How can you improve your leadership skills easily?

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(The following post is a guest post from Alma Causey.)

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”

John Quincy Adams

Finding actionable ways to motivate yourself and others towards achieving a specific achievement is a powerful thing. With more than merely focusing on coordinating everyone’s efforts, you need to aim at crafting a clear and compelling vision of success.

Leadership is all this and more.

You need to commit to being an exceptional leader. This begins with the desire to inspire. Therefore, you must learn to take the lead in every aspect of your life, whether that is at the office or a family gathering.

You’ll need to back your actions with a combination of features such as courage, confidence, sophistication, and savviness.

Ready to bring everyone on board?

To be an effective leader, you must possess the right skills for the job. Consider looking into the following tips to improve your leadership skills.

Take the initiative to succeed

There are only a few people who are naturally born as leaders. But just about anyone can learn to become a good leader. All you need to do is develop the right mix of leadership skills. And that too, with dedication and sincerity.

And leaders are selected from the crowd. If you wish to stand out as an ideal candidate, volunteer to take on more responsibilities that go beyond your current position. Show to your superiors that are willing to learn and progress up the corporate ladder.

Consider taking a course

Learning is a lifelong process. And with every aspect of our lives changing at a rapid pace, it is essential to acquire new skills and challenge yourself.

Enrolling in courses focused on building your leadership skills can help accelerate your career. Moreover, you will transform into a more confident person and an even better leader.

Make the most of this opportunity to push ahead in the crowd. Consider taking courses designed to develop self-awareness and leadership skills. In fact, joining a university to complete an MBA program could be a more suitable option.

But always register in a recognized institution that provides a comprehensive learning experience and a diverse curriculum. For example, a UT MBA is one of the most established and most exclusive ones in Florida. But also opt for ones that offer flexible timings so that classes do not coincide with your office hours.

Build exceptional communication skills

Communication is an essential quality of a great leader. Therefore you will need to develop excellent oral and written skills. This can make you an outstanding employee and an even better leader.

When speaking to a team, don’t beat around the bush. List clearly what needs to be accomplished and how possibly repeating essential points a couple of times. But often, written notes and memos become easy reference guides when there are a lot of things that need to be done.

Set up regular meetings and check in on projects from time to time. This gives instant feedback to team members and offers them the opportunity to ask questions or clarify a particular matter.

Listen effectively

Being a leader doesn’t mean you get to boss your colleagues around and coerce them into agreement all the time. Great leaders are even better listeners. They pay attention to what others have to say and reflect on it.

This creates a sense of comradeship and builds trust. Team members will know that they are being represented by people who care about them and their opinions.

To become an active listener, maintain eye contact and avoid getting distracted. Remember that your body language and gestures are equally as important.

It’s a good idea to summarize what you’ve heard and ask questions to see whether you’ve understood everything correctly. And when you respond effectively, this encourages positive feedback.

Prepare a mindset that allows you to think critically

Good leaders are critical thinkers. That means they have the ability to foresee potential problems before they actually happen and develop ways to prevent them from occurring.

More importantly, leaders are aware of potential opportunities when they arise. They know how to bank on them for the benefit of the organization and the team. And remember it’s not about the facts at hand but rather the ability to utilize and evaluate them that matters.

To train your mind to reach these conclusions intellectually, you can try to employ the following techniques and become a better critical thinker:

Evaluate everything you hear and read.
Break the information down into simple aspects.
Ask relevant questions.
Consider reversing the information to get another perspective to the same situation.
Don’t be overconfident and assume that you are always right.
Become aware of biases and personal prejudices. Don’t let them influence your decisions or solutions.

Just remember not to think all the time critically. Utilize this tool to make crucial decisions, solve challenging problems, or lead effectively in pressure environments.

Learn to delegate tasks

According to Theodore Roosevelt, the best leader is one who can pick out good men to do what needs to be done and enough self-restraint to let them do their job. Allowing others to work freely, not only empowers them but also makes people feel more involved.

Moreover, distributing tasks allows you to focus on other responsibilities. However, you must still oversee the entire project to ensure all goals are achieved on time and to the utmost potential.

Become an inspiration to others

As a leader, you need to encourage and motivate team members to drive the company forward. But this can only happen if you plan to interact with employees on a personal level and understand them for who they are.

By possessing adequate leadership skills, you need to become a role model for them. Aim to influence people positively. And if ever a conflict does arise, learn to handle the situation diplomatically.

Be ready to evolve

Highlight your strengths and weaknesses. With time and effort, you can significantly improve your shortcomings and expand on your innate abilities. Stay informed about everything.

Moreover, understand that there is more than one way to do the same thing. So you need to be open to new ideas.

Above all, admit that you are not perfect. It’s okay to make mistakes. More importantly, discuss them with your team, learn from them, and move on. In fact, have the courage to make fresh ones. It’s all part of the learning process!

Learn to enjoy life

It’s one thing to be focused on the prize, but it’s entirely another to be obsessed about it. As an efficient leader, you should know how to live a life outside the workplace. Give the mind a break from time to time. This can help to refresh your objective and allow you to look at things from another angle.

