The last few days I have been musing about leadership.  Todays post is in the same vein, but with a bit of a twist. How others percieve you becomes the foundation of who you are to them.

On the positive side, if you are viewed as warm and friendly, thoughtful and knowledgable, kind, empathetic, easy to understand, motivated and successful, (to name just a few of the critical life skills) it is likely you will be able to exercise your earned power to a greater degree.

These skills are not only valued in leaders, but in fact serve everyone well with helping achieve their goals.  The key to their practice though, is the ability to be liked.  Arogant and conceited delivery can override personal effectiveness.

Everyone is Important

Embrace the thought “everyone is important” as a singular personal value and always behave according to that concept.  If everything you do is founded on this belief, by default you respect everyone and this permeates your behaviour.  Others will feel it clearly.

So whether you desire others to think of you as a leader or just want to use your own earned power to its best effect, start with an underlying mantra embedded in everything you do that will send others a clear single that you value them.

Leveraging this basic underlying default value as the drive of all your behaviours, that is good communication, empathy, self awareness, etc, will just be all the more powerful.