How do you improve your leadership skills when it is crazy at work? The 40-hour workweek has become 70-hours. Markets, customers, and employee’s desires and needs are changing so rapidly that it is almost impossible to keep your leadership skills effective. Additionally, our attention is pulled in multiple directions like never before. Even worse, our colleagues can be scattered all around the world. To keep up with the changes, demand for our attention, and lack of proximity to our coworkers, we have to move fast. As a result, problems will surface, things will break, and you end up fighting fires. Problems, things breaking, and fighting fires create an opportunity to improve your leadership skills, but most people fail to do so.
When problems surface, things start breaking, and you go into firefighting mode, finger pointing and blame games start. As a result, it is tempting for leaders to blame their employees, organization, or culture. Everything would be fine if people just did their job. If the boss would just make up their mind, we wouldn’t be in this situation. If only the organization were structured better, these things wouldn’t happen. When you make these statements, you are making a huge career mistake, and even more, you are missing an opportunity to improve your leadership skills.
Leaders who focus on blaming others, or blaming outwardly, will not improve their leadership skills. Nothing is their fault; therefore, they don’t need to improve anything. They are arrogant and blind to the role they played in whatever went wrong, broke, or caused a fire within the organization.
To improve your leadership skills, you must focus on yourself and not others. It all starts by caring about your leadership brand. You have to take things personally because the only thing we can control is how we adapt, change, and improve. When leaders don’t take things personally, they become detached from their actions. They lose their motivation to deliver excellence. Becoming detached from their actions can also lead to unethical decision-making.
Knowing the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence Improves Your Leadership Skills
Steven Covey introduces the circle of concern and circle of influence in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Keeping these circles in mind when working to improve your leadership skills will help you balance taking work personally but not so personally that you burn out.
The circle of influence is everything you can control. How you react, what you say, how you prepare for meetings or presentations, etc. Knowing what belongs, and more importantly, doesn’t belong in this circle will help you improve your leadership skills.
The circle of concern contains all the things that bother you but you have no control over. Items in this circle include how timely other people are at completing their tasks, HR rolling out new policies, a recession, a new competitor, etc. Putting the wrong things in this circle causes you to miss opportunities to improve your leadership skills.
What can you control at work?
When you ignore the things you can control, you are flat out wasting time and opportunities to improve your leadership skills. By focusing on what you can control, you are in the driver’s seat. You are being intentional about how you spend your time, enabling you to improve your leadership skills.
- Arriving to work on time
- Meeting deadlines
- Starting your action items on time
- Completing deliverables on time
- Ending meetings on time
- Who you network with at work and outside of work
- Your expression of gratitude
- Your work ethic
- The way you treat others
- Your goals, aspirations, and desires
- What you focus your time and energy on
- The type of work you do
- Your habits
- How much time you invest in keeping your industry knowledge updated
- Your attitude
What can’t you control at work?
When you focus on what is not within your control at work, you waste valuable energy. Therefore, you will not have the energy needed to improve your leadership skills. However, you shouldn’t completely ignore what you can’t control at work. You have to accept what is, be aware, and stay educated on those things.
- Change
- Other people’s minds
- Other people’s happiness
- HR policies
- Who your coworkers are
- The behavior of your coworkers
- If your coworkers like you
- The projects you get assigned to work
- The deadlines imposed upon you
- The reality of the data
- If you are a victim of organization right-sizing
- Coworkers gossiping behind your back
- Your boss recognizing your efforts
- Your boss’s mood or attitude
- If your boss likes you
Improve your leadership skills by focusing on yourself rather than on others. The one thing you can freely change and improve is yourself. If you spend your time finding blame, you become unaware of opportunities to improve yourself and your career. Start by caring and taking things more personally. Keep the circle of influence and the circle of concern in mind the next time something goes wrong at work. Resist the temptation to blame your employees or your organization.
Last updated on April 15th, 2021 at 07:46 am
