Leadership Building: Give back to Your Employees

One of the things your employees can gain from you is learning to be a leader. Having the leadership mindset will make them do more and add extra to their ordinary. Your employees give their efforts and their time to the job; give back to them by building leadership qualities in them. It may seem a little difficult for them to comprehend the reason why you drive them a little harder; in the long run, they will have you to thank for it.

Ways of building leadership skills in your employees will be discussed below.

Teach Them to Network

Networking is an art. It is the art of getting to meet people and establishing professionally beneficial relationships with them. For a leader, networking is important. It is you connecting with people within and outside your industry. If you cannot network, it may be hard to go far. Teach your employees this skill. Take a person or two along with you to events and show them how to meet people. Give them tasks on securing appointments where they have to network to get it. Keep developing the skill in them over time.

Give Them the Right Experience

The right experience is very important in business; it brings out the best in us. Let learning under you be extremely beneficial for them. You can have roundtable discussions where they get to bring their own ideas and it can be discussed together to see its feasibility. You should appreciate the work of your employees. This is not just to give them an awesome experience of working with you but to let them know that you see their work and you recognize its usefulness to achieving the goal of the business.

Allow Them to Struggle a Little

Strive is the spice of life, it is said. You have to inject a little struggle into the work of your employees. Don’t let it be an easy ride all through. Let them feel a little of what a leader feels. For instance, you can send an employee on an assignment outside the state and let the employee know that the assignment is very important to the business. Giving people responsibility is one way of injecting a little struggle into their lives; they don’t want to disappoint you, so they do everything to make it happen.

Be a Mentor

Be a mentor. Give them insights; career advice; sit them down and let them see the reality. Your employees look up to see as a leader; do more than that. Be a leader and a mentor. It can be very comforting to be able to turn to your boss for some mentorship. It helps strengthen the cordiality with the team.

Create an Ownership Mentality

Paint the reality to every employee. Let them know that the business belongs to everyone of them. Let them know that even without a partnership stake, if the business fails, it is to the detriment of everyone and thus they have to attend to work as if they are dealing with their own personal businesses.

Foster Influence

Let your employees be able to influence others positively. Allow positive influence to flow and spread. You can teach your employees how to influence other people. It is one skill of a leader to have people influenced. Hold practical sessions and get learning resources that can help them do better in this aspect.

Lead Courageously

You have to be courageous as a leader. Even in the face of stark financial realities, still stand your ground. You are human, quite alright, however, you should be a source of hope and support for your employees and you can’t do this without being courageous. Inspire confidence in your employees by putting work in your courageousness.

Be an Authentic, Transparent Leader

Be real and transparent. Don’t be a fake or a “wannabe”. You have to evoke confidence in your employees by being real and transparent. Being transparent entails trustworthiness. You have to be able to have employees place some level of trust in you. You can do this by having them involved and informed on things affecting the business.

Don’t Delegate – Leverage Results from Your Team

Task that should be done by you shouldn’t be delegated. Learn to do things yourself. However, let your employees do their part and work on the results they have gathered. That way, there is division of labour and things are done faster and better.

Communicate Effectively

Communication is a very effective tool for you as a leader. You have to be able to pass your message across clearly without mincing words. Your employees are waiting for instructions; be clear as to it.

Ignite Passion

Hard work may not bring desired results but when done with passion, the work is much better done. You have to be able to ignite passion in your employees as to the work they do. Discuss the vision of the business with them and let them see their place in it.

Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence

These are two skills you must build in your employees. They have to know their strengths, weaknesses, peculiarities, etc. More, emotional intelligence is vital for success in any professional setting. It is not impossible that they may get irritated by an act or statement, the ability to hold themselves from acting on it will determine a lot in their leadership capabilities.

Stay Approachable

You have got to keep your door open at all times. Your employees should be able to approach you for anything. Be warm and welcoming to them. Part of being approachable is not treating any question as a stupid question; try to answer every question. Be open-minded also. Learn to imagine possibilities and your employees will be free to approach you with ideas.

In conclusion, you have got to lead by example. You want your employees to inculcate leadership skills; they have to get these from you. The above methods can be very useful in bringing the leader out of them.

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