In leadership, there is always room for improvement, and the journey never ends. It involves a lot of reflection, strengthening skills, overcoming new challenges, and, of course, being a better leader.
Early Stage Leaders
During this stage, leaders are facing many aspects of leadership that they should be familiar with. The most important thing that they need to do is know how to communicate, delegate tasks, and make decisions. They should also be prepared to manage a larger workload effectively under pressure.
Here are the characteristics of early stage leaders:
- Intense curiosity: Eager to find and learn new areas because they are open to learning.
- Resilience: Under pressure, they could bounce back from setbacks and adapt to changes.
- High achiever: Typically possess ambition, drive, and a strong desire to make an impact.
- Empathetic: Able to understand and read people, making them excel, to identify their team weakness and strengths.
- Problem solver: Good at thinking of effective ways to find better solutions.
Well-Developed Leaders
In reality, there is no such thing as a perfect leader. However, leaders can be developed. A well-rounded leader involves mastering the basic skills of a leader and the deeper aspects of leadership. They do not only need to perform their own duties well, but also help their people grow to reach their full potential.
Here are the characteristics of a well-developed leader:
- Able to think strategically: Being capable of imagining the future and seeing the big picture enables them to set long-term goals and take strategic actions to achieve them.
- Managing relationships : Effectively managing relationships with stakeholders and team members.
- Effective communication: Communicating clearly (e.g., vision), persuasively and relevantly at all levels of the organization.
- More open: Having the ability to understand various perspectives both within and outside the organization.
- Empowers people: To entrust others with power and responsibility, encourage autonomy, and produce a healthy and supportive environment in making contributions to reach organizational goals.
How can a leader level themselves up?
Leaders, in fact, do need training to be better leaders. Before elevating as a leader, one must develop the mindset of being a continuous learner. The reason for this is that they will have to face many sorts of challenges throughout the journey. To improve, leaders must develop self-awareness. Through self-awareness, they will recognize what drives their behavior, understand the factors that can cause them to fall back, and identify what motivates them to excel. Start with reflecting on past behaviors. For example, noticing being triggered when someone asks a question will help identify the underlying cause. It might be due to the wrong communication style, interruptions during businesses or even questions about a leader’s abilities. This type of reflection can drive growth by making a leader learn how to respond better in the future, thus improving their leadership skills and effectiveness.
Conclusions
The key difference between early stages of leadership and well-developed leadership is that early stage leaders tend to be focused on personal goals and gaining authority through formal power, while well-developed leaders are focused on organizational and team goals, utilizing a range of leadership styles and influence tactics to encourage two-way communication, collaboration, and shared decision-making.
