You Can Be a Leader: Leadership Principles to Achieve Excellence

So You Want To Be A Leader

Why are leadership books being published at a rate of a dozen per week? The answer is simple. Leadership is highly sought after in the workplace to improve profits, productivity, and employee retention.

What makes finding good leader so difficult? Leadership is hard to pin down, it is flexible, and it can be fleeting. Required leadership traits are almost impossible to define for every situation. Making things even more difficult is certain styles are not transferable to different work environments.

Are there are some simple leadership rules to improve your everyday life and performance at work? I believe there are...but first you need to be introspective and ask yourself some questions to see if you want to become a leader.

So you want to lead? The very first question you need to ask yourself is: Is it worth it? What do I mean by worth it? I mean, once you take on a leadership position, you are no longer one of the guys. Conversations that at one time were light and funny now take on a whole new meaning. Office politics, lobbying by your employees, and you leading the topic of conversation will become your new norm. Very little will be the same prior to you moving up in the world. Every conversation may now have an underlying theme or hidden agenda. Maybe not even hidden; if you are perceptive, it becomes very clear what people want when they talk to you. One of the negative side effects of this is you could feasibly start to over analyze every conversation. Occasionally you may be having a normal conversation and misread it as office politics. Some of the freedoms and enjoyment of casual conversation have now become casualties of leadership.

The first time you are the target of one of a lobbying conversation it may catch you off guard. When this first happened to me, it wasn't until driving home after work that I realized just how much one of my soldiers had lobbied me for preferential treatment earlier during the day. I found this very disconcerting. Why didn't this soldier just let his performance speak for itself instead of lobbying me? Insecurity? Wanting to get ahead at all costs? The personal reasons for behavior like this are too numerous to count.

As a leader, your challenge is to behave like you are having a normal conversation while trying to find merit in what your employee is telling you. Maybe there is a nugget of knowledge hidden in the conversation or you can find some insight into how this employee thinks and operates.

Watch how good leaders interact during conversations. Really analyze how they behave and speak. This will give you some good tips on how to lead your own conversations.

Next ask yourself: Do I want to accept a leadership position and all of responsibility it entails? Long hours are the norm for most leaders. I find it nearly impossible to convey how this will affect your life. You need the first-hand experience of an angry or frustrated spouse, disappointed children because you missed a significant event in their lives, and not having time for yourself. As you think about becoming a leader, realize what makes you happy. Spending time with your family and kids? You can balance this, but only to a point. At the end of the day, it's your life and your decision on how you want to spend your waking hours.

You can never let your frustration about working long hours show at work. You will need plenty of fake motivation for expected and unexpected meetings, phone calls, emails that require immediate action, and other distractions that always seem to occur near the end of the day. If you show your frustration with the hours and workload, your employees will follow your lead. Your actions as a leader are infectious. Remember, many of your employees will emulate your behavior. I believe the old adage Lead by example will always be true.

You should do your best to shield your employees from unnecessary late evenings in the office. A good leader will always try to be the backstop and shield their employees from any morale lowering long hours.