How to improve your leadership

Let’s face it. If you check the news, the world doesn’t feel great, and all that seems to be reported is doom and gloom. Rarely do they write about all the people making great changes. We need better leadership, fast, and that includes you.  

But you’re super busy trying to balance everything, and pausing to think about your leadership might feel like it’s something you just have to put off until later. You’d be wrong, now is the best time, but until you believe you are ready, here are some things to think about to improve your leadership subtly.  

Leadership is about knowing who you are and what you want to achieve; it may be about the legacy you want to leave, too. I feel strongly about good leadership

because I've brought five children into the world, and I want to leave it in a better, more harmonious state when I leave than when I entered. I want my children and grandchildren to grow up with more and more opportunities and less and less hatred, racism, genderism etc. I’d like global harmony please!  

Many people seem to think there isn’t really a problem anymore, they think just a few are causing the majority of the problems, but that’s simply not the case. I see on at least a weekly basis, a small simple problem that could be resolved but no one does.  Leaders have a profound impact, whether it's within their company, their family or on a global scale. What's important is that they understand and embrace their potential to create positive change. 

Firstly, just think about the type of leader you want to be, step away from your title and step away from your role, what is the mark that you want to leave on the world?

What is the message that you want to pass on? Why do you want to lead? It's not enough to just say 'I want to be a leader'. That's about power. What do you want people to say about your leadership when you are gone?  

A true leader has a message they want to give and a change they want to create in the world. It doesn't matter whether it's small scale within your family, your community, or your role, or actually you want to have a world impact. It doesn't

matter. But what matters is that you know what that impact is. The second piece that matters, is that you feel content inside, that you feel that you are resilient to the challenges life will throw at you. My measure for this is am I being the person I want to be?  

I'm sure that you've come across leaders that you've wondered why they were in that position because they seem to lack self-confidence or self-esteem, or they are more dictator than leader. Any baggage from your childhood or any triggers that you haven’t removed, are going to fire off whether you like it or not. They are based on automatic responses.

When we lead, whatever our intention, we act out on the outside, all that is going on, on the inside. That’s just how humans work.  

Leaders need humility and they need to be able to show vulnerability, but they need to have a core strength of, I know what I'm doing here, I know what my message is.

I may still question myself, but what I have deep inside is a knowledge that the impact I want to create in the world is to change leadership forever and for the better. 

I want a leader I can trust in, and believe in, and whose ideas are inspirational. 

So, if you want to be a leader like that, if you want to be a leader that people talk about and recommend to other people, make sure you have reflected on what your message is and then reflected on whether that is the message and mark you leave every day.

Once you know that, you will be able to see very clearly whether you need to make changes or not.