How to Be a Leader

There are leaders and there are followers, and a person is not necessarily born a leader.

To become a leader, the first step is to have good decision making skills - not something you are born with but rather taught at a young age. Your parents probably taught you the difference between right from wrong and that there are consequences for certain actions.

If you make mistakes, don’t pass the blame to others. If you make a mistake, admit it. Learn from it so you don’t commit the same mistake again.

Apart from making mistakes, good leaders should also be able to recognize their shortcomings. We all have some and the people we work with sometimes are too afraid, or polite to tell s what they are. If you want to know what your shortcomings may be, you have to allow your team members to speak freely so you can identify what you need to change.

Effective leaders speak well and if you lack that skill, it will be a good idea to take public speaking courses and practice speaking in front of the mirror or your friends. You can't really expect people to listen to you if you don’t have good communication skills.

Being a leader does not always mean talking and everyone doing what you say. Instead of just you thinking about what to do, listen to what people say. Your team members may have a great idea that you never thought about before.

Take it into consideration what they have to offer.

Leaders should be able, also, to take some risk in any decision they make. It should not be made on a whim but rather a calculated one that could be good for the organization. If this should fail though, you should be ready to face the consequences and take responsibility.

It will also be a good idea to assess what contributed to the failure so that if you want to try something like it again in the future, the outcome will be different.

A vital quality that any leader must have is trust. People look up to you so you have to show that whatever they say is kept in confidence. If you say you are going to do something, keep your word because this is your bond. Hopefully, people will admire these qualities and then try to do the same thing.

A leader is not born. He or she is made so that they can have a vision and then share this with whomever they are working with. Does the leader have the answers to everything? No - but if the person is able to inspire others, it can help them develop ideas that they can share.

Read more on improving conversation skills

Learn How to Love Yourself - An Antidote for Stress

It's kind of difficult to work on your self improvement program when you are upset.

In the most stressful of days, everyone needs some for that famous TLC, (tender love and care). When you feel tied into knots with stress, it's probably a good time to mentally remove yourself from the situation and see things in a bigger and better perspective. Stress cannot be avoided, However there are responsibilities you just can't ignore, and unfortunately, some of these are accompanied by high levels of anxiety.

Sometimes giving up just seems to be the best solution. What do you do when the time comes that you have to deal with everything, face up to your decisions, and take all the consequences? Running away is certainly not an option. Just remember, being scared is not necessarily a bad thing. It's what you do when you're faced with fear that counts. When you successfully deal with bad situations, take the time to treat yourself with a reward. It helps inspire you to do better every time a form of harassment comes into your life.

Ways to deal with stress

One thing many people resort to when they need to unwind is have themselves a (Read more here)

Putting Motivation Into Perspective when Setting Business Goals

The difference between achieving formal goals versus informal goals is one of motivation.

If you've ever worked in a corporate management position, you're no stranger to MBO - the concept of establishing goals and their importance to any organization that practices management by objectives.

Even if you've never been in a position where you had to define specific, measurable goals, you may not realize that you do this every single day. By not consciously saying so, you are actually setting goals and you are usually better able to achieve them with far less analysis than accomplished through formal goal setting.

Quite often with formal goals, we may make progress towards our objective, but not have a clear understanding of the process required - and we often see a decline in our motivation to continue effectively.

This is perhaps most often seen in group work environments where one or two members of the group seem to ... (finish reading here)

Consider this stress relief exercise

Consider this stress relief exercise –

Set a timer (for example on a digital watch) to beep every 3 to 5 minutes as a reminder to check your breathing. This helps because as we submerse ourselves into a given task, we can easily lose track of our breathing without realizing it.

You may even find it helpful to repeat a phrase during your "breath in - breath out" practice like, "I'm breathing in", "I'm breathing out", to help you establish the proper rhythm. Your goal is to allow your body to take over automatically with proper breathing habits.

Practice makes perfect - and you'll find that this is an excellent stress management technique.

Understand more about Stress Relief breathing techniques

Goal Setting - In Theory and In Practice

Creating a clear vision of what we want to accomplish in a business plan involves the cardinal task of establishing goals.

Setting goals doesn't appear to be that difficult. You establish a specific goal, one that's measurable and has a defined timeframe for completion.

You implement the plan, measure progress towards reaching the goal and then evaluate the outcome objectively to refine the process.

On the surface, it sounds easy enough to do.

But it rarely seems to work out that way for numerous reasons; primarily because we often fail to establish realistic goals.

Additionally, we often casually set goals with only a hazy view towards how they'll actually be accomplished. And while we're typically motivated at the beginning of the process, it's not at all unusual to lose this drive somewhere along the way.

When preparing your own goals, it's important (Read more on Goal Setting)