Leading through Result ( Developing your Thought leadership)

One of the ways to make an impact in your professional environment is by developing thought leadership.

What is meant by thought leadership?

Thought leadership is that you develop expertise in your core functional area or any subject and people in your network always seek your opinion or ideas or your perspectives when they face any problems in the technical domain or subject.
 
That is, Thought leader is one who is “sought after expert”  in a given field or functional domain.

For example,
If people in your network or your organization perceive you as an expert in creative problem solver for any business challenges, they will approach you when they face any business struggles. By making yourself as an expert in any given functional domain, you are making an impact on others, or you are delivering results as a leader in a professional environment.

You might have come across some people as an expert in Tooling, Design, Coaching, Negotiation, Investment, analyst, problem solver and so on. 

You can become an expert in your functional area with systematic effort.
 
How to develop thought leadership in your functional domain?

1. First, you need to identify your core area or your strength
2. Polish your knowledge and skill in your core area
3. Continuously add value to others in your core area, especially in a meeting forum or during the crisis in a professional environment
4. Over some time, people will identify and associate you with your expertise

Developing thought leadership will pay you in the long run, and the development effort is a continuous effort. You need to invest in you!!!

Leading through Result - Impacting others

Having discussed making an impact at self-level on leading, let us examine, how you can make an impact on others in a day to day life.

The others could be your friends, colleagues, boss, and subordinates in a professional setup. The first impact you can make others is that making yourself approachable when others are reaching out. Approachable means, how you are friendly enough and how you care them through listening. It should not be perceived that you need to be available for others all the time and do serve for other’s need. Even if you are not available to others, how politely you are refusing is also a way to make an impact on others positively.

Similarly, when others are approaching you for a solution to problems, how you are guiding with your thoughts or perspective or directing to right sources makes an impact on others.

The point is how you are conducting yourself through eventually make an impact on them about you. Once you make an impact on others through your positive gesture and thought process, any higher level challenges in the organizations can be resolved with your leadership capability.

To sum up, when you are going up the career ladder, you need to make an impact on others through your ease of approach and friendly. This is something experts refer to as soft skills. Once you impact on soft aspects, you can lead in any hard, technical, business challenges!
 

Leading through Result -Impacting Self

The first logical step in delivering a result or making an impact as one of the leadership development processes is to create an impact at self-level through our actions.

Making an impact at self-level:

To gain more influence on others or any decisions you take on a professional ground. First, you need to make an impact at your level.

For example, if you are suffering from some unwanted habits, you need to work on yourself to give up the practice. When you achieve through your willpower, you are making an impact at your level, and this impact will reinforce your leadership capability.

Similarly, if you are the person of coming late for any event, first correct yourself and make an impact on yourself. This impact at your level will bring you more confidence to you when you insist discipline on others.

If you afraid of taking a decision even with given data points, make yourself to break the inner fear and experiment to take a decision and face the consequence. By breaking your limitations, you are making an impact at self. 

Likewise, each one of us has many inhibitions, reservations, doubts, inferiority complex, procrastination and when you work on it and overcome those pulling factors, you are making an impact at yourself. Any positive impact being created by you at self-level will give you tremendous power to lead others.

Identify the limitations which are pulling you down, take action and see the result or make self impact!
 
Let us discuss the ways by which you can make an impact on others in a day to day life in next week!

Leading Through Result

Having discussed some insights on personal leadership and leading others, the next step in the leadership development process is “ delivering results.”

Not only in a professional environment, in any transactions, like in customer-seller, employer-employee, sports, politics, what is being watched out for is Impact or result being delivered consistently.

You could be a person with good value systems, self-organized and good at building an interpersonal relationship with others, yet if you lack delivering impact or result, your growth and leadership development stalled.

You might have observed some people with excellent qualification and attitude, but struggles to go up through career ladder due to lack of delivering expected results or impact in their given role.

When we say result or impact, it could be tangible or intangible. However, people are looking for consistent result or impact from you as a leader in a given role or context.

Some of the areas need to be discussed on making an impact as a leaders

1.Making an impact at self-level and others
2.Thought leadership 
3.Managing expectation on Impact or Result
 
Let us discuss those areas in next week.

Have a great week till then!