1. Trade Minds With the People You Want to Influence
In order to lead others, you must understand your followers. You must understand what their goals are, so you can work towards them together. Invest your time in getting to know your employees or the group of people you'd like to influence. Once people feel understood, they are more likely to trust you and view you as fair. Trustfulness and fairness are important traits to have when becoming a successful leader.
If you want to influence others, you must get to know them personally. You cannot change someone's mind or influence them if they feel you have nothing in common with them or do not know their values, morals, etc.
2. Think: What is the Human Way to Handle This?
Things will go wrong. This is a part of life. Not everything will work out as planned and you must be able to improvise.
So when something goes wrong (and it will) stop, take a deep breath, and think to yourself, "What is the best way to handle this as a team?". When you're in a leadership position, you are thinking selflessly about the team and not just about yourself.
Great leaders throughout history have always been able to improvise and adjust in times of crisis. You do this by staying positive, remaining calm, and believing that you and the team can get through anything. As a leader, it's important to instill grit and perseverance within your people.
3. Think Progress, Believe in Progress, Push for Progress
Think big and dream big. Who do you admire? Who would you like to be 5 or 10 years from now? Once you determine who you'd like your "future-self" to be, look for role models who closely resemble this. Once you determine this, study them and study their behaviors and habits.
Your big dreams will inevitably carry over to your people. Create lofty goals for yourself and the team and execute them.
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."
-John Quincy Adams
4. Self-awareness: Take Time to Confer With Yourself
Take time to self-evaluate. It's important to be aware of your habits to ensure yourself and the team are on track to accomplish the short-term and long-term goals.
Ask yourself:
How are you doing as a leader?
Are you creating an open-dialogue environment where people can speak freely?Are you allowing feedback not just for others, but for yourself as well?
Constantly see how you can improve as a leader and as a human being. What are you doing to better yourself every day? By doing this weekly, daily, or quarterly, you're holding yourself accountable as the leader of the group.
