When running your own business, you need good leadership skills, regardless of whether you employ staff.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the traits of strong leaders, and how you can learn leadership skills.
How to be a strong leader at your business
The traits of a good leader
A good leader will usually show the following traits:
Good listeners
Being a leader isn’t about people doing what you want. To be a good leader, you should listen to the concerns of the people around you, whether this is an employee’s concerns or customer feedback.
When listening to negative feedback, a good listener should not become defensive, and take the criticisms on board to make effective changes.
Know your team
To get the best out of your team, get to know them, their strengths, their weaknesses and their ambitions.
This will allow you to have your team using their skills in the best roles and allow them to work on their weaknesses.
When you know your team, you can allow them to make decisions and provide solutions to problems, which will make them feel empowered in their role. Being able to effectively delegate to your team is the sign of a strong leader.
Holding accountability
As the leader of a business, you ultimately hold responsibility for the business’ success.
Whilst you can take credit for the success of the business, you should also be equally responsible for shouldering the blame for any failures.
Doing what’s right
As a leader, you can’t be afraid to have a voice and stand up against wrongdoings or injustices. This means noticing wrongdoings and having the confidence to address if necessary.
A good leader may also have to break rules to find new solutions and take a business in new directions. Being a good leader is about breaking the status quo and being creative.
Learning leadership skills
Leadership skills are normally learnt through experience, however, there are other ways that you can learn these skills.
Take on more projects
By taking on more projects to work on, and different projects outside of your comfort zone, you will be able to keep practising your skills and applying them to a range of different situations.
This kind of experience will allow you to learn whilst you work and constantly make improvements and tweaks for any future projects.
Find adult learning courses
Most local or online learning institutions will offer courses for professionals who want to develop key skills.
You can even use job search websites like Reed to find courses that can help you develop your skills.
Work with a business coach
Business coaches are consultants who will help you run your business by putting plans and strategies into place, or by showing you how to run your business day-to-day.
They will also be able to give you advice and guidance on developing your leadership skills and help you put those skills into practice.
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