15 Components of Building Leadership Skills
Is your career as a solopreneur directing you down a path of expanding influence? Do you feel that there’s a path ahead of you that you’re being called to go down professionally? Then the keys to unlocking your potential could be Developing your habits and honing your skills as a leader.
On the journey of our career, regardless if you walk the path as an employee or strike out on your own as an Independent Beauty professional, There will be a time when developing your leadership will be the pieces of the puzzle that can drive your career forward. As you succeed more in life and in your career, you will find the urge to share your knowledge, skills and competencies with others. Working on these key leadership skills personally is their foundation piece to experiencing more success for yourself.
The 15 Key Components
1-Habits - They keep you going. Work towards achievement. Developing routine can help you maximize your autopilot mode instead of being unconscious to your daily achievements, or lack of completion. Strong, well developed habits can simplify the noise of negative distractions/temptations that work against you.
Leadership Skill Daily Habits List
Reflect Daily - This is how you train self-awareness
Strategize Daily - Exercise forethought
Learn Daily - What you put into your brain is how you will see the world
Find Possibility Daily - Train yourself to listen and see the opportunities
Execute Daily - Task achievement comes from a diligent approach to consistent execution
Give of Yourself Daily - What do you contribute to all of your relationships in your life? Master the art of gift-giving. It shows you care.
Write daily - Writing is a form of communication that can be incredibly profound. Not only for others, but yourself too. Daily practice can become one of the most important methods of reaching people. Try Journaling, blogging, texting, praise notes, thank you notes, emailing, captioning posts, or just writing
Praise Daily- Tell people around you the positive and beautiful things about them. It makes huge differences in people's lives.
2-Big Picture Thinking - Develop the ability to see the greater good, the whole instead of the one and long term as well as short term. This skill can help you become stronger in plan & goal assessment as well as select direction.
3- Selflessness - Practice Selflessness in your thinking, behaviors and beliefs. It’s a level of emotional maturity that speaks to consciousness in all you do. Master the ‘5 levels of Consciousness’ to expand your emotional maturity and intelligence into converting victim mentality into a servant’s heart.
4- Personable Interfacing - Every interaction leaves an imprint on those around you. You’re either influencing others (positively or negatively) or you’re being influenced (positively or negatively).
5- Genuine Curiosity - Be authentic in your engagement with others. Lean in, be present and actually ENGAGE. Listen with the utmost curiosity for others' needs and beliefs. Truly understand what they know and how they live. Their life’s experience is unique to them and there’s lessons in those experiences that can enhance you. Follow the rule of listening to understand, not judge and answer back. Ask questions to empathize on deeper levels of their individual experience. Being understood is a fundamental need of humankind.
6-Self-Awareness - Begin the work to move from ‘me-centricity’ to ‘self-centricity’. This is the beginning of understanding one's self. Inner and outer reflection is an all important necessity to the ingredient list of leadership skills. Once you work on yourself and learn how to navigate your thinking, respond vs. react, manage your behaviors and words, release guarded anxiety, get out of the comfort zone, practice self-discipline, adhere to self-regulation, become self accountable (not self-blame) and convert self-doubt to self effacing humor and sympathy….You’ll begin to self-actualize. Your leadership consciousness will expand and you’ll begin to influence others positively.
7- Establish Self-Definitions without limitations- Once you master self-centricity and begin to influence others, you’ll become known for something. It will become natural for self definitions to become part of your personal brand. Others will see your contributions to your groups and community, potential humanitarian causes and the world and they will recognize that It’s leadership at a whole new level. You will earn the right to lead before you even have a title to lead.
8 - Find Purpose - Think through your story and how you’ve arrived at the place you're at today. As you develop your contribution level to others and yourself, you’ll function at a much more enlightened level. This is irreversible. Once you understand this level, it will be very difficult or even impossible to move backwards. On this level of leadership and contribution, having a purpose will be as critical to you as food and water. This is a self-actualized state and one will be able to see in every interaction, a clearer purpose. One will search for purpose in all things… sometimes conveyed as opportunities. You will see yourself in a whole new light as will others.
9 - Initiate Self-evolution - Once the pieces are in place, initiate self-evolution. Not necessarily redefining oneself, but rather a conscious intention of approaching things with a new set of eyes. A heightened level of emotional intelligence, as it were. The realization that you're not a victim of chance, but that you can give better chances to not only yourself but to all those around you, for their endeavors. Study everything, Read and pour into yourself at this level. Try everything and be fearless in the trying.
10 - Be Willing to Fail - In setting the path to your goals, there will be significant failure. Understand that Failure is the practice for forward movement, not perfection. Don't hold on to failure emotionally. Instead, Self-reflect on the reasons for the failure, re-plot the course, put away the feelings around it and try again, fearlessly. Be resilient in adversity.
11 - Get Rid of Objective Limitations - Your mind is like a smartphone. When you learn new things, it’s like downloading an app onto your phone. Some apps are great and used often (almost daily). Some apps are silly and unnecessary and some are like viruses. That's what an objective limitation is like. It’s toxic to you, mind, body and soul. Learn to recognize what an “objective limitation” is. See the difference between self-affirming language and self-doubting language. Become aware of when the inner voice is directing you, not blind to it. Learn to take a pause, think it through, filter the belief or thought with these questions;
1 - Where did this thought/belief come from?
2 - What emotion is behind this thought/belief and does it belong there?
3 - What is the intention behind the thought/belief
4 - Is there objective truth behind the thought/belief
5 - Reconstruct a new belief/ thought that helps not hurts
6 - Self-affirm by reinforcing the belief daily until ingrained
12 - Build a dream team around you, internally and externally - Add to your own growth by seeking people to enhance you. Everyone serves to teach you something. Be open to learning at all times, without restraint. We all have people that we influence and we should all have people that influence us. Choose wisely. Ask for what you want and fulfill your part.
13 - Collaboration openness - It goes without saying that two minds are better than one. It is a sign of confidence and security when one collaborates without jealousy and negative competitiveness. Team is designed for magnification… of all things. When a team that has a similar cause and purpose unites, it will always yield incredible results. True leaders ( not born leaders), will ignite that with their abilities and thinking.
14 - Never Judge and act with Empathy - We’re wired to categorize things that we may not understand or have limited knowledge of. Lack of understanding, limited beliefs and categorization is behind judgemental behavior and thinking. We make, either situational attributions or personality attributions* ( Psychology Today, May 11, 2018). Situational attributions result from assessing the reason for something coming from a situation that happened. Personality Attribution comes from a person’s character. This way of assessing is longer and sticks more. When we decide it’s someone’s character, morality or who they are, it’s much more difficult to move from the judgement. Making situational attributions means separating the situation is what isn't working, therefore, it can be altered, and acceptable. Decide if it’s the action or situation that you’re judging vs. the person. Examine your style of attributing before you judge. Knowing that reason and effort given to the situation can lessen and improve the challenge. Slow down your automatic judgments. Take your time to understand and empathize. Never jump to immediate judgments of anything before you buy yourself some time to think it through with empathy.
15 - Be willing to do more for no tangible gain - Operate at a seemingly impossible level. Be willing to do more at a higher capacity. Leaders who function at this level of operation understand that leadership is the long game. Strike for balance but never make excuses as to why you “can’t”. Push for it, you can achieve more than you think. Maximize and optimize your time, not limit yourself with reasons why there's not enough time. Create your master schedule in the 168 hours of time that you have per week. In an organized fashion, Schedule your tasks. Schedule your self care and rejuvenation and schedule your personal time in order to use the hours set aside to produce, perform, function and create, which in turn, becomes accomplishment.