Good leaders are made not born.

If you don't believe this, then there is little that you can do to
become a better leader. While some people may be more outgoing or extroverted, these traits
alone will not determine whether or not they will succeed as leaders; in fact, people with a wide
range of personality traits have become successful leaders by using different styles of leadership.
It is also true that leadership is more of an art than a science meaning that there is no one magic
formula for success; however there are fundamental principles that can be learned by anyone and
used to make them better leaders. Here are five tips on how you can improve your style as a
leader:

Commitment to leadership: Being good at anything requires a commitment. You must decide that
being a good leader is something that you really want to do and make a conscious decision to be
the best. A half-hearted commitment will not be good enough. If you don't have a passion for
being a leader or simply are doing it because you want to earn more money or please someone
else, then you will never succeed to your full potential as a leader. Like any other endeavor in
life, the best of the best have a burning passion for their chosen field. In this regard, leadership is
no different.

360 Feedback: As the co-author of the One-Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard says that
"Feedback is the breakfast of champions." This book is one of the most popular business books
of all time largely because of its simple truths. All human endeavors require feedback for
improved performance. Whether you are trying to learn how to talk as a child or improve your
skills as a professional athlete, you can only make progress by modeling what good performance
looks like and benchmarking your own performance through feedback. Learning leadership is no
different than learning other skills. All good leaders seek feedback from the boss, their peers, and
subordinates on how the are performing and what they can improve upon. Getting and using 360
degree feedback from people you impact as a leader will help you to identify what you do well
and what you can improve. Only then can you make progress for improved performance.

Understand how to use a flexible leadership style. Research show that there are a variety of
leadership styles that leaders can use. Daniel Goleman, the author of Leadership that Gets
Results and an expert on Emotional Intelligence (EI) describes six leadership styles: Coercive,
Authoritative, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, and Coaching. He concludes that there is no
one best style. Good leaders are flexible and use their EI to determine what style will work best
in a given situation. They adapt their style to the situation to maximize results. Getting results is
ultimately what leadership is all about.

Seek out a mentor: Although the common myth about success is that people are self-made, it is
more often the case that they have had a lot of help along their journey to become successful.
Often the help is provided by one or more mentors who have experience and can be a guide to
getting to where you want to go. Good leaders will find mentors who help them not only improve
their leadership skills, but also provide them leadership opportunities too. If you want to succeed
as a leader, find someone who has already done what you want to do and ask them to be your
mentor. Good leaders usually enjoy being mentors and will often provide you with the support
you need.
Develop a values based leadership philosophy: Great leaders have spent time thinking about
what is important to them. They have a set of values that guide their decisions and behaviors.
The best leaders have not only thought about their values, but have also defined a leadership
philosophy. This philosophy will guide them on how they deal with others and make decisions. It
will also sustain them during times of crisis and challenges so that they can have the courage to
move ahead in the face of adversity. If you haven't already thought about your values and
philosophy, then take the time to do so. It will help you become a better leader.

Becoming a good leader is not easy, and it requires commitment, study, and constant
improvement. While there are lots of other things that you can do to become a more effective
leader, these five tips are among the most important things that you can do. Pick the one thing
that will help you the most from this list and get started today on becoming a better leader.

First, you have to be good with people. Leadership is highly interpersonal, so many people skills
are involved. To name a few: listening, accepting feedback, giving feedback and resolving
conflict. These are skills you use with people, and you can learn them.

But people skills take you only so far. You need something else. A lot of people say, "It's not just
what you can do, it's who you are." I talk about this as "personal strengths" - behavior patterns
such as honesty, integrity, compassion, composure, perseverance, initiative and dozens more.
Some people refer to them as "character," "heart" or "grit." These aren't passive traits, attributes
or qualities. They aren't real at all until you manifest them in your behavior with people.

