Leadership is earned nor by asked or given. One might be in Team Leader position does not mean they have leadership. Leadership is also a concept. There are many definitions that can be found easily by asking Google. What important is that how you think about it, about what makes sense to you when hearing the term Leadership.

One leads others and be led by another. Not many people have absolute power. In the old day, the king might have such a power. Nowadays, people are trying to approach with flat structure. Regardless of what people are trying to achieve, in my opinion, there is a group, there is a leader.

Ok, “Let’s me send you to a leadership class so you will be a great leader,“ a boss says. I do not think. It does not work that way. It does not happen overnight. You have to build it over time consciously. It is a god damn hard job, I must say. To go on that journey, you have to make up your mind

Do you want to become a leader? Do you want to build your leadership skill?

It is ok to say: No, Thanks. I am fine which whatever I am.

About 4 years ago, I decided to go on that journey. Am I a great leader? I do not know, honestly. But I do know that I am doing good in that direction. There is no an end on this journey. I am getting better over the time.

What I am sharing here is what I believe in, the principles I follow. There is no true/false in them, just my own experience.

Read Books

If you want to build leadership skill, you have to read books about the topic. Some can lead without reading books. Unfortunately I am not in that group.

Reading a book will not make you a good leader. How about a hundred, a thousand, will it make any difference? Yes, it is.

When reading a book, I get what I can make sense of. Then I think about them. Slowly apply them with care. It is difficult at the beginning but get better over the time.

Understand What Leadership Means to You

Can you tell me what it means to you? Can you write them down? Well well well! A simple question but not easy answer. How can one do a good job when they do not know what it means?

How to find out what it means to you? By reading books, observing other leaders around you. You will come up with ones that are truly yours. It must reflect your personality. Sometime it might take years to figure out.

Care and Trust People

People gather in a group/team to do a particular job, usually paid by cash. Get the job done, get money, and done. As a leader, what do you care? The job done or people or both? You know your answer best. Hey, we are professional, there is a separation between profession and person.

Really? No matter how hard you try. It is not going to work. People come to work with full emotion they got from yesterday, which includes some bad events, some bullshit stuff from the work, some personal selfishness, … everything comes with them. Why? Because they belong to them. They own their emotion. Not many people have the ability to control their own emotion.

To get the job done, you have to take care of their emotion as well. You do not have to solve their emotion problems. But you do have to care, or at least let them know that you care.

If you do not trust them, sooner or later they will leave you. People leave their boss not the job.

I believe that many leaders care and trust others. But that does not matter. What matters is how other feel, think about it. Recently, I know the concept Objective vs Subjective. You can look them on the internet easily. Most people care about objective: right or wrong, fact, logic. Subjective is about perception.

A leader can tell their team “I trust you“.

The team might think “Oh really, do you?“.

Understand How People Behave

“Why are you doing this?” is a sign that you do not understand your members. Human being acts upon the habit they have been building since they are born. Some are very careful, some are fast, the other are slow. They react to the world as they see it, not how it is.

But that does not make any sense! Oh make sense to whom? if we, as leaders, spend time to learn how people behave, we can work together, we can help each other.

 

If I confuse you, sorry. I am mumbling my thoughts 🙂 But hope it helps you in some ways.