Understanding Leadership Strategies and Tactics
Being a leader is not always about tactics. It can be about caring enough about your charges to constantly update and hone your leadership skills. As you update your skills you may recognize leadership strategies and tactics that can help you be a much better leader.
Some leaders learned through on the job experience, but there are shortfalls to this method of leadership training. Some leaders who learn from on the job training, don’t know how to lead, mentor, or strategize how to achieve goals . Others are incredible leaders who share stories, of both experiences and lessons learned, that teach the next group how to lead.
What is the goal of leadership? It is to get people to do what is necessary to achieve the goal of the team. It can be difficult, because everyone has their own characteristics and perspectives, and people are crazy. That includes those being led as well as their leaders.
Detach Yourself
One important leadership tactic is to detach yourself from the chaos and mayhem around you. When you are able to detach yourself from what is going on around you, you can focus on the goal and what it takes to get there. Only that focus allows you to remain calm and lead your team to successful goal achievement. Detaching yourself does not mean you don’t care. It means you reach that place inside where only you and the work, or mission exist. Looking from your place of detachment, gives you a new perspective and clearer vision. The new clearer vision allows better decision making, for enhanced results. It may require mental adjustment to take yourself out of the miniscule details and gain the better view, but it will create new, better situational assessments and tactics. By detaching yourself, you have already gained one of the critical leadership strategies and tactics.
Recognizing When to Detach Yourself
Be Aware of yourself and your situation. Are you breathing hard, or holding your breath? These are signs you are getting emotional about your situation. Take a deep breath, let go of your emotions, and you will begin to see the bigger situation.
Stay Humble; Arrogance Destroys Trust
Surround yourself with others who have the skills you lack and lead them to the best use of those skills. Recognizing and using skills in your team not only benefits you, but it benefits your team. Sometimes a management change puts leaders, who are inexperienced in departmental operations, in charge of people with more experience. It is crucial for a leader in this position to have the humility to turn to those experienced in the specific work or mission. Subordinates led by an arrogant leader who won’t accept advice from experienced subordinates, quickly lose confidence in that leader. Good leaders set their ego aside, and listen to subordinates with better skills for the task at hand. Even better is to let the team figure out how to problem solve and achieve the goal. That leadership approach builds a powerful team even as he/she reviews and cleans up the plan. Meanwhile, the team owns and commits to the plan because they made it. That leader’s willingness to engage the team, to believe in the team, earns the respect and willingness of the team.
The next leadership article will focus on leading with your strength, and never resting on what you already achieved. We know you have even greater leadership potential than you show today, because you are already looking at ways to improve. CommandReady believes in personal growth as a means of developing even greater leadership strategies and tactics. Thanks for taking the time to check us out.
