Practice These 7 leadership Skills To Become A Leader People ACTUALLY Want To Follow,

Chapters

00:00
Introduction: Leadership as a Skill

03:04
Chapter 1: Vision Alignment and Clarity

06:28
Chapter 2: Building Trust and Fostering a Positive Culture

10:07
Chapter 3: Authenticity and Self-Awareness in Leadership

13:01
Chapter 4: Developing the Talents of Others

18:36
Chapter 5: Strategic Decision Making for Effective Leadership

21:20
Chapter 6: Scalability and Growth in Leadership

24:56
Chapter 7: Financial Accountability and Stewardship in Leadership

summary

In this conversation, Ashlee discusses the key skills required to become an effective leader. She emphasizes that leadership is not something people are born with, but rather a skill that can be developed over time. The seven skills she highlights are: vision alignment and clarity, building trust and culture, authenticity, talent development, strategic decision making, scalability, and financial accountability. Ashlee provides practical tips and advice on how to practice and improve these skills.

keywords

leadership, skills, vision alignment, trust, culture, authenticity, talent development, decision making, scalability, financial accountability

takeaways

• Leadership is a skill that can be developed over time
• Vision alignment and clarity are crucial for effective leadership
• Building trust and fostering a positive culture are essential
• Authenticity and self-awareness are key to leading others
• Talent development involves recognizing strengths and weaknesses
• Strategic decision making requires data-driven and collaborative approaches
• Scalability is important for growth and attracting others to the vision
• Financial accountability is crucial for gaining trust and stewarding resources

titles

• Developing the Talents of Others
• Scalability and Growth in Leadership

Sound Bites

• "It's not that people are a natural born leader and you're not, it's more so that people can see that they've been able to motivate and inspire and encourage others and attracted them to them with their vision and their mission and people wanna follow them."
• "The number one skill that you must learn as a leader in leading people is vision alignment and clarity."
• "Learning how to lead people requires you to practice sharing that vision as often as possible and really tweaking it and understanding how to make it more effective and more efficient and more clear for other people."

Let's Connect: https://linktr.ee/ashleetate

Transcript

Ashlee (00:02)

Have you ever heard someone say, wow, you're just a natural born leader or that person's a natural born leader? Yes, people say that all the time and I wanna dispel that myth. It's not that people are a natural born leader and you're not, it's more so that people can see that they've been able to motivate and inspire and encourage others and attracted them to them with their vision and their mission and people wanna follow them. And that's how sometimes you get into a position where you maybe,

have to lead people or where you start to lead people. And that's the key of learning how to lead people, which is what we're gonna talk about in today's video. So as a nonprofit founder and a business consultant, I've worked with lots of people, I run a board of directors, I work with people all the time. And part of leading people really has nothing to do with your leadership position.

It has more to do with the skills that you have and that you practice on a regular basis that will allow you to be a great leader and really lead people where you want them to go or to whatever mission you are trying to accomplish. 

Maybe you're somebody who has fallen into the position of being a leader and becoming a leader because as an entrepreneur, sometimes you know that business grows and now you've got to start leading people and maybe you've been working on your own and now all of a sudden you're trying to figure out like, how do I lead these people? And the thing is about becoming a leader that's great about this is that it evolves over time and you practice as you go. So you're gonna learn this position as you go and you're gonna become a better leader as

you continue to grow and learn and practice. So in this video, I really just wanna share seven things that I've learned over time that I believe are the most important skills that you need when it comes to leading people. Now there are a multitude of other skills out there that are great for leaders and leadership skills that you absolutely should learn, but if you are leading people, these are some of the most important.

Welcome to the Practice Your Perfect podcast. My name is Ashlee Tate and if you're new to this channel, I talk all about profit, purpose and productivity and leadership skills are the backbone to increasing some of those areas. right? Your profit, your purpose, your productivity. It's really hard to increase those if you can't get people to join you along the way and help you increase, you know, help you achieve that vision.

