Be a leader at work

Who doesn’t aspire for a leadership role at work? Everybody does, but most are unable to get a leadership label.

How do you set yourself as a leader at your workplace? It is important that you do not make such an aspiration too evident because then you run the risk of being branded as an opportunist. The following actions can catapult you to a leadership position that you seek:

· Be venturesome: You should display an acute sense of innovativeness and enterprise. And that will result in some sort of discomfort for you and you should take it in good spirit. When you take risks and play with perilous activities, you could appear to be irrational and reckless. But do you have anything to lose, except your credibility if you are not proactive? All leaders are bold and intrepid; and are not apprehensive of negative outcomes or step back from the tenets that they subscribe to. If you have to be a leader at work, you should be prepared to take the most elementary of all risks; volunteering to take an assignment that others are reluctant will portray you in excellent light.   

· Harbour a winning attitude: It is a known fact that people follow only victors and frontrunners. Your contemplations and attitude should invariably be that of winners. You cannot afford to be a dark horse. It is widely believed that workplaces are rather vicious circles and that if you have to get past them, you need to be calculating and scheming rather than going through the rut associated with them with doubts and suspicions. It is imperative that whatever actions you take as part of your endeavours to shoulder responsibilities should be genuine, unpretentious and authentic. All your efforts should be assertive, but any effort to bulldoze your way or adopt bullying tactics should be avoided. If you want to be a leader at work, you should harbour intense self-assurance and believe in your capability to bring about a change for the better. Your swaying power should be directed to impel a forward movement in the people who look up to you.  

· Shoulder responsibilities & be accountable: If you seek leadership roles, you have to be adept at shouldering responsibilities – for any facet of activity that has your thumbprint on it. The implication of the foregoing is that despite all precautions and efforts, you can still contribute towards a project’s fiasco. Try as much as you may, you could well be the very cause of failure. Shouldering responsibilities means that you take responsibilities for not everything fruitful and successful, but botches and fiascos as well. And if you have been instrumental in any let-down, propriety demands that you own up responsibility for the same. Learning from mistakes is essential and you cannot overlook this dictum.

· Be transparent & amenable: If you do not accept blame and censure, then it amounts to your inclination to live off yourself. You should always have an open mind and that implies being amenable to fresh ideas and suggestions. You will find that knowledgeable and experienced people offering advice and you simply cannot afford to disregard it. Besides facilitating better performance, such tips always be on the success track. It should be remembered that there is no leadership role at work that does not cater to guidance and suggestions. You require new ideas, sans which, you are likely to parch.

· Share your ideas & plans: When you let your ideas remain bottled-up, you are like a cocoon. You have to let everything inside you cause to flow out. Unless you share your concepts, considerations and strategies, you will never come to know your shortcomings. You have to experience what you are susceptible to and then learn to appreciate the proneness associated with it. And when you empty out your mind, you create space to absorb new ideas and suggestions. These new ideas and suggestions will evidently come from both your followers and knockers; and also from least anticipated quarters. And when this cycle is repeated, you will be flooded with new ideas and thus will have more to contribute. Resultantly, your knowledge gets augmented and that any individual with a good knowledge base invariably becomes a good leader. 

· Reduce all planning to a written form: The world is full of people who are akin to locomotives – plain ‘loco’ and no ‘motive’. They are all words and no actions. But if you want to be a leader at work, you have to be action-oriented. You should focus on deeds. You should act on a plan. But making a plan and implementing it is not an easy job. Formulating a plan calls for delving into details and ensuring that nothing pertinent is missed out. Towards that, you must reduce everything that crosses your mind and which you want to undertake to writing. This will serve as a reference too and you can always fall back on to it. Resultantly, you will create an impression of being meticulous, conscientious and assiduous – the more important traits of any leader.

· Be on the lookout for ‘leading breaks’: At your workplace, there will be scores and scores of opportunities available to you for leadership roles. You do not have to bother about creating them. All that you should be doing is to be watchful and clutch an appropriate one. You will discover, much to your pleasure that there will be innumerable breaks in front of you; the initiative to grab one has to come from you. And if you are unable to spot any, then something is going amiss.

When you adopt a leadership role at work, you learn to shoulder higher responsibilities and do work of superior people. To be able to do that, you need to have a strong blend of strategy and character.