Becoming a Great Leader
What is leadership?
You have personalized gifts and strengths that can help you in life and also help other people.
Identifying, amplifying, and deliberately building those strengths enables you to have a better personal life, professional life, and also enables you to more effectively serve others in our community.
What are the gifts and strengths you are given and what do they mean?
To become a great leader, there are two things that you must think about:
1. Do you find the work you are doing fulfilling?
2. Can you identify your strengths and gifts?
Why vision is important?
Having a vision will allow you to motivate your team members with passion and purpose towards the common goal. This benefits the entire community!
Something to think about: How do you vision the project you lead? What does the future have in store for it?
How can you be a serving leader?
What does it mean to serve as a leader in the role you are in? First, let us tell you what it does not mean:
1. It does not mean that you need to do more, be more, show more. This role signifies the contribution that is currently being made by you, and it's not about contributions we hope you will make in the future.
2. It does not mean we will be giving you more work. Our aim is to honor the work you have been previously/currently doing.
What it does mean:
1. It means that whatever you do in your role, your contribution will be thoroughly valued because even small things can have the biggest impact.
2. We'd love for you to take more self-care into your routine.
3. It's okay to say no if you can't do it. It's 100% okay to say no. It's only fair to you and the community.
In this sense, service leadership is simply about where you plan to spend your time. As a collective community, our aim is to honor your contributions, no matter where or how they manifest. We rise by lifting others!
What not to do?
You don’t want to gossip, neither do you want to triangulate. This is a big part of 7 Cups culture. We want to create an environment that is extremely positive and supportive. And these things will stain that idea.
Being positive
The most important thing as a leader is to create a positive environment for the team and for the project! This will help you motivate them and it will help them approach you with an open mind about anything.
Delegate: Why, What, and How?
To be an efficient leader, you have to delegate well. It’s extremely important to understand that you cannot do everything. You might want to but that’s nearly impossible and it creates stress. There are four reasons to delegate:
- You acknowledge that you cannot do everything. Delegating will give you more time to work on new things or even things that are of higher priority.
- Many times delegating provides a better way of doing a task. Stimulating that new creativity coming from a different mind is good and healthy for a project!
- It increases trust. When you delegate, it shows that you trust your team members to do the tasks and that will make you more approachable!
- When strategically done, it can help you develop the team members. Help them with their personal and professional development goals!
Dealing with negative feedback!
You will get it often and it’s extremely important that as a leader you learn how to handle negative feedback. It doesn’t mean you are doing a bad job, it also doesn’t mean that you are a bad leader. Feedback can take a power of its own - but that’s only if you let it. Here are a few steps you can do that:
- Manage your emotional reaction. Feel that emotion thoroughly first. It’s okay to feel angry, and to feel sad, or to feel frustrated. Don’t fight it. Taking control of your emotions will help you switch to response from reaction.
- Own the content of the feedback. Have you heard this before? It will allow you to reveal blind spots and identify patterns if any!
- Solicit input from others. We rise by lifting others! Ask for help, ask for collaboration, and ask for opinion! You never know what solution one talk can bring. Discussing what’s going wrong is always a good idea. At 7 Cups, we are always there for each other and this is a big part of a leader’s life!
How to say no?
We all have priorities, goals, and commitments. Does the request/opportunity correctly align with your lifestyle right now? If not, scratch it. You want to be generous, but you must always remember to help yourself before you help others.
Empathy is important!
Story: Two people are wandering, lost in the desert. They are dying from hunger and thirst. Finally, they come to a high wall. On the other side they can hear the sound of a waterfall and birds singing. Above, they can see the branches of a lush tree extending over the top of the wall. Its fruit looks delicious.
One of them manages to climb over the wall and disappears down the other side. The other, instead, returns to the desert to help other lost travellers find their way to the oasis.
Patience is a virtue ~
As a leader, there will be many times where you will feel as though your patience is being tested. That is the best time to remember that patience is a virtue! The first step is to always try and recognize a time or situation you know your patience will be tested. If you know a challenge is coming, you can be more mindful about increasing your efforts to stay calm. A good way to manage the pressure you feel from the clock ticking is to reframe how you perceive time. There are two things that you can do:
- Redefine the meaning of speed. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast! Moving fast does not mean being strategic at all.
- Thank your way to patience. Gratitude can help you remember that, in a time of impatience, there are things to be grateful for.
Think of some leaders you admire...
Who is your favorite leader? Think of them and think about why you admire them? Are there qualities you admire? Are their traits or styles that you think are good?
As a leader, think of a few new qualities that you can acquire. Start each one with “I will..,” so for instance, “I will be empathetic and compassionate.”
The Complete Leadership Path here