So, You Want To Be A Leader? Begin Your Preparation Now

Whether you are aiming for a leadership position in your current organisation or aspiring to start your own venture, thorough preparation is essential. Below is an outline of the key steps that aspiring leaders can take to build a solid foundation for their leadership journey.

Develop Strong Self Awareness

Effective leaders are authentic and humble. Before stepping into a leadership role, it is crucial to fully understand your natural strengths, values, and areas where you have low experience or interest and that will require development or support from others with expert skills. This knowledge will help you identify the style of leader you will authentically be, your communication preferences and the support structure you will need to build around you to develop new skills.

A Commitment to Continuous Learning and Development

When leading, it’s important to accept that you are never the finished article. You’ll want to create a culture of continuous learning within your team and that starts with you. Start investing in your own education and skills development through internal/external workshops, formal education, coaching/mentoring, and self-study. Stay updated with industry trends and leadership models focusing on the early days both on breadth and depth in those that fascinate you.

Gain Experience of Situational Leadership

Originally defined by Hersey and Blanchard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theory

Hersey and Blanchard define situational leadership as ‘adapting leadership style to the ability and willingness of the individual or group they are attempting to lead or influence’. Look for opportunities in your existing role to work in different situations where you can observe and learn the situations you will face when you secure your first role. Working with a wide variety of different personalities and across different teams and functions will give you insights into the practical challenges leaders need to adapt too. In doing this preparatory work it will equip you to talk about real life situations where you can illustrate your ability to adapt your own natural emotions, thinking, behaviours and solutions to achieve successful outcomes. Developing the emotional intelligence of adaptation on an ongoing basis is a fundamental skill good leaders develop over time.

Start Building a Powerful Support Network

High Performing Leaders have a network of “go to” mentors, coaches, advisors, peers, subject matter experts, creative thinkers, confidents, and role models whose leaderships styles, values, and expertise they trust and admire. Even before securing your first step on the ladder of your leadership career, you can be on the look out for such people with whom you will instantly resonate. These people will encourage and support you from day one and in turn one day in the future you will be able to return the favour to others who follow along the same path.

Develop Exceptional Communication Skills

As a future leader you will need to inspire the rest of your team and other stakeholders. Powerful verbal, nonverbal and written communication skills using all mediums at your disposal and to a wide variety of audiences will be essential for your success. Within your current role while waiting for a position look for any opportunity to practice communicating with as many different audiences and stakeholders that you can find on as many subjects as possible. Solicit feedback from trusted colleagues on how you did on these occasions. The more challenging the situation and the audience the better as this is great skill building and gets you used to stepping out of your comfort zone. In addition, put your radar up when you are in meetings or watching others present face to face or online and note who are the exceptional clear and inspirational communicators and what did they do that got your attention.In my opinion Stephen Bartlett is a very clear communicator take a look at some of his online clips and also observe how he quickly distills his thoughts and coveys these on Dragons Den.

Time Management Balancing Operational and Strategic Tasks

You are going to be extremely busy in your first days when you step into a leadership role. None of the above will happen if you end up getting stuck in spreadsheets day after day. One of my clients was eight weeks into a new role managing a junior team of 15 people, he was completely overwhelmed with the number of operational process issues to solve, individual performance issues he had inherited, morale problems along with stakeholder requirements and making time to learn a new company culuture, many complex systems and operating procedures himself. We developed a plan of action to structure this growing to do list into a more time lined plan and a structured work week that allowed time to spend with team members plus some alone uninterrupted time to think and put more strategic improvement projects in place. If you can develop a systematic way of working within your current role to balance multiple demands this will have become a valuable habit to utilise when you progress into not only planning your own workload but that of a team. More detailed information about working as a systematic leader can be found on Chapter 7 of The Evergreen Executive available from Amazon https://amzn.to/3yhkISu.

How do you manage your time effectively? is often an interview question so having a powerful practical answer ready illustrating how you already are steeped in this skill within your current role will impress. Some people create planning documents via excel/word/PowerPoint/ASANA/Trello boards it does not matter if it works for you, and you are able to communicate your plans to others.

In conclusion there is a lot you can be doing in preparation for securing your first leadership role right now. Many clients who have taken this approach and secured the leadership jobs of their dreams much sooner than they expected.

In conclusion, the seeds of a successful leader can be planted at any time. Your aspirations to become a leader could start now, in fact we recommend that it does. Don’t wait for the leadership role to become available or to start in a leadership position. If you do this, you may be unprepared with a lack of war stories for the interview or you may miss the opportunity to develop yourself in the right way. Embracing this leadership now approach will give you increased energy for your current position and maximise the effectiveness of your leading when you get that dream role.  

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