How to Continue to Build Leadership Behaviors For the Next Level in Your Career

In the previous blog we covered Coaching Senior Leaders For the Next Level

This insight explores a practical approach to building a focused action plan that enables leaders to efficiently target and enhance specific leadership behaviors and skills. Continuously honing your leadership skills is crucial for excelling in your current role and propelling yourself to the next level. However, finding the time to invest in self-improvement can be challenging.

How do you fit thinking about your career into your already overwhelming schedule? We have found that creating a very focused action plan for each skill or behavior helps leaders to efficiently and effectively target and improve specific leadership behaviors and skills. Building an action plan is a process that allows both you and your team to identify and reflect on specific behaviors and skills for improvement. This will also allow you to be more effective in the process of improving leadership skills.

So, let’s get straight into it and look at the steps involved in building your action plan:

1. The first step involves identifying a specific goal for a behavior or skill that you would like to improve. Let’s focus on collaboration and set a goal of collaborating more effectively with peers and direct reports.
2. The second step is to ask for feedback on the behaviors that would help you reach your goal of collaborating more effectively with peers. For example, you would ask peers and direct reports for feedback on how you can collaborate with them more effectively. By sharing your goal and asking them for feedback you are demonstrating that you value collaboration, their opinion and continuing to improve your leadership skills and behaviors
3. Develop a simple action plan with 4-6 specific behaviors to change based on the feedback in combination with your own observations and thoughts.
4. Review your action plan weekly to check in with yourself. Identify where you did well and exhibited these behaviors and where you did not. It is important to understand how you can improve and change in situations where you did not exhibit these behaviors. We recommend keeping a log of this.
5. On a monthly basis, take a few minutes as part of other meetings and ask peers and direct reports for feedback. We recommend resharing your goal and specific behaviors you are working on. We recommend you ask for feedback on these specific behaviors –You can also ask if there are any other behaviors you can focus on to improve your goals of collaborating more effectively with your peers and direct reports.

Don’t let discomfort hold you back from embracing growth and development. Building an action plan and seeking feedback are transformative experiences that enable personal and professional advancement. By being the example within your organization, you inspire others to embark on their own growth journeys.

By engaging in this process, you not only set a positive example for your peers and team members but also unlock opportunities for personal and professional growth. We are here to support you in becoming an exemplary leader within your organization, developing the skills and behaviors essential for your career advancement.
Reach out to us today and let us guide you towards building the skills and behaviors necessary for your career success.