Be a leading light at work

Everybody aspires to be top dog at work. But not all become key players. Why is it that only some amongst many turn into leading lights? Aspiring to be a leader at work is one matter and make such intents known to others is another. When you do the latter, you run the peril of being pigeonholed as a freebooter or a fortune hunter.

If you want to be a leader at work, the following tips can help:

·  Be enterprising: An enterprising disposition will not be comfortable at all, however, you will have to take everything in stride. People may regard your venturesome pursuits as crazy, but then that is what handling risks entail; a person who does not take initiative loses everything, including credibility. As a leader, you ought to be daring and not fearful of a failure; you should not compromise on the principles that you stand for either. As a leader, you should not shy away from playing with chance, particularly when others are backing out.

·  Embrace a triumphant outlook: In any situation, people have got a tendency to go with victors. Therefore, it is essential that your attitude manifests a winning outlook. All workplaces are generally backbiting establishments and if you have to go through them unaffected and without fingers being pointed, you need to have a very shrewd as distinct from a devious approach. All your efforts to discharge your responsibilities should invariably be earnest and bona fide; and at the same time you should display boldness and forcefulness as distinct from brazenness and hostility. If you want to be a leading light at work, there is no way that your self-confidence should plummet. You must have full trust in your capability to alter circumstances and mind-sets of people for the better.

·  Be liable and answerable: No headship function comes sans responsibilities and accountability. You will have to be adept at being answerable for all aspects related to your duties. You may proceed with due cautiousness and restraint alright, but yet meet failure. You could even be the very reason for it. When you become answerable for any work, it is not that you attribute success to yourself; every flop or a let-down is also to be ascribed to you. Therefore, you should be forthright enough to take blame for issues that resulted in a failure. And more importantly, you should learn from mistakes and ensure that they are not repeated in future.

·  Be understandable & open: If you display any reluctance to be blameworthy and not agree to any criticism, it will be seen as an act of selfishness. As a leader, you need to have an open mind, the implication of which is being responsive to new ideas at all times. There will be several well-informed and experienced people whose advice you will just not be able to ignore as they will be sound and prove to be real success facilitators. Since work is all about teamwork, there is no way that you can do it alone. You will have to accept new ideas and work on them.  

·  Don’t be secretive: There is no point in letting ideas remain locked inside you. You must share them, together with their very reasons. Unless you do this, you will never ever come to be aware about your flaws and inadequacies. It is essential that you know your vulnerabilities and various prompting factors for them. So, when you interact and let things inside you out, the space that is generated is used to absorb and house fresh concepts and recommendations put forth by others, including those whom you least look forward to for contributions. As time passes and this process assumes a recurring form, you have at your disposal a mine of new ideas that cause you to make very useful contributions at work. Your knowledge base becomes tremendous and which causes people to look up to you.

·  Make a note of everything important: To be a leader at work, you have to be an ‘action person’ and not a ‘paper tiger’. But before you get down to action, you must have an action plan, formulating one is not an easy affair; executing an action plan is equally difficult too. Planning calls for research and exploring minute details; the process is demanding and the likelihood of missing out on some important issue cannot be discounted. Therefore, it is always in the fitness of things to reduce all planning to writing so that you can refer to it when in doubt. And more importantly, when you act as per your plan, you will portray an image of being thorough, a trait that all leaders actually display.

At any workplace, opportunities will come to you for leadership roles. You have to be alert and keep your wits about to grip any suitable one. You will realise, much to your astonishment and delight that the number of prospects that lie ahead of you are many   and that you have to be dynamic enough to seize one. And when you get into any leadership function, you start discharging duties of a senior position, for which, a strong blend of manoeuvring capability and integrity is a prerequisite.