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5 Habits You can Build to be a Successful Leader
Successful individuals tend to realize early in their journey that there’s no such thing as overnight success, that there would probably be a series of little breakthroughs instead. And to attain these breakthroughs, it would require continuous efforts. As you practice choosing to invest your time and effort into the cause, these choices become habits that will eventually get you closer to success. I recently came across a highly informative book – Atomic Habits by James Clear, which helped me understand the importance of habits, the effective way to attain good habits, and how to get rid of bad ones.
“Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.” – James Clear
The good thing about habits is that you don’t need to be flawless from Day 1. By adding even a little bit of effort and discipline, you move a step closer to your goal. The key is repetition, not perfection.
To become a successful leader, you must incorporate some good habits that over time will do their part in transforming your behavior and upgrading your reputation. Once you are able to integrate these habits into your daily routine, you set yourself up to be a better leader. But before doing that, you first need to understand which habits will help you attain the goal.
1. Make time to read every day
Reading every day offers you a range of undeniable benefits. It helps you improve focus, concentration, and memory, activates your reasoning skills, reduces stress, improves mental health, and makes you a more empathetic person. All these skills help you be a better professional and leader. The lessons you learn from reading regularly, greatly increase your potential to succeed.
To build up this habit, you may start with just 1 page a day. That won’t take up much time, but you will be able to commit to it and gradually get used to it. You can then invest as much time as you feel like.
2. Start breaking down tasks into doable pieces of work
Splitting a massive task makes it look approachable and allows you to focus on one bit at a time. If we have to put in our effort to fulfill more specific goals, we turn to strategies necessary to attain them and tend to exclude anything that’s irrelevant. This is based on a principle called Micro productivity.
A project can be divided into smaller tasks, which can be noted down by creating bullet points for each one. These multiple tasks can be divided among the team members with an achievable time goal that fits the larger plan. If we don’t have a deadline, it gets easy to procrastinate.
After breaking down the task, you are likely to realize how to delegate properly. Successful leaders pass on the task or delegate it not as an exception, but by default.
3. Learn from others, especially from successful people you admire
Although it is true that nobody will know about the situation you face and the choices you have, and even care to get it right as much as you do, the success and failures you read about, and the choices that the successful leaders have made, are important tools in your armory.
If you have someone to model yourself after, it will allow you to cross over the stressful obstacles you may be facing and relieve the acute pain that challenging circumstances subject you to. As they say, All leaders need leaders.
4. Plan your day the night before
Research shows that we tend to favor the easiest task we let ourselves get away with. This can lead us to get the simple work done while delaying the important complex work. When we have a plan ready, ‘the easiest task we let ourselves get away with is the one scheduled for that time.
Another benefit of planning the day beforehand is that we no longer need to exhaust mental resources in decision-making, allowing us to utilize those precious resources for other activities.
Planning your day and jotting down the important tasks also allows you to sleep better. You no longer have to worry about the unfinished list of to-dos.
5. Focus on what matters and prioritize
Great leaders are highly focused, but they focus on the right things. They make sure to use their limited time and energy contributing to the cause that is essential to the team. You can categorize the tasks on the basis of importance and urgency. This will ensure that you don’t give importance to unimportant things when you have something on your plate that deserves your attention.
All these skills can be honed if you apply them regularly – if you get habituated. You can build these habits even by starting small. You can carry out all the habits mentioned above by committing to the cause and repeating the task every day.
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Ishani works as Manager – Social Media & Strategy Big Ideas HR Consulting Pvt. Ltd. and also as a Freelance Digital Marketer. She has a knack for problem-solving and also enjoys writing. She loves to share her views and knowledge with the readers by the medium of her blogs.