And it's really hard along the way if you can't get people to help you achieve that vision. So that brings me to number one. The number one skill that you must learn as a leader in leading people is vision alignment and clarity. So I call this your KUDOS. And what that means is it's your known ultimate destination of success. If you are leading people, they also must understand and be clear

on what that ultimate vision of success is because you've attracted people to your vision. They want to help you create it and become whatever you want it to be. But because you happen to be the person that is leading this charge, you have got to be able to understand and express effectively what you guys are all working towards, right? What vision we're working towards, what mission we're trying to accomplish. And a lot of times with leaders,

If they don't understand that critical piece, and I do believe this is the number one skill that you must have, if you cannot express your vision and you don't know where you're going, how is anyone else? So the way to practice this is to talk to people, random people, and talk to them about your mission, talk to them about your vision and what you're trying to do and why you're trying to do that. And you'll start to see where there are some cracks.

and people will ask you questions for clarification. And hopefully you'll be self -aware enough to say, okay, this is where people are getting stuck and they don't understand my vision. This is where it's convoluted because sometimes, you you can't see the forest for the trees. A lot of entrepreneurs and visionaries get stuck on this big vision because they are in it, they understand it, they think about it all the time every single day.

but everyone else doesn't and they are living life and they have other things that they're worried about. And your job is to keep reiterating that and help them understand what that vision means, where we're going and why we're going there.

Learning how to lead people requires you to practice sharing that vision as often as possible and really tweaking it and understanding how to make it more effective and more efficient and more clear for other people. So that's the practice. Focus on that for the number one skill on vision and clarity.

Now the second skill is a top skill that you have to learn and you must know if you're going to be leading people. It's learning how to build trust and build a culture. And I put both of those in the same one because I feel like the culture and the trust building kind of go hand in hand when you are actually executing, excuse me, when you are actually executing. 

Now I do believe that this is one of the hardest skills. Now vision and clarity is one of the most important skills, but building trust and culture is one of the hardest skills because that's not something you have a lot of control over. That is something that only you can foster and you hope that the people that you are leading also want to foster that type of environment and that you can pinpoint when it's time to remove people who are not fostering that environment or

keeping that environment safe for others to actually collaborate or give feedback in a safe way or, you know,

In order for people to execute your vision, the most foundational piece of all of this is culture. That culture has to be focused on fostering collaboration, creating teamwork, having a place where people can give feedback on maybe a better way to achieve this vision or how they might disagree with the direction you're going or if you've gotten off your mission and your values.

all of those things, people have to feel safe enough to be able to say, I don't really love this direction. And in order to do this, you have to really practice a culture of asking people what their feedback is, creating a space that they do feel safe, and working with team members to collaborate, right? And put in their input, rewarding contributions that get you closer to that vision and

that align with your mission and values that people have. Those things are so important and a lot of times people forget that you might have to as a leader go out and seek that feedback from the people that you're learning how to lead. And that can be difficult. But you have to remove that ego and you have to understand that everyone's working towards the same mission and vision. So you need that type of culture in order to move the organization or the business

forward.

Now Google is a great example of a company that does foster collaboration and has a culture of trust and feedback and just that type of energizing work environment where people want to give their feedback on what's happening with the company and the direction that they're moving. And so that's a good place to kind of start and look at other company cultures to see.

how they have fostered some of these things. In fact, Google actually made a whole, like their whole workspace is basically a collaborative workspace for each other and working from home and just giving people the space to be authentic and to be themselves.

Now this number three is pretty hard to do and it's hard to hold a mirror up to yourself, but it's all about authenticity. And in order to lead other people, you first have to understand how to lead yourself. Now this is where the practice your perfect 161 method, all the reset method, everything I talk about in that workbook, that's where that comes in because learning how to lead yourself really does require regular check -ins.

It requires you to hold a mirror up to yourself and be very self aware of what you're doing as a leader to not only take care of yourself, to take care of your employees or the people that follow you and the people that you're leading, to make sure that you are also in vision alignment and that you are clear on your vision. And once you get into working with other people and you're getting feedback and you're getting collaborations and you're getting all of these things, it's really important to

make sure that you are centering yourself and aware of the failures and what you've learned from that, the things that don't feel so good and so warm and fuzzy to actually talk about and think about, but they are the thing that can make you a great leader and help you move forward in building your business and really leading people to the vision that you have.

And that's why I call all of my online business followers, anyone who works with me is on my email list. And if you're not, you should get on there. But I call all of them fierce visionaries. And that's also how I refer to myself because as a leader, that is essentially what you have to be. You have to be fierce on your goals and you have to be a visionary so that other people can then be attracted to your vision and want to also make that vision happen.

Right? so becoming a visionary, which is a leader, right? It takes practice, it takes work, and it takes authenticity and focus and check -ins and resets and really looking at yourself to become more self -aware of what might be happening both up here and here as you are running a business.

