Do you aspire to a leadership role within your organization, but the climb up the ladder seems insurmountable?\u00a0 Start with small steps!\u00a0 Leadership doesn\u2019t happen all of a sudden at the top rung.\u00a0 Developing leadership style, skills and tactics begins on the ground floor.\u00a0 Let\u2019s explore how to lay a game plan that builds to successful leadership.<\/p>\n
A high profile title is not a prerequisite for being a leader.<\/strong>\u00a0 You can be a leader whether you are in an entry level job or somewhere in middle management.\u00a0 The best place to begin is to master your job responsibilities and execute them with excellence and authority.\u00a0 Executing with authority should show mastery of your skills, and does not refer to upper-handed or arrogant authority.\u00a0 Consistently executing your job deliverables with excellence (and without drama or martyrdom) will demonstrate your ability to drive projects and business forward, which is a true hallmark of a leader.\u00a0 In tandem, scrutinize your work process and how it flows into your organization and aim to identify ways to implement change improvements.\u00a0 A combined, continued effort in delivering with excellence and aiming to refine processes will self-promote you as a leader within your group, no matter its size.<\/p>\n Look for opportunities to lead outside of work.<\/strong>\u00a0 This minimizes risk as you are developing your leadership muscle.\u00a0 Search for volunteer or mentoring opportunities that relate to your career path.\u00a0 Investing time and talent in this way will both hone your professional skills, and build your experience base with credible examples that will translate into your work life.\u00a0 For example, serving on a marketing committee for a non-profit organization, and helping to build their mission statement and guide the development of marketing execution tactics would be an impressive story to share during an interview for a promotion level position.\u00a0 Likewise, mentoring a young college student or recent grad in your area of expertise would position you as a developer of others.<\/p>\n Reframe leadership.<\/strong>\u00a0 Are you currently in a leadership role with subordinates (employees?) who are intimidated by or reluctant to receive authority?\u00a0\u00a0 If so, shift try shifting focus from telling and directing to being a solution finder.\u00a0 Problems and challenges, which need fixing and resolution surface constantly in an organization \u2013 that\u2019s why it\u2019s called work!\u00a0 Instead of calling out the problems as belonging to someone, or as an evil that needs to be dispelled, start with a discussion about the solution instead.\u00a0 Or, again, if you\u2019re not in a leadership role, you can still be a leader in this area.\u00a0 The blame game rarely has a winner. In your current work drive, or that of your teams, look at the overall project and find areas or people that need assistance and offer solutions instead of pointing the finger.\u00a0 Everyone wins with this approach, and it will shine a leadership spotlight on you in the process.<\/p>\n Determine what your leadership stance will be on important issues.<\/strong>\u00a0 That way you can be ready to troubleshoot potential problems as they arise.\u00a0 Some key business areas where it\u2019s important to have a developed leadership stance include: finance and budget; human resources; infrastructure and hardware; organization changes; communication protocols; and project development and timelines.\u00a0 Depending on your line of work, your company may have additional important areas which merit a leadership stance.<\/p>\n The first approach to developing a leadership stance in these areas is to understand and align to your company or organization vision and mission, which will often provide a sound framework to build upon.\u00a0 In the absence of a specific vision or mission, your company may have stated principles, guidelines or a history that can shape your stance.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve studied and fully understand your organization\u2019s outlook and drive in the aforementioned areas, use them to develop your leadership stance in the important business areas surrounding your work.\u00a0 To demonstrate, if your company values diversity and inclusion as a principle, it is a necessary part of any hiring process.\u00a0 For example, a human resource leadership stance would favor interviewing all possible candidates regardless of ethnicity or sexual orientation, and would exclude favoritism such as nepotism or the \u2018good ole boy\u2019 system.<\/p>\n Lead with both a commanding and collaborative style.<\/strong>\u00a0 This requires a fine balance between speaking with authority and confidence, yet at the same time being inclusive and making a concerted effort to engage all people in your work process or project.<\/p>\n Leading with a commanding presence and style includes speaking with confidence, and without apologizing, or asking for permission to speak.\u00a0 Speaking with confidence also means waiting for the right moment, and to speak with an authority that doesn\u2019t intimidate.\u00a0 Aim for a communication style that inspires and provides a cohesiveness that encourages active participation and a feeling of \u2018we are all in this together\u2019.<\/p>\n Inspiring communication invites collaboration.\u00a0 Likewise being inclusive by asking others their opinion or to help brainstorm a solution builds collaboration within a group.\u00a0 Further, you can encourage people to collaborate by sharing a past example of success and asking for input from the responsible individual.\u00a0 For example, if building out a project timeline, highlighting Jane\u2019s successful management and delivery of a global marketing program, and then asking her to share her strategies with the group both encourages Jane and prompts collaboration with the group.<\/p>\n Without a doubt, leadership has its challenges and rewards.\u00a0 If you would like more guidance in these or other areas of leadership in your organization, please give me a call today to start an exploratory conversation of how we can work together to your success.<\/p>\n \u00a9Copyright 2015.\u00a0 Kay Fittes.\u00a0 All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you aspire to a leadership role within your organization, but the climb up the ladder seems insurmountable?\u00a0 Start with small steps!\u00a0 Leadership doesn\u2019t happen all of a sudden at the top rung.\u00a0 Developing leadership style, skills and tactics begins on the ground floor.\u00a0 Let\u2019s explore how to lay a game plan that builds to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,26,4,17],"tags":[9,27,19,6],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Qkhe-3k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.highheeledsuccess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.highheeledsuccess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.highheeledsuccess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.highheeledsuccess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.highheeledsuccess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.highheeledsuccess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473,"href":"https:\/\/blog.highheeledsuccess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.highheeledsuccess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.highheeledsuccess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.highheeledsuccess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}