What’s Your Dream Workspace?
The key ingredient to building a workspace for leadership development is self-awareness. Leaders need quiet time for reflection and inner growth. Too often, leaders are consumed with the management of a project and the people. I love that diligence and dedication. Your team members appreciate it, too, but you end up feeling exhausted! Read more at the Inspired True blog.
First, we don’t want to conflate management and leadership. You know the old adage: managers manage things and leaders lead people. In reality, most positions of leadership require a bit of both skills. There are certainly budgets to meet, tasks that have deadlines, and product functionality decisions to make. Yet, good leaders trust, delegate, and grow their team members.
Each situation is unique; however, leaders must mentor employees and staff with less experience and skill, helping them learn and grow. Delegating complex tasks – and the monitoring of completion of these tasks – to senior members of your team allows them to expand skills in productivity and efficiency. As each individual team member grows their toolkits and skill sets, the leader rises to more strategic decision points. Effective leaders use this freedom from day-to-day task management to focus on customers and the core business needs.
An ideal leadership workspace allows for private study and conversations while driving team communication. Leaders must take the initiative to “walk the shop floor” and observe (and do!) the hands-on work of each team member. If this means you need to travel a lot to the sites where your team members work, learn to be grateful for the frequent flyer miles and hotel loyalty points.
Leaders also must connect with themselves on a regular basis. Daily physical exercise helps maintain mental and emotional balance. When you focus on the exercise and nature during a walk, run, or bike ride, your creative subconscious works hard on the sticky problems your conscious mind can’t solve. Always take breaks and connect physically with nature to build your leadership self-awareness.
If you’d like to chat about plans to grow your leadership self-awareness, feel free to schedule a complimentary 30-minute conversation here.
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