What makes a good leader?
In AIESEC we are all about leadership, but have you ever considered how we measure true leadership? What is the metric of leadership, how do we know how far we have gone and how far we still have to go?
Your first guess might be; leadership is measured in the results that are produced.
As the head of marketing, for example, you might want to measure leadership by the number of leads and customers you were able to get your team to produce.
While this is not totally wrong, this is not the true measure of leadership.
True leadership is measured in the number of new leaders that you can produce, in your ability to empower others to be better.
How do you do this?
First, you do not have to have a team under you, or a set of followers to be a leader, you can be a leader in your everyday life. To your friends, colleagues at work, the stranger sitting next to you on a bus or plane, you can make the person a better human thus empowering him or her.
Always inspire by action, do things that will make others want to do better and leave their comfort zones. Always be the first to take the initiative, the first to volunteer. Show them how it should be done by doing it. Show it, don’t just tell it. Always try to be the best version of yourself, this is the best way to help others do the same.
You can empower people to express themselves by lending a listening ear to their problems. What most people need is someone who can listen to them, identify with their pain, and share in their struggles. When you have the opportunity to listen, make sure you do that attentively, with the true heart to listen.
Information is power, what better way to empower a person than by teaching him or her what he doesn’t know, and sharing vital information with him or her. Always seek to share solutions to problems with people around you, teach them how it is done.
Give people the freedom to grow by letting them fail. The world is filled with people who are afraid of trying because they are afraid of failing. This has made thousands of people live beneath their potentials. Create an environment for those around you to try and fail freely. This is how they unleash their potentials and become better, perfection is overrated.
Always seek to steer people towards the solutions to their problems by asking thought-challenging questions. Asking challenging and solution-oriented questions are very good ways to challenge the way people think and get them to see things differently. Always ask the why, what, and how questions when trying to help someone come out of a situation. It stares their thinking.
Another very powerful way of empowering others is to leave your comfort zone, travel to a new and different country to volunteer for a social cause. Want to learn how you can do this? Start from here
