What are you looking forward to? Have you set your goals to help you become a better leader in 2015? The following leadership bucket list can help polish your leadership skills and elevate your influence.
Become a better business storyteller
Stories are a powerful business tool and leaders use stories to engage their teams. Business storytelling changes how we think, act, and feel. By becoming a better storyteller you can communicate and connect with your employees, clients, and peers. Business stories have an objective, goal, or desired outcome. When done effectively, business stories will create a strong personal connection with your audience, change opinions, and inspire others to achieve goals they didn’t know were possible.
Advance your public speaking skills
Everyone hates public speaking and everyone, regardless of how well practiced they are in it, gets nervous speaking in public. In order for a leader to inspire a group to work toward a collective vision, they must be able to address the group as a whole. This requires strong public speaking skills. The best way to do this is to increase your opportunities to speak in public. Write your message, practice it, refine it, and practice it some more. Toastmasters is a great place to go to master public speaking. If you look hard enough you will find opportunities all around to work on this goal.
Read more
There are many benefits to reading more but in the case of leadership, it opens your perspectives to new ideas and methods to enhance your leadership style. Set a goal that by the end of the year you are reading one business book a month. In addition to a book a month, spend time throughout each month reading articles and blogs. Don’t be shy about commenting on blogs or posts on LinkedIn, contribute to the discussion as frequently as possible. To get started setting a goal of reading for a half-hour every day, then every week or so, increase that time by another half-hour. After a few weeks, you likely will find you won’t want to put the book down!
Take more notes
Last year I read this quote that said: “the biggest lie I tell myself is I don’t need to write that down, I will remember”. That has stuck with me because I often think that way. I also inevitably forgot what it was I swore I would remember. Take more notes, write down your goals, and keep daily to-do lists. All of these things will keep you on track to accomplishing great things.
Enlist a coach or mentor
Simply put you cannot do it alone. All the great leaders and icons have coaches and mentors.
Journal or reflect more
I have been resistant to journaling. I see now how important it is to your overall well-being. Journaling pleasantly forces you to reflect on the day and reflection is one of the greatest attributes of a leader. Journaling also helps you practice gratitude because you will frequently write down things that happened that you are grateful for. Journaling will also help you express your dissatisfaction with something that occurred, allowing you to get it out and get over it.
Find more positive capabilities in people
It is easy to become stuck in a critical mindset. And, criticism has an important role to play in advancing the talents and skills of those around you but it must be balanced. When you start to look for more positive capabilities in people you start to see the things they gravitate towards, these are the things they get excited about. Help their passion shine and focus more of their efforts on their positive capabilities to more easily achieve the outcomes you are looking for.
Grow
Grow more and purposefully stretch your knowledge in business, people, and yourself. Find a new hobby or pursue that goal that you frequently think about but have never acted on. Mine is to write a book and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about doing it.
Having a leadership bucket list for 2015 will elevate your engagement at work and in your personal life. I hope you adopt some of these goals for yourself. Don’t hesitate to share your goals with those who are close to you, having someone hold you accountable will further your chances of accomplishing them.
Last updated on September 14th, 2020 at 06:09 am
