Creating great companies and organizations requires good leadership and management. Before you can be considered a great leader, you must first develop personal leadership.

In my last article and video, I covered the five things a leader must do to have his team of employees be flexible and contribute to continuous improvement initiatives.

The leader must first cultivate self understanding and the mindset for personal development and continuous improvement. They must also have a true interest in developing and coaching people so that their engaged and empowered.

Here are some steps to take to develop the right leadership mindset for personal development.

1. Understand your role as a leader/coach. People prefer to be coached rather than managed. This is especially true for the millennials who this year are becoming the largest demographic in the workplace. People are often put into leadership roles and not given proper training or direction in terms of what’s involved in dealing with employee performance and developing people. Small business owners also tend to be very knowledgeable about their product or service but may not have had skill development in leadership and management. This can be a big impediment for growth. Knowledge and understanding of leadership and coaching people must become part of the ongoing development of the leader and not left to happenstance.
2. Learn to understand yourself either through self reflection or psychometric and behavioural assessments. These tools are like having a mirror for your inner world and will better help you understand yourself and others. A leadership skill 360 survey would also be very useful to increase self-awareness.
3. Set personal development goals for yourself. Once you better understand your role as a leader you can set goals to improve in certain functions such as listening, giving feedback, delegation, training and coaching, etc.
4. Engage a coach that will help you better understand yourself, set goals and hold you accountable.
5. Read books on leadership and attend trainings and events where you can meet other leaders who have similar interests and aspirations to develop themselves.

Start now by reviewing the list of items and information above and choose one thing that you set as a goal to develop yourself as a leader. Read my article and listen to my video on goal setting and download the goal setting template. Get going on the road to being a better leader now.

Stephen Goldberg