Prioritize before you begin

As a leader, do you prioritize your work before jumping into it?

Launching a project before you have a good sense of all its components will likely slow down your work and its successful completion. Make sure you get your priorities right - including input from colleagues - before setting your project in motion:

• Clarify the assignment. Don't start until stakeholders and colleagues agree on the goals and the general timetable.
• Organize your staff. Get team members involved at the get-go so they feel ownership. Agree on a way of working – how often you'll meet, how you'll communicate, etc.
• Create a project plan. Ask your team to help you identify project activities and how long they will take. Put them in sequence and identify which are interdependent and which can run at the same time.
• Determine check-in points. Set some specific dates to do check-ins on progress.  Catching gaps and mistakes early can them corrected quickly.

Adapted from Guide to Project Management from Harvard Business Review

Now that you have the position

You now have the leadership position.  But do you have the skills?

As a leader, you have a formal leadership role.  But formal leadership roles demand a set of skills that you may not necessarily have.  People frequently are promoted because they were exemplary in their position.  However, this doesn't automatically translate into having the skills required in a leadership role.  As a leader, can you identify the necessary skill sets for your position?  When that's done, can you then identify which of these skill sets you have, which skill sets you don't have, and which ones you are developing?  Once this 'gap analysis' has been done, you have some important thinking to do about how you will build the skills that you need in your role.  In other words, what do you need to learn and how will you learn it?  Every great leader is also a great learner.  Leadership demands learning and continual refinement of the skills of leadership.  What is your plan to be a great leader? 

Here is a list of just some of the skill sets that great leaders have:

• setting direction for the work of your staff
• building purposeful, authentic relationships...and then sustaining them
• knowing how to motivate people
• knowing how to handle difficult conversations while maintaining the integrity of staff members
• problem-solving
• supporting each member of your staff in building their capacity to do the work
• coaching and mentoring.....and knowing the difference
• planning for succession and ensuring that there are always others who can carry on the work
• being accountable
• taking responsibility
• identifying the focus of the work and supporting staff in keeping the focus
• dealing with distracters so that they don't impact on your staff
• distributing / sharing leadership with others
• ...and the list goes on....