Leadership Strategies - How to

Let’s face it, not everyone is a natural-born leader.

Some of us need to learn the skills required to take
on a leadership role.

Thankfully, it’s not that difficult to develop the
skillset needed to lead a team or take your business
to the next level. It begins with discipline and focus.

One of the most important skills is in being laser-focused
on your goals, not allowing anything to derail your efforts.

Being a good leader means being able to keep a team on
track focused on the end-goals, and this begins with you.

Demonstrating discipline involves things like:
* Always meeting deadlines and due dates.
* Maintaining focus even when managing multiple projects.
* Sticking to a schedule that your team can rely on.
* Following through on all tasks that you self-assign.
* Staying organized amongst the chaos.

A leader should be most the most self-structured member
of the team. You should set a daily work schedule while
learning to chunk (completing specific tasks in groups), and
delegating regularly in order to stay on track.

Becoming disciplined takes practice. It’s not always easy to
stay focused when you’re busy building a business that
requires so much of your time and effort managing many
different things.

Start by building a strict system that outlines a task from
start to finish. Delegate what’s needed and set time
restraints on how long you and your team have to get the
job done.

Then, take on more projects, tackling them one at a time
while also learning to multi-task. Throughout the process,
you’ll not only learn discipline but you’ll develop
situational awareness which will help you keep a close
pulse on your team and prepare for any setbacks or
problems that may sprout up during the process.

One of your most important leadership qualities
is your ability to M.I.E:

* motivate, inspire and encourage others.

If you’re managing a team of freelancers you’ve hired to
help you boost your business, this becomes all the more
important as the main person who benefits from the work
and the effort they put into your projects is you.

This means that you’ll need to find ways to motivate and
inspire your team throughout each project.

This goes beyond keeping them focused with regular payments
or milestones (though that help!). It involves empowering
your team members so they are given the creative freedom
to work on your projects in a way that truly utilizes their
skills and talents.

While it’s your job to be clear and direct in your expectations,
and to provide an outline for your project, you never want to
be so restrictive that your team members aren’t able to bring
anything more to the table.

The more open you are with exploring ideas, listening to
feedback and consider other avenues or possibilities based
on the experiences and skills that your team members bring
to the table, the better your projects will be.

To inspire, empower and lead your group by allowing them
to collaborate and by showing appreciation and the willingness
to listen whenever they help you bring new ideas to life.

Honesty and transparency are the two things that will bring
a team together and keep them focused on doing the best job
possible.

This means that you need to be both direct and reasonable
with your expectations and goals.

Outline every major project by task so that your team members
know what they’re responsible for and what you expect from
them.

Give them time to review the outline so that they can come to
you with any questions or concerns they may have.

Be open to listening to alternative ways of getting a project
done.

Above all, always keep your team informed and up-to-date on
where projects are headed and how you need to utilize their
skills.