Posts Tagged ‘leadership traits’

Being a leader presents many challenges. One of the most valuable assets you can have as a leader is self awareness. Why is it so important and what are the benefits?

Benefit 1: You Play To Your Strengths

• While you can be competent in many areas, it is tough to be great at everything. Being more self aware allows you to focus your time and energies on what you do best. After all, you want to be playing to your strengths.

Benefit 2: You Get Others Playing To Their Strengths

• Organisations are full of talented people, many of whom are never ever fully utilised. Make the time to find out where others excel and get them focusing on what they do best.

Benefit 3: You Adapt To The Situation

• Leadership is not something that comes with a step by step success recipe. A lot of it is trial and error, learning and reflection and being able to adapt. The best leaders are highly skilled at adapting to the situation they face.

Benefit 4: You Think Before You Act

• In any situations there will always be many options open to you. Good leaders know this and will choose their response and options to take account of others’ perspectives.

The Bottom Line: The truth is that raising your levels of self awareness can really make a huge difference to the results you achieve. So what’s your first step?

To help you to assess where you excel and where you perhaps need to develop yourself, I have developed a simple Leadership Assessment.  You can get your free assessment by clicking on the  following link leadership-skills-assessment

1. Create a clear and compelling vision for the future.
2. Set and communicate effectively the long term direction.
3. Involve others in decisions.
4. Listen a lot.
5. Gain the support of others.
6. Influence effectively.
7. Act as an ambassador for the organisation.
8. Act as a role model and demonstrate the behaviours expected.
9. Take a real interest in others.
10. Stay connected to the key stakeholders.

What else would you add?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

As a leader, I guess that you ultimately want to achieve success. At the same time, you know that success as a leader is definitely not guaranteed.

So what traits do you want to avoid if you want to achieve success as a leader?

1. Trying to rely on status or seniority to get things done.
2. Never allowing others to have a go and try things out because of fear of failure.
3. Avoiding taking key decisions that need to be made.
4. Trying to do it all by yourself.
5. Failing to trust others in the team.

I wonder what else you would add to the list?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

1. Adapting to changing circumstances
2. Bringing out the best in others
3. Taking balanced risks
4. Taking responsibility
5. Giving credit to others

What would you add?

One trait that you probably identify in the best leaders is self awareness.  Self awareness is about knowing what you do best, what makes you tick, what impact you have on others and where you still need to grow and develop.

The benefit of being self aware is that you can aim to play to your strengths and as a result achieve greater success.

So how self aware are you and what could you do to develop your awareness even more?