10 Leadership Goals That Will Help Your Business Reach Sky Highs!
The roles of a leader are multiple and varied. They certainly are accountable and responsible for the juniors and the other members of their team. Let’s Find Out About Leadership Goals.
As a leader, it is quite necessary that you portray to your team the importance and value of setting goals. With clear and defined objectives, employees can be more efficient and productive within the organization. A leader is expected to set an excellent example by developing their own goals.
In this article, we shall be discussing why leadership goals are essential and why every leader should have these goals on their way toward success.
Key Points To Remember
- Every organization leader can improve their personal leadership skills.
- As a leader, you must set operational leadership development plans that you can keep a track of.
- Leadership development goals mainly focus on improving relationships and communications.
Importance Of Having Good Leadership Goals
Being a leader can not be defined as just another position in the hierarchy, a better paycheck, or more responsibilities; it is more of a skill set that you need to gradually develop. Every leader, despite their experience level and skills, will always have some room for more growth; however, the thought of setting goals and achieving them in itself may be confusing.
There are some primary development goals that you must strive for. Once you strive towards your identified goals, you can work towards developing a plan of action that will help you accomplish them and track the progress you make.
10 Leadership Development Goals To Ensure An Optimistic Work Environment
After digging through the internet and looking for first-hand experiences, we took the opinion of multiple leadership experts on how leadership development goals are essential in an organization.
You must always remember that the leadership skills you wish to develop must center upon specific skills and expertise levels.
Here are the leadership development goals that you must incorporate within yourself in order to be a successful leader.
Be An Active Listener
For a junior or a fresher, it is very important that their thoughts and opinions are heard and acted upon. Active listening is one of the topmost qualities of a good leader.
An efficient leader exercises a culture where there is a smooth flow of communication and listens actively to what their juniors have to say, regardless of their designation.
If you wish to become a successful leader, make sure that you have good listening skills. Participate more in the conversations and refrain from adding anything till the time the speaker is giving their input.
This quality also has a visible effect on the rest of the members of the team. If they are confident that their leader is listening to them, they will be more confident to speak up, which will promote a healthy and efficient work environment.
Offer Constructive Feedbacks That Will Help In Facilitating Growth
Organizations that cater to clear communication and growth of employees generally do so with the help of feedback. An auspicious quality of a leader is to provide constructive feedback to their team that focuses mostly on improvement, not mistakes.
Providing feedback is a lot more than just reviewing the behavior of individuals. When correctly operated, it helps in driving growth and development.
As a leader, you must always look forward to creating a work environment where your team feels relatively confident to receive feedback and not be scared of it.
“LEARN TO GIVE FEEDBACK IN A WAY THAT REINFORCES AND AFFIRMS THE THINGS THAT PEOPLE ARE DOING WELL SO THAT THEY CONTINUE TO DO THOSE THINGS, BUT ALSO DEVELOP A SKILL SET WHERE YOU CAN GIVE FEEDBACK AROUND PLACES THAT NEED TO BE OPTIMIZED IN A WAY THAT A PERSON IS LEFT WITH A SENSE OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO GROW OR [FEELS] INSPIRED THAT THEY CAN DO BETTER.”
Joey Klien, CEO, and Founder, Conscious Transformation.
Be More Welcoming Towards Growth And Change
To be an efficient leader, you first need to stop assuming that you are the only one that knows everything. That is totally impossible.
Being open to change makes you stand on better grounds to run a business. Therefore, you must always set leadership goals where you are more open to changes, adaptable, and more welcoming to learning.
This is even more important at the time of economic restructuring, where you may require to pivot the resources or the business operations to house the changes in the economy.
Keeping an open-minded approach towards new opportunities and new ways of operating business
will help not just you but also your company to grow smoothly over time.
Work On Your Emotional Intelligence
The best of the leaders all around the world have incredibly high emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence comprises five major components –
- Self awareness
- Social awareness
- Self regulations
- Motivation
- Social regulation
These traits help in decision making, managing stress, and setting goals – which are all the appreciated qualities of a successful leader.
While some leaders are just generally gifted with high EQ, some need to work hard to improve it over time.
Klein added,
“EVERY LEADER SHOULD HAVE A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS AND A PLAN TO DEVELOP THEIR CAPACITY FOR IT.”
Work Towards Efficiency
Leaders are often expected to manage multiple conflicting responsibilities in which time management plays a key factor. You need to identify ways in which you can become more efficient, not just for your individual responsibilities but also for the operations of the business that you are associated with.
Once you become more efficient, you will have access to more time to spend in order to develop any other skills or to accomplish other tasks.
Build Dynamism Within Teams
Some of the best organizations around the world are inclusive, diverse and comprises unique individuals from around the world. The quality of a good leader is to identify the employees that are best suited for a job and build a team accordingly.
Klein mentioned that it is a natural habit of leaders to hire people that incorporate the same qualities as them. However, dynamism within the work culture is extremely important for businesses to thrive.
“BUSINESS LEADERS NEED TO GET GOOD AT EVALUATING IF AN INDIVIDUAL IS RIGHT TO FULFILL THE OUTCOME THAT THE BUSINESS HAS WHILE BEING A GREAT FIT FOR THE CULTURE”
Klein added again.
