Leveling Up Your Leadership Style

How do you engage yourself as a leader? As an executive, aspiring leader, or manager — you can reflect on your progress, record your success, and stay on track in order to reach your personal and professional goals — then, build upon your mastery of leadership as you engage yourself and others for success.

The main focal point is that each of your incremental improvements leads toward your overall success.

How can you lead better? When being a leader, or manager, it would help to consider the difference and how you would lead more effectively. To answer this question, read the article in Harvard Business Review, “Great Leaders Embrace Office Politics,” by Michael C. Wenderoth, published on April 11, 2016. The main focal point is that each of your incremental improvements leads toward your overall success.

In the first step, determine how you can lead people with a plan to work on improvements. It is the time to tap inner resources! Write these inner resources down now.

Using the SWOT analysis below, write down your:

• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats

Then, write down how you can:

• Build your strengths
• Lessen your weaknesses
• Take advantage of your opportunities
• and, Avoid your threats

Now that you have conducted your SWOT analysis, you need to:

• Identify, and write down your current obstacles.

Next, write your action plans:

• Write down your to-do list to help you reach your goals and objectives, and most importantly, write your action plans to accompany your goals

Now that you have identified your obstacles and action plans, develop a personal strategy that is a major milestone in your work and personal life:

• Write down what you can begin to do that will enhance your success as a leader or aspiring leader, such as a response to pandemic recovery

Then, determine how you can best lead yourself. Ask yourself:

• Am I on the right track?
• If so, do I value the things that will result in my high performance?
• Am I a team player?
• If so, how? If not, why not?

Once you determine your level of leadership and how you can lead yourself to be a great team player, use the four functions of management (Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling) to help you succeed in your endeavors.

Answer the following questions:

• How can I better control my performance so that I can achieve my goals and objectives?
• How can I lead myself to better ascertain my goals and objectives?
• How can I become more organized in order to accomplish my goals and objectives?
• What plans can I make to ensure that my goals and objectives are met?

After writing them, place them on your to-do list.

Write down how you show courage.

After identifying what makes you an effective leader, determine how you feel about your leadership style. What do new work scenarios, such as during pandemic recovery, look like for you? Write them down in one to three sentences.

Write down how you show courage. Think of how fearless or fearful you are. Do you respect your own fear? Do you attempt to master your awareness of fear? Do you act despite some level of fear being present? Think about and write down how you will address your own personal fear. Feel good about yourself and your work and career. Ascertain a high level of self-efficacy.

Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies, and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

Michael J. Provitera is an associate professor, and an author of the book titled “Mastering Self-Motivation” published by Business Expert Press. He is quoted frequently in the national media.