Are great leaders born or made? While having certain personality characteristics might make it easier to succeed as a leader, most leaders are made over time, based on their experiences, the training and coaching that they’ve received and through their own self awareness and self reflection.
Getting feedback from others can help you be a better leader. However, nearly all feedback is provided through the filter and bias of the person providing the feedback. Your own self reflection is a valuable tool in your growth as a leader.
Here are three tips to become more self aware and more self reflective:
#1 Assess your current strengths
Hopefully you have had the good fortune to work for a great leader at some point in your career and if you have, then you can assess your behavior in relation to the standard set by that person.
Or, you can use a leadership assessment like the one we include in our Front Line Leadership training program.
#2 Identify opportunities for improvement
To avoid overloading yourself with too many areas at once, select a few behaviors that you want to work on that will give you the biggest impact on your leadership effectiveness.
Instead of viewing these areas as weaknesses, view them as opportunities for further strengthening.
#3 Make changes and observe results
Making improvements means changing your leadership behavior and approach, then observing the impact on your team’s performance.
You likely have developed a comfort zone with a mixture of both functional and dysfunctional behaviors.
When you decide to change your approach, it might take some of your team members by surprise. Some leadership changes will have an immediate positive impact, while others might take a little longer to show results.
Some of the positive changes you make might not work the first time, so have the perseverance to keep trying and adjusting your approach until you see the desired results. Continue to be self reflective so you can take the next positive step in your leadership journey.
As you work on being a more self reflective and self aware leader, you can tap into some of our resources at frontlineleadership.com or connect with other like minded leaders on our Facebook page.
