Leaderonomics

Tips For Young Leaders

Apr 07, 2014 • 1 Min Read

As the world is evolving, leaders need different leadership skills and qualities. For emerging leaders, now is the time to begin to master these skills

Here are three things that emerging leaders can begin doing today:

1. See the big picture

Being able to take a step back and see the bigger picture is very important.

According to Bob Gandossy, founder of the Top Companies for Leaders survey, providing guidance is becoming more difficult as the world has become more uncertain and complicated.

Leaders should be able to get their heads around these complications in order to lead their teams with clarity and credibility.

Get hungry for understanding and start seeing things from a bird’s eye view in order to fully comprehend issues.

2. Values matter more than hierarchy

Today, credibility comes with hierarchy to a lesser extent. People assess the value systems of leaders and seek people who can inspire them and who they genuinely want to follow.

This happens not only for leaders, but organisations as well. According to an article on CNN by Susanne Gargiulo, “Research does indeed show that an increasing number of people, particularly among the younger generations, want to work for organisations that do good and have clear values.”

Assess your own value system. What drives you? Are you able to inspire others to follow these same values?

3. Get creative with “stupid” ideas

According to Ronald Heifetz, director of the Centre for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, you must be willing to explore theories and different ideas as this is what keeps you ahead, helps you resolve issues and gets your creative juices flowing.

Creativity and the ability to think out of the box are highly prized as we move towards a knowledge-based economy. Exercise your creativity by pushing yourself to consider wacky possibilities.

Ask questions, throw out ideas, and let your creativity flow no matter how “stupid” they may sound in your head at first. There may be valuable gems there that could be groundbreaking ideas.