3 Practical Ways to Generate Personal Leadership Traits in Your Team
What if I told you a great team leader makes others feel like they’re leaders, too? Crazy, right?
Truth is, we’re all leaders in some form. Whether it’s within our family, among friends, or at work where you have managers, supervisors, and sometimes, team leads for small groups and projects.
Most importantly, we’re all obligated to lead ourselves to success. And if you are a manager, you can help others do that for themselves, you’ll fast-track your entire company to success.
Why Focus on Your Team’s Personal Leadership Development?
In the largest leadership study conducted, 55% of leaders point to "developing the next generation of leaders" as their main challenge in 2021.
Leadership development beat out all other problems, second only to the global recession and declining economic growth — itself a contributor to next-gen leadership development.
Of course, leadership development is not just about leading others. It’s not even only about management.
If you already follow me, you know that I’m a big believer in building creativity into the work we do to help build strong team culture.
But what about how we model the way we lead ourselves?
Personal leadership is a fundamental piece in today’s organizations – especially when it comes to these new hybrid workspaces. Only 19% of CEOs said they're prepared for a digital transformation.
Yet, here we are, conducting most meetings via Zoom or Google Meet, and looking for activities to reinforce positive employee engagement and morale.
Ultimately, the hardest person to lead is ourselves.
Personal leadership is the backbone of a team that thrives within a culture of collaboration and communication and separates forward-thinking companies from others.
So here are 3 practical ways to generate personal leadership traits in your team.
1. Design Personal Leadership Development Plans with Team Members
When you take the time to empower your employees to learn and grow, you help them garner a sense of satisfaction which thwarts burnout and builds a happier team.
Building a high-quality personal development plan into yearly work plans alongside regular strategic goals and measurable objectives for employees can help. For example, include stretch assignments.
🙌🏼 What are stretch assignments?
Stretch assignments are short-term projects assigned to employees with the goal to challenge and develop their skills and abilities. Have a conversation with your employees to see where THEY might want to stretch their skills.
Before creating a personal leadership development plan, ask your employees:
✅ What skill do you want to learn or develop?
✅ How would you like to make an impact on your team?
✅ What do you want to work on? How can you practice with other colleagues?
Learning from others is a great way to stretch leadership skills. Ensure you include self-reflection and self-evaluation processes in your personal development plans for maximum results.
2. Identify Key Leadership Competencies and Do Regular Evaluations
Alongside a leadership development plan, it's important to store and track the talent capabilities of your team. Be sure to recognize leadership potential, zone in on it, and intentionally build it up in your team.
Assign a value to personal leadership traits which align with successful leadership traits. Some of these may include:
Creativity
Empathy
Flexibility | Adaptability
Good listening skills
Living core values
Strong written and verbal communication skills
The ability to build trust with others
The ability to turn information gathered into action (i.e.) practicing concept to completion with projects
Time management
😊Pssst … remember to practice these yourself. Positive energy is transferable! And when just one person on the team starts modeling the way, a positive ripple spreads out to everyone.
3. Celebrate Self-Leadership Growth Wins
Always remember that it starts from within — with you and your team and your respective and / or organizational values. From there, personal leadership pervades all those around you.
When you see development in your team's personal leadership traits, celebrate their success. Vocalize their achievements, boost their visibility, and advocate for them to others.
Loyalty is a two-way street.
When you genuinely engage and help build up your team members, you increase the retention rates of your organization. Plus, you know you're helping someone become a better leader.
Get Guidance to Generate Personal Leadership Traits in Your Team
As a business owner or CEO, it's okay to want guidance to lead your team. In fact, in the study we mentioned earlier, 48% of leaders said they want to learn more and desired validation that they were on the right path.
As a creative leadership consultant, I've been around the block with leaders like you who are eager to cultivate an inspiring workplace.
Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed this blog post and I'll see you soon with another one!
Janic 💜
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