So on this point, I want you to practice regular check -ins with yourself. And this will allow you to become clear about the things that you need to trim, like when they say trim the fat, this will allow you to become clear about those things that you need to let go so that you can focus on where you're actually trying to go.

Now number four, so number three was all about developing the self, right, yourself as a leader. But number four as a leader is also learning how to develop the talent that you do have in developing others and making them the best that they can be. Now, one of the things that you have to realize about, you know, becoming your best self is that, I mean, helping others become their best self is you have to recognize people's strengths and weaknesses.

why maybe you hired them or why they're on your board or why they're struggling with something that's one of the things I do as an online business consultant. I look at people and I hear what they're saying, I listen and I'm trying to figure out what they actually like, where their purpose lies and where they actually want to go, but what's actually holding them back. And I would say as a leader, of the critical pieces of your job

is to help people see the best in themselves, help them understand their strengths, help them understand their weaknesses, and then find a place within your vision where they can use those strengths to help move the mission and the vision forward. So how do you practice this? You practice this by finding ways to develop those strengths and understand what those strengths are.

So you may not be able to look at someone and you may not spend a whole lot of time with them and be able to say, hey, here's your strengths, here are your weakness. So you can have tools that are available to you that maybe you run people through or that you just know. So as an example, I use zodiac signs. I love zodiac signs. You guys probably have heard me talk about it on here before. One of the things that I love using zodiac signs for is to understand how to relate to people.

and have a a starting point as to what type of personality they might have and what their strengths might be. And when you're looking at it from that perspective and you really are doing it to help people, that's when you really get the most out of people because you're looking at their strengths, you're able to encourage them to work in those strengths and help you with moving your vision forward, right?

And the other piece about that is if you have done the self -awareness piece and you've done the check -ins and you understand your own strengths and weaknesses, then when you are looking for people to help you move that vision forward, you're looking for people who have strengths in the weak areas of yourself so that you are essentially creating this kind of behemoth of a group that has people who are filling in weaknesses for other people with their strengths.

and vice versa amongst each other. And so you should always be looking at your business as a kind of living thing. Where are the holes? Where are the gaps? What needs to be filled? And where can people best fit? And that's really where talent development comes from. And as a leader, it's one of the best skills that you could possibly learn outside of vision and culture. So do that. Practice that, guys.

Practice that guys, it's a huge one. And this is something that you can practice.

Talent development is something that you can practice on anyone. This can be on your spouse, this can be on your children, this could be on a friend. It's something that you develop and you work on all the time. You're always practicing. So maybe you use, like as I use this zodiac signs, maybe someone else uses the Myers and Briggs or the Clifton strengths but you're looking at people and you're trying to figure out what is the best, what,

what do you really have to offer? Like I always say, how can you unleash or something amazing? Well, that doesn't just equate to people that are watching my videos that equates to everyone that I meet. And that really is the goal. And as a leader, that should be your goal is to help people really figure out where are my strengths and how can I help this mission, right? Or what are my weaknesses and what am I looking for in people that I want to bring along on this mission or that I'm attracting? How can they help? What can they offer? So practice that.

Practice with your kids, practice with your spouse. You'll see it's really fun, it's very interesting, and you'll start to see that people gravitate towards you when they feel like you are looking for the best in them, not for their weaknesses.

So number five is all about strategic decision making. So we make a lot of decisions all day. Some of us even have decision fatigue. I know I've been there before. for being a leader, one of the most important things you could, I say, miss important all the time. say, la, la, la, let's get.

One of the largest struggles that a lot of people have is strategic decision making. And the reason for that is because if you are not a data -driven person, but you're running a business and you're an entrepreneur and now you're a leader, people are looking to you to make strategic decisions based on the information that you get. So that information could come in as data, numbers. It could come in as feedback.

It could come in from a collaboration. It could come in from a lot of different areas. And your job is to make sure that you are making the best decision possible with all of the information that you have. And a lot of times that information might hurt your ego a little bit, right? We're all working from that ego, but we have to put that in check when we are trying to make a decision.

