Blog: 14 ways to improve your leadership

Set realistic standards for yourself and for your employees – Set yourself up for success and not failure. Focus on perfection and unrealistic standards of success and achievement are difficult targets and failures become commonplace and result in demotivation. When steady and consistent progress and excellence in performance is focused on than ironclad outcomes, it becomes easy for you as a boss and for your employees to succeed.

Be as critical of your own performance as much as you are of your employees- Not more, not less! The standards and benchmarks set must be the same for you as well as the employees. If you underperformed on your goals because of some specific event or circumstance, you need to understand the impact of the same event and circumstance on the performance of the employee as well.  

Hire people better than you – It is human instinct to be wary and fearful of people smarter than you, because we consider them a threat. However, as colleagues they can be incredibly great resources to whom delegation can be done of responsibilities without fear of mess ups. If your motive is to make your own job easier, focus on hiring smart and better people rather than hire mediocre people hoping to keep them under your control. Latter is a very near-sighted and regressive attitude in a leader.

Highlight achievements, handle errors discreetly – If your employee makes a noteworthy achievement, reward and recognise the success. If it is an error, do highlight it privately to him and express your displeasure in a non-insulting tone and discreetly. Public slighting is the worst blow to a person’s confidence and performance. Your criticism should have suggestions and solutions to do things better as well. Most often it is ignorance that causes mistakes rather than intent.

Be a good listener – We all have just one mouth, but two ears and not vice versa for a reason. Being a good listener is important for a leader. When you listen more than you speak, you get to sense problems way ahead of them actually happening and prevent flare-ups. You being a good listener also helps in the development of communication skills in your employee because they too would have a preference to be heard and understood correctly.

Spend time on bettering communication skills – A leader has a clear necessity for being a strong, efficient and effective communicator. Like in any relationship, here too you cannot assume to be understood by your team. What one needs should be clearly spelt out as mind reading is still a challenge for science. Clear communication is different from micromanaging as it’s not about constantly telling people what to do but keeping dialogue open and offering and providing feedback. Spending quality time with employees and gathering feedback consistently is essential.

Be accountable – Taking responsibility when things do not go well and sharing credit when things go great is the true sign of a good leader. A boss like that commands respect from his employees. Trust and confidence develop in the leadership of someone who doesn’t desert them at the face of disaster. A leader would be able to gain trust of his employees only with honesty and transparency.

Choose to be a leader than a dictator – The mode of functioning should be primarily through a 360-degree feedback mechanism. This is not about relinquishing your rights to the team but about not imposing your opinions on them. A leader should be open to ideas where he might be proved wrong or be accepting of better ideas than his. You stand to gain more by being humble and welcoming.

Help employees set goals and guide them in achieving them – Foresight and proactiveness are key qualities for a boss. These qualities are to be used in helping your employees align themselves to the vision and mission of your organization as well as in helping them set achievable goals. It serves no purpose to analyze and dissect their performance during just their appraisal period without having offered them any guideposts or course correction during the rest of the year.

Take yourself lightly – Most situations can be handled with a good sense of humor and by not taking yourself too seriously. A poker face is not a prerequisite to earn respect. Respect works with the principle of reciprocity. It comes to you when you display an ability to take criticism on your stride and benefit from it.

Do not react in anger and in a hurry, respond after thinking through – As a leader, almost daily you can expect to be confronted with situations that are less than pleasant and a knee jerk reaction to it or anger can be more damaging than the original set back. It makes sense to introspect and analyse if the anger is directed at the specific problem or if there is something else that’s bothering you. Your reaction and responses should have parity to the magnitude of the problem. Over reaction is disrespect of your employees and creates blocks in channels of communication.

Understand that personal life is important for them as it is to you – A vacation or a family get-together is as important to your employee as it is to you. An equitable treatment when it comes to the personal life of employees is only a fair expectation. Be generous in spirit and encourage your employees to maintain good physical, emotional and mental health

Learn to delegate – Your team needs to be trained to make decisions and take initiatives themselves. A sense of autonomy will be appreciated by them. Delegation of decisions and tasks to the team gives you an opportunity to focus your attention on other important aspects of your business.

If you are looking for help in preparing yourself or your team to improve leadership skills or towards reaching out to the next level in your careers, do write to us at harish@harishrao.world to know how we can help you with it. We would love to work with you on this or any other business coaching needs you may have!