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5 challenges you can face to improve your leadership skills

To grow as a leader, you must personally challenge yourself every day, such as doing something you haven’t done before, improving your skills, and developing new attitudes, behaviors, and habits. To improve your leadership skills, you must challenge yourself to be better. You must set expectations for yourself and others. It would help if you dealt with tough times because they make you stronger and more successful.

By shashank shekharPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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1. Build New Relationships and Strengthen Current Ones

It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out in your career or an established leader; you must build new relationships and strengthen current ones. Ask your colleagues good questions so you can get them to open up and bond with them.

Great relationships start with great questions.

Creating positive energy is the key to growing relationships. It’s about being more curious. To build relationships, you must show kindness and be emphatic. Don’t push your agenda.

You go further as a leader when you form solid relationships with your colleagues. Remember that friendships at work and in life are crucial to your success as a leader.

2. Do Things That Matter

It’s easy to be sucked into unimportant meetings and unnecessary tasks. As a leader, you must protect your precious time and mental energy. Every meeting you attend should align with your goals, the team’s goals, and the company’s goals.

Your time must be guarded carefully to reach your goals.

Being a successful leader is about maximizing your productivity and avoiding the time sucks or things that are a waste of time. To ensure you do things that matter, you should consider activities such as time blocking your calendar, asking for an agenda for every meeting you attend, and being ruthless with your email.

3. Making Learning a Daily Habit

Learning is more than obtaining knowledge. It’s about unlearning, learning, and relearning. It’s about being ready to learn something new every day.

It can be easy to get lost in the weeds with your duties as a leader that you lose track of learning and becoming a better leader. Seek out a mentor to learn from and become a mentor. Coach a team. Education is critical to your development.

When you make learning a daily habit, you become more resilient, quickly responding to challenges thrown your way, and become better at your job. Don’t get caught up in your day-to-day responsibilities as a leader that you don’t make time to learn something new.

4. Say “No” Without Burning Bridges

To grow as a leader, you must know how to eloquently say “no” to others, so you keep the mental well-being of yourself and your team intact. You must set healthy boundaries and manage workloads appropriately. Don’t fall for myths about workplace burnout.

There is only so much one person can do every day. It’s okay to say “no” because we all reach a breaking point for managing things. Take time to learn how to say “no” when it needs to be said. Focus on your priorities and offer an alternative for “no,” so you keep the door open for the future.

5. Listen More and Speak Less

“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.” — Doug Larson, an American journalist

Get into a habit of listening first and speaking second. Become a great listener because the better listener you are, the better communicator you are. Leadership is about good communication, so you must become a more effective communicator.

Remember that listening is more than hearing; it’s about paying attention to others, showing respect, and gleaning information that can help you later in other conversations. Listening is an invaluable skill that you must master as a leader, so you grow relationships with your team, boss, and colleagues.

Bringing It All Together

Take action to challenge yourself today. Challenging yourself means facing fear head-on. It means stepping into the unknown. It means taking a hard look at yourself in the mirror.

There are five things you should do to challenge yourself. Build new relationships, strengthen current ones, do things that matter, and make learning a daily habit. Say “no” without burning bridges and listen more and speak less.

You can advance your leadership skills when you reach a point of discomfort. What are you doing today to challenge yourself? Are you doing something you haven’t done? Are you looking at your habits and seeing where you can improve?

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shashank shekhar

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