadership traits of an individual while the second one is more on seeing leadership development as a process wherein the surrounding people and the working environment are involved.
Developing your own leadership skills
If you feel that you have great chances of becoming an effective leader, then now is the time to consider enhancing your leadership skills on your own. For you to do that, you must first assess what hinders you to being an effective leader. For some, it it’s their personal issues and problems while others is because of their inability to understand and accept certain situations. To be able to overcome these issues and emerge as a better leader, you must:
- Forgive yourself and let the past go. Experts say that many people have the great potential to become effective leaders only that they cling on so much to the past and couldn’t forgive themselves for the mistakes that they have committed. If you want to become an effective leader, try to accept that there are things that are beyond your control. Then, you will be able to forgive yourself and start anew. If you just keep thinking of the past, this will serve as a reminder of your failure. And if you keep thinking about your defeat, you will undergo a never ending cycle of blaming yourself for the things that you did not really opted to do.
- Have a dream and hold on to it. To lead is not easy task to start with. It would require lots of efforts and self-assessment to be able to maximize your full potentials as leader. For people who would want to reap the benefits of good leadership in the future, they should start now by having a dream that they could hold on to. The scale or the size of that dream doesn’t matter, it can be a big thing or a small thing, what's important is the person is willing to do everything to achieve that dream.
For some people, having big dreams work on them because they are looking forward to big rewards in the future that is why they are giving their best this early. While some people opt to have small dreams because they want to make sure that they will be able to accomplish that dream and won't have to deal with defeat or failure in the future.
- Always take one step ahead. Leadership development on your own means you have to be able to continuously motivate yourself despite so many problems. You can do this by taking one step ahead of things, meaning, you need to plan ahead and do things ahead of time so you will be given more opportunity or chance in case the first plan did not work.
When you become a leader, whether it be that of a small team or a large company, the prospect is always daunting. Leadership is always a large responsibility and it can be a crushing burden if not handled properly. History is littered with leaders who weren't able to handle the pressure. Thankfully, we've learned a few things from history – which is where leadership development programs come in.
Being a good leader is not a trait that's spread out in the human population. It's kind of like being a good soccer player or a good player. Some people have the natural talent to be a leader. Some people need a little push in the right direction. The problem with being suddenly handed the big chair is that, unless you've had previous experience, you might not know which of the two are you.
Which is why most employers initiate leadership development programs for those who are in a management position. You might be confident enough in your leadership abilities but those higher-up have to make sure that you are doing the best that you can at the job. The following are two reasons why leadership development programs are good for you:
a) Better self-assessment – Most of the time we're often blind to our own faults. A cursory self-examination will always come up with the result that you may not be perfect but you're not that bad. That's a completely wrong way to do it. When evaluating yourself, you need to be your own worst critic. This is mostly because most other people are not as forgiving of your own faults.
Having a faulty high opinion of oneself is a recipe for disaster – everyone's heard of the arrogant boss or supervisor. You should identify your personal shortcomings before your subordinates do and do something about them. Leadership development programs have a strict self-assessment portion that helps you do this. Additionally, the professional counselors who run these programs can help open your eyes to any troublesome personality traits or habits that you may have.
b)A more aware learning experience – Most leaders learn on-the-job. It's not exactly optimal but sometimes the best way to learn something is to experience it. These learning experiences are often problems at work. The problem with experiencing crises it is sometimes we don't think of it as a learning experience and just pass it off as being part of the job. They do not care to examine deeper into the problem.
This is why they do the same mistakes that resulted in the situation in the first place. Leadership development programs usually give you a better handle on these incidents. A more positive outlook and an inquisitive mind are what these programs encourage and they often result in leaders who know how to identify roots of problems and eliminate them at that level.
There are, of course, several other reasons why you should join leadership development programs but these two are the primary ones. Enter one as soon as possible and prepare to learn to become a better leader.