How to Become an Effective Leader

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By Nicole Smith
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Become an Effective Leader

As a leader you have a responsibility to your employees, group, organization, or team to lead fairly and ethically. The title "Boss" or "Manager" does not automatically make you a leader.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

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Step 1

Understand what is a leader. A leader is the appointed head of a group, a team, or organization. He or she is a charismatic person who is able to make good decisions and inspire others to reach a common goal.
Step 2

Understand what is leadership. Leadership is the power to communicate assertively and inspire others. It is the ability to influence others.
Step 3

Understand the leadership qualities. Charisma is one quality that is often mistaken as the most important leadership requirement. However, you can attain charismatic leadership more easily if you work to develop the following qualities: knowledge, trust, integrity, standards, decisiveness, assertiveness, optimism, results, vision, and an appearance of power.
Step 4

Understand the leadership styles. Just as no two snowflakes are exactly alike, no two people lead in exactly the same way. Here are the leadership styles: 1) Dictatorship, 2) "Almost" Democracy, 3) Partnership, and 4) Transformational.
Step 5

Understand the traits of a leader. 1) Positive Thought - visualize yourself and team winning 2) Positive Talk - communicating a winning attitude. Tip: Positive talk is key to helping your organization visualize a win.
Step 6

Learn how to communicate as a leader. Communication is the ability to transmit information, thoughts, and ideas so that they are satisfactorily understood by a listener or listeners. As a leader you need to communicate through verbal communication (i.e., high-impact words, buzzwords, using analogies and metaphors, anecdotes, and speeches) and non-verbal communication (i.e., exhibiting assertiveness, facial expressions, posture, hand gestures, interpersonal distance, and personal appearance).
Step 7

Learn how to empower others. Leadership has great flexibility in varying the level of empowerment based on the individual's capabilities and seriousness of the consequences of the individual's action/inaction. When assessing capabilities of others, consider the following: 1) willingness to accept empowerment, 2) training, 3) judgment, and 4) experience.
Step 8

Develop a vision. Idealistic in nature, a vision gives a sense of the differences between the present and future states of an organization. To develop a vision you need to: 1) start with aspirations, 2) do research, 3) spend some time thinking about the organization, 4) think about possible and necessary improvements, 5) think about do-ability, and 6) use your intuition.
Step 9

Communicate the vision. As a leader, you need to develop ideas and plans for an organization's future and communicate them effectively by: 1) informing management about the care of the future and 2) informing employees & others about the importance of being innovative thinkers.
Step 10

Transform into becoming a good leader. You will need to fortify yourself by keeping up with the latest leadership trends, observing other leaders (including leaders in your own chain of command and leaders in the news), and recognizing that your own unique brand of leadership will change as you gain experience.

Comments

respite said

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on 8/25/2009 Good article ... beyond all a leader must move its constituents in a direction that fulfills the organization's strategic objectives - exude enthusiasm that motivates constituents to follow - has charisma that is magnetic drawing constituents to support the corporations' vision and mission.