Like we may have a, we may decide that we want to go a certain direction because that's the direction that we want to take our vision. you know, we can get, can, visionaries can get very focused on that vision, but if someone comes to you and they say, Hey, here's some data that shows that that might not be working. You have got to be ready to pivot. You've got to be ready to make a decision based on strategy and based on what has been proven. Right. And so you have to be open to that feedback and all of that from.

other people and sometimes that means that you're kind of failing in public you're failing in front of the people that you are leading and It's hard but it's necessary in order to really move the vision forward and that's the that's the most important part that I guess I can stress here is that as a leader your goal is to move people closer to that vision move people closer to the mission and You can't do that with ego

You have to do that with facts, feedback, collaboration, focus, a vision that's very clear, team building unity, all of those things in order to really go forward.

Speaking of going forward, number six is, I don't even know what I did there. Now, speaking of going forward, number six is all about scalability. And scalability is one of those things where you have got to understand your systems and processes in order to move forward. And as leaders, our goal is to grow the mission, grow the business, Grow the vision and attract more people to what you're doing.

And in order to do that, you have to focus on scalability. Now, scalability doesn't just happen. Scalability is something that you absolutely must have a plan for. And in order to have that, as a leader, you have to be looking for systems and processes that are already in place or that need to be in place to move things forward. And I guess that's kind of the trend here where we talk about things that need

that need to be done to move forward. So in order to practice this, I would recommend that you look for systems and processes in your business that are repetitive or things that are stop gaps that are holding you back from moving forward in a specific area or that cause a lot of friction either for yourself or for the people that you're learning how to lead. And if those things keep coming up, repetitive tasks, put it into a process, put it into a system.

It makes life easier for yourself and also for learning how to lead people.

The other aspect of scalability is it keeps the interest of people in your vision. So a lot of times you'll have someone who is building a business and they get focused on it, but then people lose interest because you're doing the same thing you've always been doing. But in order to scale and in order to move forward, you need innovation. You need people who are interested and excited and energized.

by your business and wanna help it move forward. They wanna be a part of it. And that's your goal as a leader to keep that interest, to keep that energy. And in order to keep that energy, you gotta have scalability. So that's part of like a cycle that you create within your business and within being a leader. Your leadership skills allow you to see the places where you can scale up and increase that scalability. And in turn, it keeps your customers

It keeps the people that follow you, it keeps the people that you lead, it keeps everyone focused. And that's one of the best ways to lead people, right? You keep that energy up, you keep them empowered, you keep them proud to be a part of this and wanting to see what's next. So that's a little bit of showmanship that you're gonna need, but it's also a very serious skill that you need to develop if you're going to learn how to lead people.

Now lastly, okay, no. Now lastly, number seven is all about, we had to talk about it, numbers, financial accountability. You must be good with your finances if you want people to follow you and if you wanna learn how to lead people. People are going to want to know that you are a good steward of your resources, of the funds that you have in your business account.

They wanna make sure that the funds are being used well. They wanna make sure that you are, that they can trust you really. That's what it comes down to is can people trust you to make good decisions about your financials and where you're going and how you're using them to move the vision forward. So this is one of those topics that I know a lot of people don't like to talk about, but it is huge.

And it is very important as far as how you're going to attract people to your vision, how you're going to attract people to your business, and really one of the core principles of how to lead people.

So how do you practice financial accountability? One of the easiest ways to practice financial accountability while you're learning how to lead people is to, my god, really.

One of the easiest ways to practice financial accountability while you're learning how to lead people is to do regular reviews of your accounts and to check those financials often have regular check -ins, have regular reports that you offer and to continuously be looking for ways to grow. Like coming to places, I mean, I go to my board and I always have different ideas to share. Sometimes they get shot down, sometimes they don't.

And you always have someone questioning, does this help us move forward towards the vision? Is this the best way to steward our resources? Is this the best way to use human resources even when you are building out your financials for the following year? Get people to help you on that. Like those are things that keep people interested. So financial accountability is easy to practice.

but it's something that you have to put on your calendar to regularly review those financials and make sure that you're up to date and you know exactly what's going on with your money and your human resources and all of the resources that you have available to your business. So stay on top of that.

So like I said earlier, leaders are fierce visionaries. You are one of them too. It might be hard to learn how to lead people right now. And if you just practice these seven leadership skills, I promise you, you will start helping people unleash there's something amazing and they will start helping you unleash that vision to the world and really help you get to that kudos, your known ultimate destination of success. So I want you to get out there, unleash your something amazing, stay fierce on your goals and I'll see you next week. Bye guys.