Leadership ability isn’t a static concept.
Understanding essential leadership characteristics is fundamental to professional growth. Unsurprisingly, developing and improving leadership skills is an essential aspect of the role because it helps you to adapt to changing business and market demands.
Whether you’re a leader looking to improve or someone wanting to move into a leadership position, here are 8 of the best ways to improve your leadership skills. These are in no particular order, but you might find it easier to start with some over others.
The Best 8 Ways to Improve Your Leadership Skills
1. Figure Out Your Strengths and Weaknesses
One of the most obvious places to start is understanding your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. For this, you’ll want some external feedback (ideally from both superiors and those you lead) combined with your reflections. Some people will find this easier than others, and a higher level of self-awareness will help.
Figure Out Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Figuring out your strengths should be easy, although this is the less useful side of this process. After all, improving weaknesses is arguably one of the best ways to get better at something – this is where external feedback will come in handy. It can be challenging to figure out where we need to improve something, but talking to others can help with this.
Knowing your areas of weakness gives you something to focus on in leadership training and development. Alternatively, you could ask for mentorship within your organisation if your weaknesses are more business-specific.
2. Learn About Leadership Styles
Depending on the school of leadership thought you’re working with, there can be lots of leadership styles and domains. For example, you might be a coercive or democratic leader, or you might favour relational leadership more heavily than contextual leadership. If these terms mean nothing to you then you’ve got a lot of learning ahead!
Whether we know it or not, we’ll all use one broad leadership style more than others. But knowing the specifics of a style, and having the self-awareness to specifically use it, will greatly improve your leadership ability. Each style has its associated behaviours and strategies for motivation and strategic thinking, and knowing which works best for you will be a massive help.
More importantly, though, knowing the differences between styles will allow you to adapt to changing business demands. For example, your team might respond best to democratic leadership, where everyone gets a say. But in demanding situations, you might need to take over with coercive or authoritative leadership. Improve Your Leadership Skills, Switching things up based on business demands will quickly make you a better leader.
3. Do Plenty of Reading
Improving your leadership style is, at the most fundamental level, a process of learning. One of the easiest ways to learn is to read, so make sure you find time to do plenty of this. Start with broad topics, such as conflict resolution, and well-known authors. As you find areas of interest, you can start digging down into the finer details of a topic.
Of course, you don’t just have to focus on books. Blogs and LinkedIn posts can be just as valuable for learning, as are online courses, seminars, presentations, and more. Considering the endless stream of content most of us engage with every day, you might as well adapt it to your needs and use it as a learning experience.
Do Plenty of Reading
It’ll help to know your leadership strengths and weaknesses before jumping into learning resources.
Ideally, you’ll focus on improving weaknesses first, although learning more about your strengths can be a motivator to continue reading. However, you approach it, aim to spend time every day absorbing information about leadership.
4. Expand Your Network
Networking is an essential aspect of pretty much any professional role, and this is no less true for leadership. You can expand your network by attending local events and trade shows, seminars, and presentations, or you can simply use a website like LinkedIn.
Let’s stick with LinkedIn, as it’s probably the easiest to use. Look for leaders, ideally in the same field as you, and connect with them. Engage with their content, look at the things they post, and share your thoughts. Once you’re confident enough, you can start sharing your posts to get people to come to you.
Whether online or in person, expanding your network is a great way to see how other leaders operate. You can see how they make decisions and deal with challenges in the workplace. Ask them questions about their strategies or share your thoughts on how you would’ve tackled a challenge and see what they think. Getting others’ input in this way is invaluable for improving your leadership style.
5. Work with a Mentor
Mentorship is a classic way to improve leadership ability, and its usefulness still holds true. Ideally, you’ll want your mentor to be from your organisation, as this will help you to learn business processes alongside company-specific leadership skills. A mentor should be in a senior position to you, too, as you’ll want someone more experienced to learn from.
This tip works for both current and potential leaders, as there’s always something to learn from someone else. If your organisation is small or there aren’t any available senior mentors, look to join a formal coaching programme instead. It’ll still be helpful, you just might miss out on business-specific education.
Whatever route you choose, be mindful of getting tunnel vision. If you stick with the same mentor for too long, you risk adopting both their good and bad practices. To avoid this, work with different mentors who have explicitly different leadership styles. Doing so will allow you to identify weaker areas and combine the best points from each mentor.
Read More: Unlock Team Success with DISC Personality Profiling
6. Take on More Responsibilities
This tip is more for potential leaders, but it works for existing leaders too. Taking on more responsibilities in the workplace is a good way to dip your toes in the water and get a feel for a leadership role. Helpfully, if you’re not a leader yet, it allows you to make decisions and practice without the risk of making big mistakes.
There’s not loads to add to this, as it’ll depend on what you’re willing to do and what your workplace will let you take on. You could try working in a new department or taking part in projects that push you out of your comfort zone. If possible, start with small tasks and build up bigger responsibilities over time.
If you’re an existing leader who’s on a training programme, extra responsibilities in work can help you put theory into practice.
Again, this could be managing another department’s project or doing a secondment in another business location. Look for options that don’t repeat your existing responsibilities but instead act as new learning experiences.
7. Target Skills for Improvement
Targeting skills builds upon a few points mentioned so far. These don’t necessarily need to be weak areas, as you can always improve already strong skills. Importantly, this process involves several leadership skills, giving you opportunities for improvement while figuring out what to improve!
Some skills you could consider improving include:
- Decision-making
- Communication
- Negotiation
- Strategic thinking
- Influencing and motivation
Target Skills for Improvement
Once you know what skill you want to improve, think about the most effective way to do so. It could be through reading mentorship, or roleplay and practice. Whatever method you use, make sure you set goals and track your progress so you’ve got some evidence of your improvement.
Of course, setting goals for some of these skills can be difficult. You might find a negotiation goal challenging, as it’s not a measurable skill. Consider fitting the goal into your wider improvement strategy, such as “I will negotiate working with a different team in the next month.”
8. Enrol in a Leadership Training Programme
Although this might seem like a fairly obvious suggestion, there are few more effective ways to improve your leadership skills than a specific training programme. A course will be useful for both existing and potential leaders, as you’ll find different syllabi suited to experience levels and leadership styles.
But does leadership training work? Provided you’ve found a good course, yes, it works. A training programme can provide you with the foundational skills needed to be a leader before teaching you more nuanced styles and strategies to excel. For more experienced leaders, courses can be a great way to learn more about current industry trends.
The most important thing a leadership training programme offers is consistency. Everyone is taught the same things in the same way, meaning there’s less chance of passing on bad behaviours. When combined with workplace mentoring, this is one of the most effective strategies for improving leadership skills.
Final Thoughts
Improving your leadership skills is a collaborative process. It’s not something you should aim to do alone because perspectives from colleagues and superiors are invaluable for making you better.
Whether you’re an existing leader or someone looking to move into a leadership position, make sure you adopt the mentality of leadership being a constant learning process. The sooner you think this way, the sooner you’ll be able to consciously improve your leadership style.
