25 ways to improve your leadership effectiveness

In their book, Extraordinary Leader, Zenger and Folkman shared 25 ideas on how to improve on the attributes and behaviours of effective leaders. Given the interdependence between these approaches, improvement on one attribute can have a significantly positive effect on other attributes. These include:

1. Decide to become a great leader – it’s your choice to be either good or great at something.
2. Develop and display high personal character – its all about what you do. How you behave transforms your attitudes which in turn moulds your character
3. Develop new skills – always be learning something
4. Find a coach – it helps to focus and be accountable for behavioural change
5. Identify your strengths – this is about making yourself better at what you’re already good at.
6. Identify your weaknesses and then find ways to make them irrelevant – delegate to others whose strength is your weakness.
7. Fix fatal flaws – repair them quickly and prevent them from reappearing.
8. Increase the scope of your assignment – get out of your comfort zone
9. Connect with great role models – learn both “what to do” and “what not to do” from others
10. Learn from one’s mistakes – mistakes are a fundamental part of any learning process. Accept it and be open to learning from yours and others’ mistakes.
11. Seek to give and receive constructive feedback – accept feedback as the valid perceptions of others and seek to understand what they are saying.
12. Learn from work experiences – reflect on work experiences and the learning to be got.
13. Study the current reality the organisation faces – step back and look at through a different lens – as if you were a competitor or client
14. Learn to think strategically – getting caught up in the day-to-day, week-to-week tactical issues is not going to get you tow where you need to be.
15. Communicate with stories – it’s how we best connect to others and reduce complexity.
16. Infuse energy into every situation – bring excitement to what it is you’re doing. Show your passion.
17. Allocate time to developing others – this is about the “law of harvest”. Take the time and make the effort to train and develop others. The returns are infinite.
18. Weld your team together – build relationships with your team members. Get to know each other – work and play as a team.
19. Build dashboards to monitor leadership effectiveness – identify measures that matter and then measure them.
20. Plan and execute a change strategy – make change happen. Nothing is forever. Focus on what needs to be changed, then make it happen.
21. Become a teacher – the best way to learn is to teach.
22. Observe what high performers do and replicate their behaviour – model your behaviour on those great people around you.
23. Volunteer in the community – you make a life by what you give and a living by what you get (Churchill)
24. Always be articulating your vision – always focus on what the future vision is. Where are we going, What do we need to do and How are we going to do it.
25. Prepare for your next role – think, plan and prepare ahead.            

Reflecting on the above – which of these ideas are you currently working on and how successful have you been? What else could you do to ensure you continuously improve on your leadership effectiveness. Please share whatever other ideas you have or what has worked for you.