5 Tips on How to Unlock Your Leadership Identity
Before becoming a well-established leader, there are crucial steps you need to take to ensure that your company, your team, and your clients are being led effectively, while you are guiding with confidence. One of the most important steps is creating your leadership identity. A developed leadership identity serves as a key building block to leading you and your team to success. While unlocking your leadership identity takes time, the results that come from it are pertinent to your team’s success. Below are five tips that I believe will help you on your journey to unlocking a well-developed leadership identity.
1. Understand Your Mission
At the forefront of any leader lies their mission for their role, their team, and overall their company. Before embarking on creating your leadership identity, you must spend time reflecting on and understanding your mission. As a SERVPRO franchise owner, my mission is to lead a team that can be the guiding light on our client’s darkest days. In the disaster relief field, my team and I are led by the mission I set forth – to complete the necessary job for our customers. Having a well-established mission was the foundation for creating my leadership identity, and understanding the leader I needed to be to accomplish my mission at hand. I encourage you to take some time to reflect and understand not only your mission as a leader, but your company’s overall missions to ensure that you are building a leadership identity that embodies that said mission.
2. Develop Your Vision
Along with your mission comes your vision. However, it’s important to note the difference between the two especially when it comes to being a great leader. Your mission statement details what you, your team, and your company are doing today. Your vision is where you want to see your leadership, your team, and your company go. As a leader, your vision should serve as the guiding light for all of your leadership aspirations. When developing your vision, you must understand what you as a leader want to accomplish. Do you want to be a strict leader that micromanages your team? Or do you want to be a leader who embodies kindness and is ready to help their team in whatever they need? In my own leadership journey, I knew that I wanted to be a kind leader whom my team could always come to with any issues, questions, or concerns. Developing your vision stands as another crucial stepping stone in leading you to create a successful leadership identity and ensuring that you are being the leader you always envisioned.
3. Lead By Purpose
At the forefront of my leadership identity is my purpose. I firmly believe that leadership cannot excel without being driven by purpose. Our purpose as leaders is to not only lead our team in an effective impactful way, but also ensure that our clients receive the best experience possible. Driven by my purpose, I was able to create a leadership identity that resembled my leadership goals and the reason behind my leadership role, to help as many clients as I can, especially when they are going through their roughest times. However, it’s important to note that leadership is a continuous process that should constantly be led by not only your individual purpose but your company’s purpose as well. More importantly, you must take time to ensure that your purpose is coming across correctly and effectively to your desired audience – your consumers. Once you can understand your purpose, you can then build a leadership identity fit for you and your company’s purpose. Patagonia continues to stand as an example for a purpose-led company. The clothing brand has been recognized as an environmentally conscious company providing the best product for its customers. However, in 2019, the company shifted its focus to a clear mission statement leading the brand – “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.” Guided by this purpose, Patagonia strives to create top-of-the-line products for consumers looking to explore new environments, but more importantly, protect those environments so they can be explored. Being a purpose-led brand has not only helped Patagonia sustain a loyal following but has also made a lasting impact on the world around them.
4. Hold Yourself Accountable
Self-reflection is crucial in the process of unlocking your leadership identity. In a leadership role, you must take time to reflect on your role to understand how to move forward and evolve. On a team level, spend time evaluating what your team is excelling at and what they are struggling with in all sectors of their work. On an individual level, it’s imperative that as leaders we take time to self-reflect on our leadership style, our leadership identity, and our processes. Did we make some mistakes in certain aspects? Is our leadership style not working? Or did a certain leadership decision not pan out as we wanted? These questions can help you grow as a leader and ensure that your leadership identity is beneficial for not only you, your team, but most importantly, your clients. In your self-reflection, don’t be afraid to hold yourself accountable and understand that mistakes, while unwanted, are the stepping stones to becoming a successful leader. As much as it is important to hold yourself accountable, it’s also imperative that you give yourself grace. Mistakes will occur or goals may not be achieved, but do not let those deter you from becoming a better leader. Investigate what went wrong or what led to those mistakes and unmet goals, and then improve upon what you discover. Make the necessary changes, learn from the mistakes, and most importantly, don’t be afraid to try again.
5. Be Open To Evaluation
Evaluation while it may be scary is necessary when it comes to evolving into a well-equipped leader. Evaluation can be conducted in various forms; whether it’s self-evaluation or third-party evaluation. I believe that third-party evaluations can serve as one of the best ways of evaluation, especially when it comes to things you might not have seen or caught before. Inviting a third party into your space not only evaluates you on a one-on-one level but also sees how your team is working as a whole. Is your leadership style working for your team? Are there certain areas that both you and your team can improve on? The selected third party can evaluate your leadership on all levels and provide you with the necessary feedback to ensure your leadership style is working for you, your team, and your clients.
Unlocking your full leadership potential requires a clear understanding of your leadership identity. A firm grasp of your personal strengths, objectives, and strategies is crucial before you can successfully communicate your vision to employees and clients.
Julie Roberts
5 Tips On How to Unlock Your Leadership Identity