We have always heard people saying to be a great leader, but hardly anyone ever stresses on the importance of being a great boss. The reason is the thin line between being a boss and a leader. You can be a great boss, but you might not be an amazing leader. In order to succeed and create a lineage of successors, one needs to lead and not just manage. Therefore, it is important for entrepreneurs as well as people in the management field, to possess leadership skills.
It is a theory that a leader is born to lead and that it is not something you can learn. But on the contrary, there are true leadership coaches who not only encourage you to learn leadership skills but also provide you with some wisdom that helps you become a good leader.
One such leadership coach is Monte Williams, who highlights the importance of being a leader through the insights he provides. He believes adding value to someone’s life fulfills his purpose in life as a leadership coach. He feels content while doing so and aims to help people become leaders that the world will always remember.
According to Monte, a leader must possess a certain set of skills that may include courage, agility, resilience, integrity, and discipline.
It is an undeniable fact that we, as managers and team leads, hope to be leaders in such a way that our leadership is appreciated by enhanced work productivity and high morale. Our hope gives rise to the need for a strategic leadership action plan. However, only a few of us know what exactly that means.
Monte Williams reveals that in order to build a strong strategic leadership action plan, it must be built on the basis of four essential steps. These steps include having your goals for organizational growth determined, making realistic and meaningful key actions with deadlines, substantiating progress by keeping a check based on outcomes, and adjusting the plan where needed.
Apart from the steps that make up a strategic leadership action plan, there are a few key factors that make this plan up and running. These key factors ensure that you not only have a concrete strategic leadership action plan, but you also execute it fruitfully.
Evaluating:
An unbiased evaluation of your leadership behaviors is needed, including your strong points, development areas, drivers, and values. It provides clarity into your daily strengths, your propensity to magnify strengths under pressure, and the motivational factors needed to execute the set task.
Drafting mission & vision:
This includes having a mission statement in accordance with the goals and vision of the organization. This refers to building a purpose and creating your leadership statement accordingly. Your leadership message will be more straightforward if you can identify your underlying motives and relate them to your mission. Additionally, it will encourage and motivate you to bypass your comfort zone and explore unchartered avenues.
Setting development goals:
Creating development goals is another key factor for determining a strategic action plan. You can set SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Representative, and Time-bound objectives. This will enable you to assess your progress over a set period of time.
Thinking ahead of time:
Being ahead of time and feedforward rather than focusing on feedback is a factor that will help set you apart from your peers. This means you should ask for advice from credible and competent colleagues on how you might improve results in the future compared to seeking feedback on past performances, which cannot be changed. This way, you will avoid making mistakes from the start and be well-prepared for any given task.
Encouraging feedback:
It is imperative to get reviews on the outcomes on a regular basis. This requires you to keep a check and balance over the tasks you have assigned to your team. If you have a mentor, then your coach will assist you in acknowledging your accomplishments, critically evaluating areas where results fell short of your expectations, and developing the fortitude and perseverance to face difficult circumstances head-on.
According to Monte Williams, a strategic leadership action plan serves as a route map for you and your management to ensure that you and your team are on the same page in bringing about the changes you have prioritized. In simpler words, it is a roadmap that helps you build a strategy, lead and make adequate use of the resources available in order to execute strategies to accomplish goals set by the organization.
