Aside from having the experience and expertise to be a manager, it’s important to develop the intangible skills possessed by all effective leaders out there. In this post, we offer 10 soft skills you can work on to help you make the transition from regular employee to someone in a leadership position.
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Be Ready to Make Mistakes
You need to accept at some point, you’re going to make mistakes. But as long as you hold yourself accountable and don’t repeat the same mistakes, you should be fine. What you should never do is blame others or make excuses for your screw-ups.
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Be Ready to Meet Dissent
Being a leader means having to make tough decisions not everyone will like. But decisiveness is also an important quality in any manager. As long as you’ve done your homework and analyzed the situation carefully, your decision, no matter how unpopular, will have come from a good place.
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Be Approachable
Effective leaders are people who others can come to for guidance and advice. You need to send your team the message that you are always ready to talk to them about work and even their personal lives. The more comfortable they are with you, the better.
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Lead Your Team, Don’t Boss Them Around
The best leaders coach and support their team members, helping them find ways to be better at their jobs. Instead of calling people out for their mistakes, help them fix the problem and avoid the situation that lead to it.
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Don’t be a Know-It-All
Nobody likes a know-it-all. Sure, you may have the skills, intelligence, and experience to lead a team, but you don’t know everything, so don’t act like you do.
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Maintain a Love for Learning
Taking on a leadership role means you are constantly under pressure to learn and improve yourself. Always be ready to learn new things that will help you lead your people more effectively.
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Be Worthy of People’s Respect
If you respect your team members, you will get their respect in return. Always be respectful of their ideas, opinions, and actions, even if you don’t necessarily agree with them.
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Be Inspiring
The best leaders are those who can inspire others to do better and be better. Be ready to talk to your team members, find out what makes them tick, and figure out how best to motivate them.
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Apply the Golden Rule—Always
Treat your people the way you want them to treat you. Many managers are guilty of letting their position go to their heads, forgetting what it was like to be under someone else’s leadership.
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Be Confident
How can you inspire confidence when you don’t even believe in yourself? You were chosen for a reason—you got this.
If you’re looking for roles to grow your career and need to be pointed in the right direction, let the staffing services specialists of Top Notch Personnel help. Contact our offices to learn more about how our staffing solutions can help you.
