How to be a Good Leader and Inspire Your Employees

I graduated at 24 and was "thrown" into the business and entrepreneurship world by my family (story for another day). Being so young, I learned how to become a manager and a leader the hard way. It was not helpful either that my academic background was of industrial technology and engineering. I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was, I wanted to make money! (don't we all).

Anyways, let's move on to understanding what makes a good leader.

A good leader guides and inspires to get what he wants.

This is why leadership is NOT for everybody.

You can be appointed to lead a team, you can be promoted into that position which requires you to be the leader of several teams, but that does not ensure that you will be a leader who can achieve his/her objective.

I have seen many people who "happened" into their leadership position and yet they can't seem to reach the objective set forth by the company.

Have you ever been acquainted with a leader of a company or organization who just seems to inspire people non-stop by simply doing what they love doing?

That’s right.

Almost anyone can be a good leader, but how do you inspire others in the process?

By building good characters within you.

2 internal characters :

1. Understand yourself.
2. Know what you want.

4 external characters :

1. Understand the end objective of your task.
2. Understand how to achieve the objective.
3. Employ good management skills to relay the objective to the managers.
4. Understand what type of managers you have.

1. Understand yourself.

   Do you know who you are? Do you understand your strengths and your weaknesses? Have you ever gauged your intelligent and emotional quotients? Do you know what type of character you are? Do you know what triggers you and what motivates you?

   Honestly, if those questions baffled you, then sorry honey, you need ALOT of improvements and self-learning to be a leader who can inspire.

   Understanding yourself is very important so that you can mould your leadership style to maximize impact on others.

   When you know your strengths, you can sharpen them more in order to use them to help motivate your managers.

   When you know your weaknesses, you can either employ someone who can do the job for you or equip you with the knowledge or skill; or you can be aware of your surroundings and not let your weakness become a hindrance.

2. Know what you want.

   Knowing what you want is extremely important. A person who knows what he wants will be able to make decisions fast. In business or in any situation, making decisions is a job always tasked to the leader of the group. If you can't even make your decisions right, let alone fast, then you will fail to inspire others and invite doubt and suspicions instead.

1. Understand the end objective of your task.

   A leader always work from the end backwards. Once you know what is the objective of the task, only then you can form the framework to achieve that objective. Through this framework, you will be able to see which parts of the task needs to be broken down further and which manager of your teams will need to take up the smaller tasks.

2. Understand how to achieve the objective.

   A good leader would have acquired a lot of skills in order to understand how smaller tasks need to be achieved in order to achieve the overall objective of the project. On top of that, a good leader would know how to motivate and guide his teams to achieve the objective within the desired time frame.

3. Employ good management skills to relay the objective to the managers.

   Many people think that being a leader means he only needs to layout the objective of the project and instruct the managers to do their job. They are very wrong. A good leader has superior management skills.

   They know how to engage without engaging.
   They know how to tell without telling.
   They know all about the positive-no(s) and the negative-yes(s).

   Say what..?? Yes, you got that right. A good leader would possess excellent people management skills because they know it's the people who get the job done.

4. Understand what type of managers you have.

   In order to inspire people around you, you need to understand what kind of people they are. Most of the people around us fall into one of the quadrants of the social styles.

   • Amiable
   • Analytical
   • Driver
   • Expressive

   By understanding their characters and how they interact or perceive things, you will be able to communicate more effectively and hence motivate, guide and nurture your team managers.

   You will be that leader that people always like. Because they know they can always count on you give them solutions.

Most importantly, I would like to highlight that in order to be a leader who inspires others; it is imperative that you understand yourself fully.

Why? Because only when you are comfortable within yourself, will you be able to exude the confidence and happiness to those around you.

When you fully understand yourself and who you are, only then you will understand your leadership style and how to employ this style to guide and nurture others around you.

Your effort, tenacity and compassion will inspire those around you and make them give their best.

When I turned 28, I became the COO of our company. Being the Chief Operating Officer, I was in charge of 35 employees directly and had to make sure the day-to-day operations were done effectively and efficiently.

I remember being hot-headed, egoistic, objective driven, pushy on top of my other good qualities which were nurturing, motivating and helpful.

I was not my true self. Caught between my own wants and needs to prove to others and justify my actions, with the desire to see everyone become their best, I became the person everyone wanted to consult but known as the tough alpha female.

I must say I inspired everyone in the wrong way. Everyone wanted to be like me. But everyone was scared of me.

In an organization, this is not what we want. We want to inspire everyone around us, but we also would like to be likeable to ensure smooth communication.

When you invoke fear in the people around you, people tend to hide things from you and this creates a whole lot of stress in your team, which you're not even aware of.

When you invoke good communication in the people around you, you will be able to understand the real problem around recurring issues and determine what steps you can take to ensure they don't happen again.

This is important so that you can grow and build your team, company or organization exponentially with people around you who you know truly in and out.

My experience taught me that there is no leader without followers.

You can be the appointed leader, but if nobody is willing to follow what you say, that does not make you a true leader.

To be a leader who inspires others? You will create a legacy and help many others along the way.

You will inspire and you will grow.