The Christmas decorations are away, and that leadership book you bought last year is calling you from across the office to be opened.
You are ready to take your new leadership mindset to the next level and claim the success you want this year.
These are all logical and natural thoughts as we start a new year.
The question is, what exactly is your plan to proactively manage your career and development and set yourself up for success in a business landscape that is constantly changing?
The truth is many people don’t have a plan they work and yet consequently wonder why they get to the end of another year when nothing has changed.
So today, as we start a new year, I want to share with you some of the elements of one of our training programmes on success management that will get you started.
Ready?
Let’s start with the most logical question.
What Do You Want?
As a leadership trainer and coach, the first question I ask a new client is, what do they want? It would be easy for me to guess what that might be depending on the enquiry they have made about help with training their team.
Though until I ask several questions, I don’t know the deeper truth about what they want to achieve.
This is the same for all of us as individuals; we have to ask ourselves important questions because the answers we communicate will help inform our next steps.
- What is our purpose?
- Have we defined who we are and what we want?
Rather than the next senior leadership role, we might want to work for our organisation on a different continent and experience a new culture with our family.
Once we know that, we can then set some meaningful goals that we can achieve by cultivating helpful beliefs and behaviours.
This is all part of setting the direction for your success path. Knowing the direction we want to move, it is time for a self-audit.
Your next task is knowing the traits you have or need to develop for success.
EQ: How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?
Your emotional intelligence, your EQ score, guides how you interact, empathise and handle those around you and yourself as you process problems or react to change.
These are critical traits if you want to be successful. I suspect you have experienced colleagues who are absolute stars in their roles’ technical aspects and never move forward because they cannot hone the ‘softer’ skills required from their position.
Such a disappointment because we have the power to learn and adjust our EQ to suit new business situations.
Unfortunately, this also means EQ can be unlearned if those skills aren’t continuously practised. Expanding on this topic, let us dive into a couple of critical EQ areas; self-awareness and our ability to regulate our response.
How Self-Aware and Self-Regulated Are You?
One of the biggest challenges for humans is understanding themselves, in other words becoming self-aware of their strengths and development areas.
I am sure we have all experienced individuals in the workplace who don’t seem to have a clue how their behaviour impacts others.
If they did, they might get a different and potentially better response from their team or other leaders in the business.
Following this is something known as self-regulation, often referred to as our ‘watch out’ areas; in leadership terms, self-regulation is a form of emotional intelligence.
It is an attribute that allows individuals to control their responses to situations and people, resulting in avoiding outbursts and knee-jerk decisions. In uncertain times like these, the ability to self-regulate will enable you to demonstrate predictable and calming behaviour to everyone you interact with in your organisation.
Another important EQ trait is the ability to empathise; let me explain more.
Empathy: The Ever-Present Skill of Successful People
Business leaders are driven, and achieving success is at the top of their agenda. However, leaders now get the best from their team by developing an empathetic approach.
Employee burnout and well-being are at the top of every CEO’s agenda, and bullish leadership no longer works or creates an engaged team.
As a leader today, you must develop an open mind and be able to assess the views and opinions of others with a high degree of empathy.
Several items might now have been added to your development to-do list, leading to the question; how motivated are you to take action to set yourself up for ongoing success?
What is Your Motivation Level?
Inexperienced managers can often tell their team to be ‘more motivated’, which is a challenge considering that motivation happens after the action. Let me explain.
As I write this post, currently, many people across the globe want to either lose weight or get fitter and aren’t feeling motivated. However, once the first few pounds disappear or their thirty-minute run takes twenty, motivation suddenly kicks in.
A better way to describe motivation is to look at what drives and inspires us to kick-start our motivation.
Identifying the “why” behind your actions can make finding the motivation to do them easier. Understanding your values and your definition of success will help you set a plan to make motivation work for you rather than against what you want to achieve.
Success is achievable for all of us in our careers, provided we take the necessary steps.
Would You Like To Know More About Setting Yourself Up For Success This Year?
This post has given you a start to developing your success plan. Success relies on many factors, including knowing who you are: your strengths, values, motivations, purpose and goals.
Once you have clarity on this, success requires other skills and knowledge, which we share in one of our online learning programmes.
It guides you to get clear on what it is you really want and why and then enables you to focus on your brand, network and other skills that will get you there.
If you want to know more, drop me a note here or call this office on 0845 548 0833.
Until next time,
Julia
About Zestfor
Zestfor specialises in developing leadership Training programs and resources scientifically tailored for technical markets – including Pharmaceutical, IT, and Life Sciences.
Our blend of in-classroom, online, and virtual live-stream delivery methods will engage and assure even the most introverted team members from the first meeting. Let us arrange a brief chat; call us at 0845 548 0833.
