Tools for Developing and Improving Your Leadership Skills

If you’re an entrepreneur who has purchased a business, you might find yourself thrust into a variety of leadership roles — leading a business, leading a team, or leading a community — without any training.

To ensure that your business thrives and that your employees take direction from you without complaint, you might be best served by investing a little time and energy into improving your leadership skills.

Let’s look at a few strategies you can employ.

1. Roll Up Your Sleeves

Too many managers and leaders hide behind their desks, truly unaware of what their employees do on a daily basis. But the best managers are willing to get their hands dirty, so to speak.

Shadowing or working alongside your employees gives you a better understanding of their roles, which can help you better guide them as a leader. For example, if you’ve been frustrated because Terri in Accounting hasn’t been turning in her weekly financial reports on Fridays, you might be surprised at how much work she has to do at the end of the week. When you see firsthand what she’s doing, you might adjust your expectations or your deadline.

2. Acknowledge Your Weaknesses

If you haven’t managed a team before or gone to business school, you likely have some shortcomings when it comes to your leadership skills. Don’t be embarrassed by this fact, but instead, be honest with yourself about where you’re lacking.

Once you identify one or more aspects that need improvement, you can get a plan for how to develop those skills. For example, if you realize that communication isn’t your strong suit, you could make an effort to regularly tell employees when they’re doing a great job. Seeing how they blossom under your compliments might encourage you to keep on with the positive vibes.

3. Boost Your Knowledge

There are hundreds of books, blogs, magazines, and online courses designed to help with leadership skills. Invest time, even just 10 minutes a day, to further your education. 

If you learn best by watching videos, here’s a playlist of TED Talks about leadership.

4. Understand Your Leadership Style

The more you understand about how you lead, the better you can lead. There are online leadership style quizzes that can help you see how you make decisions, encourage employees to get their work done, and provide feedback.

5. Create a Sense of Community

While yes, you’re in charge as the business owner, it’s your employees who need to come together for the greater good of the company. It’s your job to create a sense of cohesion so that your employees are excited about contributing.

Community stretches beyond the walls of the conference room. Create a sense of camaraderie by hosting informal gatherings after work so you can get to know your team more personally. Make time for play so your staff can rest their brains, and they’ll be refreshed and ready to give their roles everything they’ve got!

6. Ask for Feedback

You can’t know how you’re doing as a leader without the feedback of the people you’re leading. While it may initially be intimidating for them to come to you with criticism or suggestions, if you receive feedback openly and make changes, your employees will soon understand that you value their opinions.

If you’re not getting the response you want when you ask for feedback, consider an anonymous feedback option, like a suggestion box. That way, if employees are embarrassed to give you feedback to your face, they can do so incognito. 

7. Make Change Happen

We’ve all worked for bosses who seemed to listen to our suggestions…but then did nothing to implement them. Don’t be that boss.

Instead, be honest about what you can and cannot do. If an employee suggests offering a yoga class before work begins, and you can make that happen, do everything you can to make this idea a reality. Even making one employee’s suggestion come true can inspire others to come to you with their own ideas.

8. Learn to Have Difficult Conversations

Being a leader isn’t always going to be fun. You’ll have to deal with disciplining habitually tardy employees, mediating disagreements between employees, and even firing people from time to time.

The key is to have these difficult conversations with compassion but also to be honest and direct. Remember why you’re in this situation. Let’s imagine you’re firing someone because they stole sensitive data from the company. If you’re a softie, it might be tempting to take back your words if your employee starts sobbing and telling her sad story. As heartless as it seems, you’re making a business decision. You have rules, and you abide by them. Emotions need not come into the equation.

Don’t be hard on yourself after difficult situations like these. It’s all part of being a leader.

9. Look to Tomorrow…and 10 Years from Now

One of the difficult parts of being a good leader is keeping an eye on the present and short-term as well as the long-term. That means managing your day-to-day responsibilities and planning for the future.

Having the big picture in mind for where you want to take your company may necessitate changes today. If you want to expand into new territories with your products in five years, you will need to develop a marketing strategy to reach new customers, assess the competition, and hire more salespeople to cover the new territories. This will take time, so always be planning.

10. Find a Leadership Mentor

It may be helpful to connect with someone who is both an entrepreneur and a seasoned business leader to advise and coach you to become a better leader. 

If this person is willing, schedule regular meetings to ask questions, take notes, and learn.

There are also professional leadership coaches you can work with if you want to step up your game even more. It may be helpful to get an outsider’s perspective on how you’re managing your team, and a professional coach can give you pointers to course-correct when you’re stumbling.

11. Practice Active Listening

How good of a listener are you? When an employee speaks, are you engaged in fully listening, or are you already crafting your response?

Active listening is a skill you can develop. It involves being fully present when someone is speaking to you, and trying to understand their perspective (rather than viewing the situation from your own lens of experience).

You can show someone that you’re listening by your body language: lean forward without your arms crossed. Nod. Maintain eye contact. 

You can also show you’re engaged by summarizing what you heard: “So what I hear you saying is that you’re unhappy in your current role because of the workload. Is that correct?”

Don’t interrupt when someone speaks to you, and if you feel defensive about the conversation, aim to keep your emotions to the side.

12. Know When to Step Aside

Just because you’re the business owner doesn’t mean you have to manage your employees. If leadership doesn’t come naturally to you or you don’t have the desire to take on the role, hire a skilled manager for the job.

Keep in mind that even if you hire someone else to manage your business, you’ll still need to manage that person and make key decisions. Consider it a partnership between you and the manager. He or she can take on the daily tasks of running your business, and you will be consulted on important decisions.

Conclusion

Good leaders aren’t born; they’re made. And even if you haven’t spent decades managing employees or making big business decisions, you absolutely can learn how to do it all. Just be willing to learn, open to feedback, and ready to improve your leadership skills.

And remember: part of being a good leader is taking care of yourself. Remember to balance your workload with a little self-care so that you can succeed long-term as a leader.