Knowing Your Core Values of Leadership
Some of the core values you may want to include in your personal leadership mindset philosophy could be: confidence, adaptability, focus on people development, having a realistic vision. The important thing is that the values must be your own — things you deeply believe in and care about. They cannot just be a list of positive attributes that you find in a book or online.
No matter what attributes and values you choose, however, trust overrides them all. Without trust, none of your other attributes and values matter. Trust is something you earn and maintain through your behaviors. It is not bestowed upon you by rank or title.
Confidence is another key element of a strong leadership mindset. It comes from knowing yourself, and fully understanding (and appreciating) your strengths and weaknesses.
It also comes from observing and analyzing how you make decisions, both good and bad. Not every decision will work out as you expect. That’s okay. The key is to reflect back on how and why you made a particular decision to learn about your decision-making capabilities and tendencies. This helps you grow as a leader and gives you greater confidence when you have to make judgment calls in areas where you may not be a technical subject matter expert.
This also enables you to de-personalize decisions, i.e. no more “I’ll go with Beth on this one.” Decisions should be made based on your determination of the facts and reality of the situation, not based on which person is presenting a proposed option.
It also allows you to create your own solutions from differing opinions that build on the strengths and ideas of each. Leveraging positive cognitive conflict (i.e. the opposing of two or more ideas) is one of the best ways of coming up with innovative solutions. It also keeps negative personal conflict from getting in the way of good decision making.
This blog post is excerpted from the book 8 Keys To Becoming A Great Leader, available now at Amazon in Kindle ($3.98) and paperback ($6.38) formats.
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