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Becoming an Effective Leader

Your life is going to consist of many different types of organizations, careers, jobs, and tasks that you must be a part of. In order to make the most of your abilities and to be a success often leadership can become an important part of this ongoing task in your life. Leadership is a skill that is often learned, with only a few naturally a leader. To become an effective leader at work, in your home, in a club you belong to, and just to get things done well, I want to tell you more about how to work and deal with people while you are in a leadership position. 

The biggest part of becoming an effective leader is to be a good communicator. What you need to do is listen, and then reply to others. Tell the group or the employees what you want and how you want it to happen; possibly they will have other ideas that might be better. Communication is the key to getting things done, and to making a leadership role more than just being the ‘head of the group’. 

To become an effective leader you need to learn not to be controlling of everything that is going on. A leader is going to delegate what needs to be done. A leader is going to give the employees or the group direction and how to attain a goal, not to do everything their selves. If you find you are being too controlling you will feel over worked, and unappreciated. 

When you feel you are over worked, give more work to others. This is what a leader effectively does to get the job done right. If you are too controlling you will constantly feel the need to check up on employees, find the employees that you can trust to get the job done and done right in order to make the goals of the business or the group be accomplished. 

Don’t feel as if you have to be perfect. Even the most successful leaders have had problems, made mistakes and have had problems in getting to where they are. The best things about being a leader is that you can so, ok, I had a problem and this is how I am going to solve it. Just as you are only human and you are going to make mistakes, realize that your employees and others in your group are also going to make those occasional mistakes. Take the problem head on, fix it, learn from it and move on. Dwelling on the need to be perfect is going to delay the goal that you reaching and working towards. 

Don’t try to be someone or something that you are not. If you are not the overly pushy type, quit trying to be. If your employees are not working up to par, give them something to work towards and for without having to stand over them and push them along. Find what their motivation is and use that to get them to work more and more efficiently without the worry of having to be too pushy to get the job done right and on time. 

Everyone is different, and from different homes, different religions and different political views. In being an effective leader you must also realize that everyone has different views so you should not bring your religion, political views and such into a position that effects the employees or others in the group if they don’t want it to be there. For example, you are passionate about a person who is up for election. While discussing this can be acceptable, don’t expect that everyone on your team or in your employ is going to feel the same about it. Keep a difference between discussing and becoming overbearing. 

To be an effective leader in the work place, there is one saying that you are not going to be able to take with you to the top. The old saying about do for others as you would want – well you can’t give and supply everything to your employees and still expect them to do a job that you would expect. If your employees had everything that they ever wanted, they have no motivation to continue working and working hard. Keep giving employees and those you are leading bits of what they need, whether monetary, or physical things, but little at a time. For example, if you were to give everyone a five dollar an hour raise, what is going to make them want to work any harder for that next raise when they will be expecting another five dollar a hour raise?

When you take your leadership roles more to heart, listen, delegate and learn to trust others, your leadership abilities are going to earn you the trust and respect of those who are working with and for you.