What does REAL LEADERSHIP look like?
What does REAL LEADERSHIP look like? It’s also much easier thank you might think!
These days it's actually easy to forget that real leadership is not about ordering people around or telling people what to do. They might be some elements of a leadership role but that's not true leadership. Human beings follow a simple rule called the law of leadership. The person in any group who understands the needs of the other members of the group is seen as the group's natural leader. It's not necessarily the oldest or wisest or most skilled or the strongest person. In other words, when people feel understood by you and they feel you're looking out for their needs and want them to win and succeed, they will naturally support you, stick with you and stay around with you during hard times. They'll give you their best. It contributes to you too to living your mission or purpose of helping people win, helping people succeed. What do we do right, what do we do to listen, be present, take time, help people or assist people whatever leader you are.
Everyone can be a leader and is a leader even if it’s leading themselves or their friends or family or again even themselves at first. So again a real leader has what it takes, time to listen and be present and help. Saying I don't have time for that however is like a business person saying i don't have time to maintain my business relationships ,that is your business. Business is just a collection of relationships that's why we win the best quality relationships with the best quality people who really want to see you do well and win and support you and buy from you. One of the biggest keys to leadership is having kick-ass people who are willing to support you and do their best ,go away above and beyond and stick around for you during hard times, someone who takes responsibility. Real leadership is also someone who takes responsibility for something they may not normally seem to be responsible for or maybe they take responsibility for their team members success instead of saying that it was her job or it was his thing or he should have done this or she should have done that. It doesn't mean you have to do it all yourself because a good leader delegates, however also taking responsibility for those results even if it's technically up to other people to execute.
Another one is being a coach to your team or employees or people whether you're an entrepreneur or a big business leader or whatever it is, there's a lot of research out there these days and a lot of leadership professionals that say and articles even saying that the best leaders are also coaches. It doesn’t mean that you have to sign up to be a life coach, but just being present, talking about what's going on with them, their lives personally and professionally, why are they wanting to work with your company or business and when you can connect to their mission. When you can find a common goal or a common path or a thought pattern, you're going to have super productive and super happy teammates or employees.
Next point is to lead by example. There's nothing that will get you disrespected faster or have people shut off and not support your leadership. If you're not walking the talk, you're going to lose people. There's no way faster to lose respect and admiration of people and with no admiration and no respect, they're not going to listen to you or support you. One more point is never sacrifice good leadership or great leadership for just for the sake of getting things done because that will sabotage great performance. Being humble is also one of the highest forms of leadership and last thing is that a great leader also helps people see different options and different possibilities that they weren't able to see before. As a leader whoever you're leading whether it's your friends, family, yourself, your employees or teams , your customers or clients , whatever it is, real leadership is way easier than you think. It's also way more challenging than you think.