How To Become A Leader - 5 Steps Action Plan

So you want to become a leader, but you don't know where to begin.

Don't sweat it. I got you covered. Welcome to my YouTube channel. This video is for you. If you're an aspiring employee that wants to become a leader, maybe you're a small business owner or founder of a new company. I got you covered. You got to understand we're all on this journey to become better leaders. I'm here to guide you through five very simple but actionable steps that's going to help you build a culture of accountability and trust with with some psychological safety mixed in. Because those are the foundations of developing great leadership inside of a great organization. So congrats on wanting to become a leader. Here's step one. Develop self awareness. That is the first step. There is no second. If you don't get this first, understanding your strengths and your areas of opportunity or your areas that you're not as good, it's critical because that's the only way that you're going to improve and grow. You have to be able to reflect on your actions. You're going to have to be able to seek feedback and be open to change. If you don't have those things or you don't have someone that can give you those things, it's going to be really tough for you to become a great leader. So my recommendation that point would be go hire a coach, someone that can help you identify those blind spots because we all have them and help you work through the challenges of those blind spots. When I was a new leader, one of the things that I thought, which was a mistake, is that I had to have all of the answers and that's just not accurate. You have to have all of the questions because as a leader our role isn't to give the answers, the answers to our teams, our role is to question the things that they do so that they can critically think and come up with the answer because that's developing them professionally if you're able to do that. And it wasn't really until I started asking for advice, not feedback. Understand the difference. Asking for advice gives people the opportunity to really tell you the things that you really need to hear. Where sometimes if you ask for feedback, they're going to give you a couple nice things and the chances of them giving you like hitting you between the eye with something that you really need that's valuable to you and is pretty small. So learning the difference between asking for advice and asking for feedback is certainly going to help you along your journey to becoming a great leader. And Just remember, the best leaders are asking questions, not giving answers. So step two Build trust and psychological safety. As I said earlier, building trust is the foundation of developing a great organization. You will not retain your employees, you will not retain engaged employees. If you do not have trust inside of your organization. You have to understand, I say this frequently. Time is a leader's currency. That is the payment that it requires for you to build an organization of employees that stick. You can't build trust and psychological safety without spending time with your people. And I get it, Clegg. I'm so busy, I wear so many hats as this small business owner. And those things are true and I get that. And I do understand that. I've been there. But that's no excuse for not spending time with your people because it is the only way to develop trust. So it's something that you need to figure out how to do. There is no replacement for spending time time with your people. That's not something you can delegate and that's certainly not something that you can outsource. And I'll say this again, trust is the foundation of any successful team. In my Leadership Squared framework, it's a very specific formula with two pathways, culture and connection. In order to develop deep connections, there are four steps that you'll have to take. One on ones, skip level meetings, stay interviews, and breaking bread, which is a very informal meeting. Here's my QR code. If you want to join my inner circle to learn more about leadership squared and that pathway, come join the community to help yourself become a great leader. You know, one of my clients transformed themselves by starting every single meeting with open, honest communication. And you'd be surprised the huge impact that makes in a very short period of time, because it really starts driving collaboration. Transparency goes a long way. There's another reason why coaching and providing regular feedback help drive trust. Because when employees get what I would call bad news, right when you're giving constructive feedback, they're not left guessing on how they're doing, right? It's actually a very kind thing to do, helping people understand where they are in their performance. And so it is imperative that you're able to do that. We have to be able to give very critical feedback to our employees because we don't want them filling in the gaps where they lack information, right when they're not getting feedback on their performance, they're going to start filling in the gaps and the holes with negative information. And that's not a good place for them to be. Step 3 Foster accountability. An accountable culture Ensures that everyone is taking responsibilities for their actions and for their commitments. If you don't have standards and expectations in your organization, stop the video right here. Don't continue on any longer because it doesn't matter if you don't have standards and expectations, you're not going to be able to become a great leader because your organization isn't going to be able to retain any of your employees. We'll be here when you get back and I'm dead serious about that. Do not go forward in this video unless you know that that your team understands what your standards are and the clear expectations. Those standards are the guardrails of the path that you're building for your team for growth. There's no replacement for that. Now I once worked with a team that was struggling with deadlines and turning things in on time. And when I instituted weekly check ins at the time, now we call them one on ones as I mentioned. But those weekly check ins were unbelievably powerful because I got a chance to not only learn about the individuals and their performance, but I also learned about their challenges and the obstacles and where they needed additional resources. And if you're not having those one on ones, it's going to be really tough for you to do that. And setting clear goals drives the team's productivity. And the thing you have to understand, there's something that's called Pearson's law and Pearson's Law. When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported performance improves exponentially. The last part is it's your job as a leader to identify what the employee wants and needs are. When you have those wants and needs now, it is your job to connect their goals, their wants and needs with the goals of the organization and their roles. Should be a bridge that connects those two. Step 4 Be a model Leading by example is crucial. Your actions set the tone for your team. It if you want your team to be punctual, you better be on time. If you want your team to value continuous improvement, guess what? You better be continuously improving yourself. Okay, Invest in yourself, invest in your education. Those things are critically important. When your team sees that you're invested in their development, I promise you they're not only appreciate that but they're going to work harder for you. For as an example, if it's a high stress moment or period of time like some people have monthly deadlines, quarterly deadlines, those types of things, if you can't maintain composure during those times and model that behavior, you certainly can't expect that of Your employees. So you need to confidently be guiding them on the behaviors that you want them to exude. And the only way that that happens is if you model them. One of the biggest challenges I see with teams, generally speaking, and this is more of a human nature issue, is, is adapting to change. And you have to do the same, right? You have to be able to show that you have great strengths around adaptability because change is daunting, change is tough. Your attitude around change is going to set the tone for the rest of the team. You know, as an example, in my current role, we all know that AI is taking the world over. So it's important that I learn about AI before I try and integrate that in with my team or with my organization. So. So I'm investing my own time and energy into learning about AI before I try and integrate that. That's not something because it's so big, it's everywhere that I didn't feel that it was appropriate to delegate that to one of my leaders. I wanted to learn where this could potentially fit into our business and to our organization. And ultimately it's going to foster collaboration when I bring my findings to the team and how we can utilize it to make their jobs a little bit more efficient. Step 5 Communicate effectively. To master the art of communication, it needs to be clear, concise and almighty, transparent communication, okay? Because we have to prevent misunderstandings. And the only way that we do that, remember those standards and expectations. What we don't want is to have unspoken expectations. And that's something that I see quite frequently. You may even realize that inside of personal relationships that you've had, there may be unspoken expectations. I know with my wife and I, if we get in an argument or a disagreement, we always go back and check like, hey, does she know where I'm coming from? And do I know where she's coming from? And oftentimes an overwhelming majority of times I'll say it's about unspoken expectations. So it's critical that we have transparent and clear and concise communication. As I mentioned, there are ways to do that regularly through consistent communication channels and that's through one on one skip level meetings, stay interviews and breaking bread, as I mentioned earlier. And one last thing that I will say is implement a daily, daily huddle, okay? If you want great communication, implementing a daily huddle is another way to keep information in front of your employees. Daily huddles is one of the first things that I implement with new clients. It's so critically important to keep the information front and center with your teams and what's going on. There you have it. Five simple, easy steps to have you leading like a pro. Creating a thriving workplace culture. And remember this leadership is a journey. It's not a destination. We're continuously improving. You know, my goal is to humanize 100,000 conscious leaders, and we're going to do that one video, one person at a time. If you found this video helpful, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. Like and comment. Share this with your colleagues. Because together, I want us to create a better future. Thanks for watching. Have a great one.