5 Ideas to Help You Cultivate Leadership
The ultimate sign of an effective leader is that they are cultivating leadership in others. Sometimes this happens naturally. Yet, more often than not, if you want to cultivate leadership, you need to be intentional.
Here are 5 key ideas that can help you cultivate leadership in others:
Leading can be simple
In fact, committing an act of leadership can be as simple as committing an act of kindness. Once you begin to recognize leadership in action, you’ll be able to see more opportunities for you to be a leader.
One of the best ways to cultivate leadership in others is to – show them what leadership looks like in action, by acknowledging people both publicly and privately when they speak up, step up, or stand up. And make sure to identify these actions as acts of leadership. This is a very simple way you can immediately cultivate leadership in those around you.
Mindset matters
Learning to think like a leader, by adopting the mindsets of “MY future is up to me” (the mindset of personal responsibility) and “OUR future is up to me” (the mindset essential to leading others), will result in you seeing more opportunities to lead by speaking up, stepping up, and standing up. Change the way you think, and you will naturally choose to take new action.
The skills of leadership are developed by committing acts of leadership.
Just as you can’t learn to ride a bike without getting on a bike and starting to pedal, you can’t learn to lead without taking action. You will only learn to lead and develop the skills essential to be an effective leader if you are willing to be a beginner and practice consistently over time.
Said another way…
To learn to #lead, you need to act before you KNOW HOW if you are going to LEARN HOW.
Acts of leadership often require courage.
If you want to grow, you must be willing to step outside your comfort zone. To be willing to risk failing, however one defines failure, a shift in perspective is often required. Essentially, that shift is FROM “failing means I am a failure/I am not good enough/I’ll look bad to others, etc.” TO “there is no failure, only feedback.” This leads me to the next idea that will support you in empowering leadership in others.
Know their WHY (and if they don’t know it, support them in discovering it).
Why is it worth it for them to risk being a leader? If they don’t have a strong enough “why,” it will be very hard for you to support them in elevating their leadership. This is actually true for all of us! Our WHY must be sufficiently strong to compel us to take the risk of stepping outside of our comfort zone. Leading involves risk, and risk requires courage. This is especially true when we are learning and may not do something perfectly or succeed with the first attempt. We all need a why that is strong enough to compel us to take the risk to lead. Tend to the “why” for others, and you will help them build a strong foundation for their leadership.