You have to learn to live alongside work. So go to your family at the end of the day. Consider going on vacation regularly.

Wrapping up

It’s time you honed in on your capabilities as an effective leader. Developing these skills can influence various aspects of your life, especially your career. Take steps to discover your true potential.

Gain the hidden benefits of leadership skills, such as enhancing productivity and building your level of confidence. But above all, becoming a successful leader brings an insurmountable amount of personal satisfaction.

And remember that the key to transforming into a great leader is recognizing the importance of influencing others. Instead of becoming an authoritative figure, lead others towards a united force for success.

Ready to be an exemplary leader?

Two Ways To Enhance Any Career

Career & Workplace

Did you know that anybody can enhance their life, and thus their career, by improving some simple, basic skills? Once you have a handle on these skills, there’s no telling what can happen but you have to apply them consistently: everybody needs to learn how to learn and learn how to teach.

Learn How To Learn

Learning is essentially acknowledging that you don’t know everything and being open to expanding your horizons.

What are you reading? If you don’t read, start slow and it will get better quickly.
If you are always reading a novel, try reading some non-fiction regularly.
If you never do fiction, start with some short stories and work up.
Take a class in something that appeals and intimidates you.
Play games on your phone or computer that are not in your comfort zone, like words for a math whiz and numbers for the linguist.
Learn how to use your hands or your body a different way, like dancing or knitting or soccer or anything fun.

I bet you thought I’d be telling you to work on a career skill, and that certainly is a good idea. But for many of us, we need to start developing the ability to learn first. When you start with what you like and stretch your mind a little bit, you are learning how to learn.

Learn How To Teach

Teaching is not being a windbag standing in front of suffering students and talking to hear themselves. Good teachers listen to their students and try to understand how they perceive things so the facts being communicated get through to the brain. A teacher needs to have a good grasp of the subject in order to explain it effectively.

Offer to explain something you are good at to a friend who wants to know how.
Show a newbie some tips about a skill you have.
Write instructions just to see if they make sense when you follow them.
Improve your writing skills so you can communicate better.
Rewrite things that are confusing to make the meaning clearer.
Research the styles of learning and figure out how to explain to each style.

The truth is that we all teach, whether we realize it or not. The goal is to be a teacher of good, helpful things who passes on all you have learned. When a person continually is learning, and is also continually sharing their knowledge, it completes the circle of intelligent growth. It also keeps you in a positive stance for whatever your career is doing and enhances any job.

Professional Or Executive Resume: What's The Difference?

Resume Writing

If you do a search for “professional vs executive,” you will find a lot of stuff, but you won’t find a universal definition for each role. In fact, Asian job culture tends to put the title of “executive” at opposite ends of the career track, which causes a lot of confusion as companies go global. It’s a good idea to go past the labels and look at where you are in your career, what you want to accomplish, then take your list to compare it to what kind of resume you need.
Professional Resume Services offers both Professional and Executive Resume packages.
Here’s how they differ:

Executive Resumes are designed for executive management, and C-level positions– those who are prepared to be at the head of an organization. They earn well over $100,000+ annually and carry all the responsibility of the power to control major decisions. These executive resumes must show that you are up to the task of leadership decisions that will affect many lives and fortunes.
Professional Resumes are just as important, but they are designed to show your competency for a different kind of responsibility. Professionals, specialists etc. with five or more years of reliability and experience gradually creating a name for themselves. These are the people who understand how to work with their department to get the desired results. There’s leadership responsibility with much more hands-on daily tasking.

Still not sure what you need?
When you visit our website, a friendly contact box pops up with an opportunity to ask questions or set up a time to talk. If you don’t see it for some reason, there’s a “contact” tab in the lower right corner. We can help you figure out which of our services will work best for your purposes.

How Long Have You Been In The Race?

Resume Writing

Have you noticed that the working world is kind of like a track event? Some races are marathons, and the runners who win are slow and steady folks who keep on moving ahead, where the sprinters, the ones who zip past leaving their co-workers in a cloud of dust, don’t always stay on track. Not that sprinting is bad, it’s just a different race and the techniques that work in a short speed contest don’t do well in endurance challenges. Track events will generally have a variety of contests and different skills will win different events.
Sometimes an athlete will move from one event to another, like the sprinter in the marathon. If the sprinter has developed the endurance to keep a steady pace and still have the strength to run fast at the end, they will likely be the winner. If they have no endurance, they won’t be able to keep up in the long run. An athlete who has learned how to adapt can switch to several events and win them all, but it takes experience and training. It also takes recognition that they are capable of moving from one category to the next.
A worker who has moved up to manager or supervisor and shown 2 – 10 years of quality work is often ready to be promoted from one event to the next, but they have trouble getting the recognition for their abilities. Because they are seen as capable managers or supervisors, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they will be seen as executives. It’s like the marathon runner has announced they are entering the sprint.
Our professional resume packages highlight all the accomplishments in your career and showcase the skills that you will bring to a promotion. They are perfect for presenting your abilities as a professional ready to add a different category to your career.
If you have been the race for a long time, maybe it is time to up your game. Go over your resume part by part and make sure it represents who you are today and where you see yourself going. Do your accomplishments shine brightly? Is your experience rich with detail but yet concise enough to not bore your reader to tears? Does your resume have action statement and keywords to pass a keyword scanning machine? To stay competitive, update your resume yearly with highlights of what you did the previous year. Don’t leave it until the last minute when someone is asking for it. Like training, it takes a bit of time and thought, but the results will be worth it.

