Discover Your Most Valued Leadership Traits

13. 06. 2023

Building your leadership skills

Graham Andrewartha| Director| MCA group

Knowing your leadership skills is important whether you are a seasoned professional or just starting out in your career. Understanding your leadership style and strengths can help you achieve success in both your personal and professional life. However, identifying these traits can often be challenging without the right tools and guidance.

The key components of effective leadership include: self-awareness, emotional intelligence, communication skills, and strategic thinking. This knowledge will allow you to better navigate complex situations in the workplace and inspire your team to achieve their full potential.

Your leadership qualities are like the steering wheel on a car. Just as the steering wheel guides the direction of the vehicle, your leadership qualities guide your team towards excellent performance. This is especially true if you involve your team in giving you feedback about how they perceive your leadership skills.

The right tools and guidance mentioned above, include things like; solid mentoring, expert coaching, and a tailor made 360 degree leadership assessment process.

Mentoring

Successful mentoring relationships go through four phases: preparation, negotiating, enabling growth, and closure. These sequential phases build on each other and vary in length.

A mentor is a trusted respected senior manager who introduces you into the organisation’s culture and ways of behaving. they will provide you with the tools, guidance, support, and feedback you need to thrive in your career. They’re often someone who’s gone down the same road you’re on currently and is there to advise you on what they’ve done and what’s worked for them.

Mentors and mentees should select each other. Ask questions like:

Is it clear they have real experience walking the same path as you (or a path you’re interested in)?
Are they good at giving and receiving feedback?
Do they speak in a truthful and respectful manner?
Are they invested in their own growth and development?
Do you respect and like this person inside and outside the office?
Do they have mentors of their own? `

Expert coaching

Leadership coaching is an exquisite skill. An independent expert partners with the leader to focus on real issues in real time. I have previously discussed the nature and value of engaging a good coach in this article.

360 Degree assessment

A 360-degree assessment is a method that systematically collects feedback about an individual’s performance from peers, direct reports, colleagues, and superiors within the organization. Overall, it provides a comprehensive view of a leader’s strengths and opportunities for growth. It is perception not fact, and is best used by an expert external coach who incorporates other factors as well as the 360 data.

It is not useful as a means of helping a poor performing leader. A performance review is about the job a leader is doing, a 360 review is about a leader’s skills. The development goal is for the coach to identify what the leader should continue doing, stop doing, and start doing to be a more effective leader. See here for our outline of the 360 process.

A 360 assessment is ideal for developing an executive or management team or refining the skill set of a leader moving into a new role.