Most of the time, you use a personal strength because it's your habit to do so - your way of acting
with people. Personal strengths are similar to leadership skills in that they are behavior patterns.
Throughout your life, you learned to operate a certain way in a particular situation. When you
listen, you do it a certain way. Or, say you have to deal with a crisis. If you take responsibility
and tell the truth, it's because that's your way of behaving in that situation.

I use the term "personal strengths" because these behavior patterns are hard to engage. You aren't
born with them. People skills and personal strengths are learned. Every individual is at a
different stage along the path of personal development. People will be strong in some skills or
strengths, and there will be areas they need to work on. They may find it easy to act with honesty
and integrity, because they've always acted that way. But maybe it's not so easy to take a risk. Or
maybe they have trouble staying calm, cool and collected when the world's on fire around them.

So if you're someone who's in charge of others, you should make the best use of your strengths,
and you should probably always be working on some aspect of effective leadership skills.

How do you know when you've "arrived," when you can stop working on getting stronger as a
leader?

I don't think you ever arrive. How good a listener can you be? How patient can you be? How
compassionate? It's like asking a golfer how good a golfer can he be? How good can a musician
be? Would anyone striving for excellence say, "I'm finally at the end of my learning. I'm as good
at this as I can possibly be." No, they achieve higher levels of excellence by continually striving
to improve.

This principle also holds true for managers. If you want effective leadership skills and personal
strengths, you never stop improving. One reason is that there are dozens of people skills and
dozens of personal strengths. No one can be strong in all of them. Mastery is a lifelong journey.

The journey begins when you're in charge of your first group. You realize that getting the best
work from people isn't easy. You make mistakes. But mistakes are one of the best ways to learn.
Learn from each experience, learn from your feedback, and learn from the coaching you get from
more experienced managers. The learning happens when you actually try something different.

Self-awareness is a big help. Listen to feedback. Take an honest look at yourself, and you'll
know what you should focus on next. And as you succeed as a leader, as you accept more
responsibility, remember this: you can still continue your growth as a leader - one area at a time.

Achieving the position of leadership is a completely different process than the process of genuine
leadership development. One is a matter of position, and the other is a matter of character and
deep inner confidence. Having the character of a leader can empower you to "out lead" the
person with the title, even if they're your boss. Of course, there are always limits and exceptions
to this, but if you develop the character of a leader, you'll find that those exceptions are few and
far between.

Let me give you an example of how this works...

How Character Can "Out lead" Position

Before founding VQ Success, I worked for a security systems dealer who hired me to build a call
center from nothing but a room full of phones and a very poorly written training manual. The
owner was a very results driven and slightly impatient person, so naturally he got a bit anxious
when over a month passed and the call center was still unprofitable.

I remember him calling me into his office a month later and saying: "We're shutting the whole
call center down today, it's just not working." Now before I had discovered the secrets of Value
Driven Transcendence, I would have been crushed by this news. But instead, I defended what I
was doing and sold him again on the value of sticking with it. Now understand that this was
someone who was known for not going back on a decision to let someone go.

However, I was 100% confident in what I was doing, why I was doing it and in my ability to get
results and build a solid team. That meeting bought me another two months...and that was all I
needed. Two months later, the call center was two dozen reps strong and overall company sales
were up by over 30%. Another month, and I left the company, having trained one of the reps to
manage the center in my place.

Six months later, I visited the company and found that the call center was still there, with 60% of
the original staff and it had become the major sales machine for the company. Had the "leader"
of this company had it his way, the whole thing would have died after four weeks.  What does
this all mean?

The Foundation of Leadership Development

Looking back, it was nothing but raw confidence in my ability to get the job done that caused me
to challenge my boss's decision. Confidence based not on skills or techniques, but on an
unshakable awareness of my own value. This is the kind of confidence that will empower you to
sell others on the value of your plans and of your ability to achieve them. Once this happens,
those others will help you make it happen or at least get out of your way....and yes, this can even
happen when one of them is your "boss."

Leadership is more about your character than your position, and if you develop the character of a leader,
you'll be empowered to lead with confidence from any position.