The Importance of Persistence in Job Searches

Job SearchResume WritingResumes

There is an old joke of sorts that defines recession as an economic period when your neighbor is out of work, and a depression as an economic period when you are out of work. The point of that is that for someone looking for a job the economy is never great. This is why persistence is so important for your job search. Without it, even in a great economy, you aren’t going to have much luck.
As an example; a young woman I know was looking for a job. She had been an intern at a company that wasn’t hiring, but she sent them a copy of her resume anyway and requested that it be kept on file. She called and checked on new positions every other week but the company had tightened up due to the economy. After 6 months of this, she went and placed her updated resume on file. The head of the department remembered her and they were chatting about some of the changes that had taken place in the year since she had been an intern. The young woman drove the three hours home. Guess what? There was a job offer from the company waiting for her on her answering machine. The head of the department admired her persistence in keeping after what she wanted.
This is a real world example of getting what you want by going after it. When a company isn’t hiring, politely request that they keep your resume on file and be sure to ask how long it will be kept. Then send another one. Visit the company, network with those who work there. Because many companies prefer to hire from within, consider taking any position that opens up with that business. Persistence is often the difference between a job and a career. It’s also often the difference between being employed and being unemployed.

How To Get Your Boss To Pay For Job Training

Assessments & Education

Getting paid for job training is likely not something that your boss will do on their own. But, that does not mean that it is completely off the table. Here are three tips that will help you get paid for job training: have all the facts, explain the benefits, and be a team player.

Have All the Facts: If you want a clear answer, ask a clear question. It’s a lot harder to say “no” to a specific proposal, so make sure you’re armed with all of the facts. If you’re interested in attending a seminar or conference, make sure you know the location, date, and cost (including travel and hotel, if needed), and can summarize what you’ll learn.
Explain the Benefits: Explain exactly what you want to get out of the seminar you’re proposing and, more importantly, how that will benefit your work and your company. When it comes to benefits, don’t be afraid to get creative
Be a Team Player: Even though it will cost more overall, it may be easier in some instances to argue for training a group of people. It makes your request seem less selfish and reinforces the idea that you’re looking out for the team. If you have a large group (more than 10 people), some seminar companies will bring events in-house, reducing your travel and hotel costs.

When you approach your boss about paying for job training, think of it as a bit of a sales pitch. Keep it short but professional, and come armed with the facts, including a few bullet points about the benefits. Your boss isn’t always going to say “yes,” but if you know what you want, are sincere, and can demonstrate why training is valuable to the company, you’ll dramatically improve your odds.

What Do HR Managers look for in Executive Level Talent?

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HR Managers like to develop relationships with potential executive candidates long before the candidate is even considering another job. But, you still have to find the right HR Manager who will help you on your job hunt. Human Resource professionals know all the tricks of the trade when it comes to recruiting executive level talent. That’s why you need to know their tricks so that you can put yourself out there and find the career for you.
Experiences vary Incredibly
Executive level recruiters know which streams of information to tap into. Companies are looking for executives with a strong cost/value relationship, so they want great return on their investment. You’re their investment and they want to see results, so focus your attention on ways that you’ve improved your previous employer’s sales or goals.
Recruitment Strategies
Word of mouth is often a great recruitment strategy for executives. If one executive knows that a recruiter will find them a position with more money and better benefits, then they should hop on it. HR Managers are looking for executive talent that can recruit themselves based on their own experience within their field. If they want to choose another field, then the HR Manager will need to focus on showcasing how their talents would translate.
They Collect Data on the Executive Recruit
Collecting data about an executive level recruit is one way that HR Managers look for talent. They want to find the candidate that has the best experience working with close competitors on the same type of position or something similar. HR Managers often find that this is the easiest and most hassle-free way of looking for talent. It’s not easy trying to find the most competitive positions within large companies, but thats what recruiters do, they find the cracks, get the right data and position their client as the best candidate.
Recruiters get Specific
With the amount of people looking for employment, HR Managers have had to get very specific with who they recruit. They advise those who do not meet the requirements for a position, to not apply for that position. HR personnel have to organize and interview those who meet their specific requirements, which is usually done through a phone screen and then a face-to-face. Make sure that you are comfortable during the face-to-face with your recruiter, but your recruiter should also make you comfortable. Often they will offer you something to drink, so take that into consideration, does this person have your best interest at heart? Recruiters will often select people with good listening skills and they pay close attention whether a candidate is listening to them or not. They will not base their choices on looks because clients are not focused on that. Companies are looking for people who are going to make an impact based on their past experiences, not their appearance. That’s not to say that you should not be dressed in business attire.
It might sound like a lot but if you’re going to work with a recruiter on your executive level placement, then you need to follow their instructions and choose the right one. Take it easy, you’ll do fine.

Learn How To Learn

Learn How To Teach

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