Leadership: What is it? The ultimate guide to being a good leader.

Welcome to Win Your Week - our weekly blog on all things motivation, mindfulness, life hacks and more!

This week is all about leadership - what it means to be a good leader, understanding what good leadership looks like, and how to be a better leader in your everyday life.

Leadership is a term that is often highly regarded and used to describe successful individuals. So, today we want to discuss what leadership is and if it is a trait you may want to develop. 

So let's dive in with the question: What is leadership?

Leadership at a glance

By definition leadership is “the capacity to translate vision into reality,", and it is generally a leader’s responsibility to develop a vision for the people and institutions they direct.

While leadership does contain responsibility, it is not dependent on an individual’s title. 

In fact, the idea that you must lead a large group of people to be considered a good leader is highly misleading.

The truth is leadership can come from anywhere!

What makes a good leader is the vision they have and the ability to accomplish this vision. This vision does not have to be significant or typical. The scope of the vision doesn’t matter! All that matters is that the goal aligns with you personally.

It is for this reason that leadership is highly personal. You can lead a large group of people if you want, or you can simply lead yourself. They key is finding a vision that is within your capacity.

How to be a good leader:

So, what does being a good leader or leading yourself entail?

See below for our three easy tips to improve your leadership skills.

Tip #1 - Practice Discipline

A good leader needs discipline!

As we mentioned before, leadership is characterised by an individual’s ability to realise a vision. Therefore, developing discipline is a must to effectively achieve goals. We can have a bit more discipline in our lives by ensuring we meet deadlines, keeping appointments and end meetings on time.

Tip #2 - Keep learning

Another way to be a great leader is to keep learning new skills. Learning new skills keeps your knowledge current and skills fresh which are essential for achieving your overall vision. Learning new skills is also essential for leadership as it provides us with new ways to overcome challenges.

Tip #3 - Personal Reflection

Personal reflection is another essential practice for developing our leadership skills.

Reflecting on specific situations and how we handled them will enable us to identify areas for improvement and what we could have done better. By reflecting on current situations we can be prepared when similar situations come around again.

Over to you...

We hope we have helped redefine what being a leader is and highlighted that anyone can be a leader regardless of their role or position. If you work toward achieving your vision and have some discipline, and reflection while developing you can be a great leader.

Now go ahead and Win Your Week!