“A leader is a person, who just does not direct his team on how to conduct the work, but also walks the journey with the team supporting, guiding and encouraging them as per the situation.”

When you are a leader for the team, you have proved yourself to be better than the other in the organization. Being a leader does not mean that your efficiency and your creditability is for a day, or the duties are for a limited time. Rather, being a leader is a consistent job, where you just don’t have to prove yourself but you have to prove the accountability and creditability of the team as well.

To be a better leader, the best thing can be to be a good self-reflector, and the reflection should be mainly of yourself. You don’t have to spend your entire day on reflecting upon yourself and trying to understand what are you exactly up to? All you have to do is spend 15 minutes of your evening time in isolation contemplating and reflecting upon yourself.

Following are the points that you need to reflect upon:

1. Organise yourself: Every individual has his own set of work to do and his own to-do lists to complete, and apart from that he has to see to his team’s task, assign them work accordingly, and even manage to take feedback and updates from his team with regards to their work. This all needs to be done within the stipulated time period of the office hours. So keeping all the tasks in mind, it is very important, that the leader should organize himself first, as per the priorities and plan his day in advance so that his working can get organized.

2. Discipline Yourself: Every individual always organizes himself and plans his tasks for the next day at work. But what outstands a good leader is that he disciplines himself enough, that he follows his plan for the day at work. Like any employee, there are many urgent tasks and activities that come up on the said day. For being a good leader, the leader should be disciplined enough to stick to his organized plan for the day. More importantly being disciplined means doing one thing at a time, and focusing upon it completely till it isn’t complete and perfect.

3. Accept Your Short Fallings: No one is perfect always, but what is important is an employee accepting his mistakes. Acknowledging your shortcomings, and working on improving it, are the attributes of a good leader. No leader is born a leader, and no leader knows everything, but what outstands them from others is that they are acknowledging their shortcomings and working on them to improve so that they attend perfection.

4. Know the kind of Example you want to be: Every individual in life looks up to his role model for inspiration. In the same way, in an organization, the employees look up to their leader for not just inspiration but encouragement too. So it becomes the sole responsibility of the leader as to what kind of example do you want to set to your team. If you as a leader decides upon what kind of example do you want to set for your team, you will behave accordingly towards your team, and based upon your behavior will the success or failure of your team will depend. So, it is very important to keep a check, whether what kind of leader do you wish to become, and whether you are working upon the same.

5. Make your Team Stronger: Once, you have reflected upon yourself and found out as to how you can make yourself better, you then need to reflect upon your team as well, to try and understand, as to how can you make your team better and stronger. This is never a one day process, but a leader, can try to touch one attribute or quality of the group, and help them in developing it, and making it stronger. Thus, gradually the leader can help in making his team stronger and better step by step, one at a time.

Don’t burden yourself with how to develop yourself to be a better leader, rather just spend 15 minutes of your day on reflecting on yourself, and work towards your reflection.

Have a Transforming Tuesday!!

Written By Faber Ancita Lobo