“THE MORE ECLECTIC TEAMS THAT THEY CAN BUILD THAT ARE STILL IN COHERENCE WITH EACH OTHER, THE BETTER.”
Lead By An Example
The foundation and culture of every business take the first step with its leadership. If you want to be a successful leader and want to have a business that practices teamwork and open communication, you need to embody those traits. Similarly, if you are setting a poor example, that will then follow within the organization, and you will have no chance to complain.
For instance, if you do not have the habit of listening to your teammates or paying attention to what they have to say, you surely must not expect them to behave any differently, either. Your team will be a reflection of what you are to them as a leader.
“As a leader, you should lead during this time with exemplary actions,”
suggested by Daniel Snow, CEO and Founder, The Snow Agency.
“YOU SHOULD LEAD BY EXAMPLE AND NOT ILLUSTRATE HOW TURBULENT TIMES MAY BE AFFECTING YOU ON A PERSONAL LEVEL.”
Be A Mentor First
Good leaders are good mentors first. You must never forget that your team looks up to you for learning, counseling, and other guidance; therefore, you must always make healthy mentorship a part of the leadership goals that you wish to attain. There is a Rhombus University’s Christian psychology degree online program that you can take to further enhance your leadership skills.
The co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Tutor, the People, Eliza Nimmich, had said that the best leaders personally communicate with each member of the team to have a better understanding of their career goals.
“You should lead by example and not illustrate how turbulent times may be affecting you on a personal level.”
Nimmich suggested.
“Give them regular feedback and advice after your meeting to help them along the way. Show them that you care about their personal development by taking the time to listen to them and with new opportunities to challenge them.”
Be More Appreciating, Recognizing, And Empathetic For Your Team
Every good leader will know that the biggest asset for any organization is the employees. Therefore, it is important to show gratitude and appreciation for the team even more when they reach new milestones.
If the employees are well satisfied and content with their job, productivity will automatically skyrocket while majorly reducing employee turnover.
“Recognize your staff publicly so they know that they are valued and appreciated,”
Snow added.
“Acknowledge that all of the work they are doing is not taken for granted and they are a very important asset to your company. Have a companywide meeting where staff can give a shoutout to each other on who has been helping them in every way possible or who has gone above and beyond.”
Nurture Honesty, Transparency And Accountability
One of the greatest qualities of any business leader is to be transparent and honest with the team and take fair accountability for their actions. To be transparent, honest, and accountable, as a leader, you would require humility.
In order to become humble, you must prepare yourself to accept your faults and mistakes and always keep an open mind to hear your customers out and listen to other employees with an open mind.
These traits nurture trust between employees and management, which is an utmost necessity at times of uncertainty.
“While turbulent times can clearly affect every industry for better or worse, you need to be able to give employees notice and be transparent with your plans so that everyone is aligned on your vision”
Snow added.
Why Do Good Leadership Goals Matter?
Good leadership goals bring forward some really commendable differences in the workplace. Without effective leadership goals, the morale and productivity of the employees will inevitably suffer.
Do not be afraid to make leadership mistakes. It is way more common than you can imagine. Instead, learn from your mistakes. Accepting your mistakes and learning from them is one of the best leadership traits that you can incorporate in yourself. If at all you have made a mistake.
Whether you have developed your leadership skills over time or were just blessed with them, room for growth is always available. The more you push yourself to become a better leader, the more you will get to learn that there is so much that you didn’t really know about. This way, you can gradually discover what skills you lack and work accordingly on them to become a more effective leader over time.
How To Construct Leadership Goals?
To become an effective leader, you need to first realize that each person has different strengths and weaknesses; hence, the leadership goals for different leaders must be more specified and individually customized based on each leader.
You may consider this simple process to create and track down your progress on your individual leadership goals.
Identify Your Personal Strengths And Weaknesses
While writing down your leadership goals, your first step should always be identifying your personal strengths and weaknesses as a leader. If you feel like you are struggling to find your own weaknesses, you may as well get feedback from your team or coworkers.
It is way easier for the ones that you work with to identify your weaknesses, as we humans often tend to overlook our own faults.
Choose An Area Of Improvement
Once you have found out your weakness or weaknesses, you must focus on improving those areas as soon as possible. However, your focus must be on improving on one or two traits at a time.
Keep A Track Of Your Progress
The goals may be long-term or short-term; you must always keep a record of the progress while achieving them. You may also break down the long-term goals into short-term objectives that are fairly easy to track.
The Bottom Line
Leadership qualities define the culture of an organization. Therefore, leadership goals also play a crucial role in determining how an organization operates.
If you want to practice a healthy working atmosphere, you must take leadership goals seriously. This will not only help you in your own betterment in the longer run but also help in reducing employee turnover and promoting an optimistic work environment.
Thank you for staying with me for this long. I hope this article was helpful to you. If there is anything more that you need to add, feel free to drop a comment below.
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upasana sarbajna
Upasana is a budding journalist who has a keen interest in writing. She considers writing as therapeutic and is most confident when she writes. She is passionate about music, movies and fashion. She writes in a way that connects with the audience in a personal level. She is optimistic, fun loving and opinionated.
