Unlocking Your Potential: Leadership Skills to Practice Early & Catapult Your Career
Introduction:
On the professional side of my blog, I’m working to provide tools that allow young adults to confidently face common professional milestones such as career fairs, internships, interviews, their first jobs, etc!
Whether you're a recent college grad or have a few years of work under your belt, the benefits of leadership skills are relevant in any industry or role! Learning these early in your career can help you stand out, take on more responsibility, and set yourself up for long-term success. Leadership skills can take many forms, and in this post, I'll take you through some strategies for building various leadership characteristics and skills that you can implement in your first job and for the rest of your career!
1. Seek Out Leadership Opportunities
This one seems obvious, but it’s important to acknowledge that it’s hard to practice leadership when you don’t have anything to lead. It’s also important to point out that these opportunities won’t just fall in your lap — you’ll need to actively seek them out!
I want to clarify that “leadership” doesn’t only mean you have people reporting to you in your job, so you don’t need to wait for a promotion to get started. A leader takes the initiative to make things better, teaches people something new, establishes themself as a resource on certain topics, adapts well to change, embraces and learns from mistakes, and has strong communication, decision-making, and problem-solving skills. Any way you can demonstrate your ability in these areas will contribute to your overall leadership skills!
You could seek out leadership opportunities outside of work such as at volunteer programs, student groups, or other local organizations. As I mentioned above, leadership can also be in the form of taking initiative. Is there a process that isn’t well documented that you think your team would benefit from better instruction? Build a guide and present it to your team! Are there interns at your company studying the same subject you did? Reach out and offer to be a mentor! Is there a group or club you think your company would benefit from? Start one! Whether you seek out an existing role or create your own, leadership opportunities are all around you and there’s always room for improvement in any area you think you could provide insight!
2. Build Your Network
Building your network is one of the most important pieces of advice you can receive, and not even just in terms of work. But for the sake of this post, I will talk about it in that context.
At every step throughout your career, what you’re doing and what you will do next depend heavily on the people around you and the relationships you have with them. Networking isn’t just about knowing more people in your industry. The people you meet through networking could be your future recruiter, your future boss, your letter of recommendation, your mentor, your mentee, a business partner for a startup, someone to help you out of a tough time, etc. — you literally never know how someone will impact your life! They cannot, however, impact your life in those ways if you don’t meet them.
To bring this around to the point of this post, your network can also heavily impact the leadership roles you ultimately land. I’m not sure how I feel about this saying, but I’ll quote it anyway because it’s usually true: “It’s not what you know (or what you can do), it’s who you know.” The reason I don’t love this saying is because of the little work ethic loophole it can provide where people promote others simply because they’re friends, not necessarily because they’re the most qualified for the job. Regardless, you’re a smart and diligent person, so we don’t have to worry about that loophole. The main takeaway is that you need to get your personality and skills in front of the right people!
You can meet people through your job, events at work / in your industry, or other professional associations. See what you can find online! The more people you meet, the more perspectives you’ll have, and the more you can learn and diversify your skills!
Lastly, remember to take good care of your network. Stay in touch with people and help others when you can — you never know who might end up returning the favor in the future! The “least” that could happen is that people have good things to say about you — but even then, you never know who they might tell!
3. Find New Challenges & Work on Personal Development
I already touched on taking the initiative to seek leadership opportunities, so all I’ll add in this section is this: leaders are not box checkers. Box checkers won’t do anything outside of their specified role description, won’t work outside of 9–5, and won’t ask how else they can help. So a great way to practice leadership is to challenge yourself to learn new things, suggest a new project, broaden your knowledge by meeting with people outside of your immediate team, demonstrate you can thrive and adjust well in new situations, and when more is asked of you than your job description entails, respond positively and do a great job on it!
4. Develop Your Emotional Intelligence & Communication Skills
As we know, a leader also isn’t someone who just tells others what to do. Great leaders will appreciate the abilities of those around them and strive to maximize every skill set in the room, not just their own. A great way to implement this is to build strong relationships with your coworkers, project a sense of calm organization when navigating conflicts, and practice things like active listening, empathy, and being open-minded. It would also be helpful to get feedback from others on how you’re doing in this area to make sure people are feeling heard and valued!
Another note about communication skills — leaders are able to understand their audience and cater their communication style to a given group’s knowledge level. Not only does it demonstrate a sense of authority on the topic at hand (showing you know what you’re talking about), but it also shows that you care about the audience enough to ensure they will understand and therefore be in a better position to be included in further discussions on that topic.
5. Cultivate a Positive Attitude
To build a bit on the networking section above, make sure to always have a positive attitude. We all have bad days and sometimes it gets the best of us, but overall, you should strive to leave a positive reflection of yourself in the minds of others. And try to right wrongs when you can — one way or another, negative encounters can stand out more in people’s minds than positive ones. So if something didn’t go as well as you planned, reach out and see if there’s any further way you can help. Positive people demonstrate a strong ability to be team players and are much more approachable and will therefore be seen as a mentor to others when applicable. Overall, people look up to others who are positive and reliable, so while it may seem simple, it’s a crucial leadership skill!
6. Seek Out Mentors
Another great way to learn about developing your leadership skills is to watch others put them into action! Connect with people who are farther along in their careers, have more life experience, and are willing to share what they’ve learned along the way! Those who have read my other posts will know I’m a strong advocate of learning to love asking for help. Not only does it help you broaden your knowledge, but it demonstrates humility, an eagerness to learn, and an awareness that success is a team effort. Leaders aren’t where they are because they know all the answers - they know that the best ideas often come from collaboration and diverse perspectives.
Great leaders always learn from those around them and acknowledge that the world is always changing, so an ability to stay curious and open-minded is crucial at every level! Those skills allow leaders to anticipate challenges, changes, and trends as well as problem-solve in ways that best suit their team and company!
One final note about mentors and people you look up to — they want to hear from you! It doesn’t matter how scary or high-up you think that person is. They are still just a person and likely someone who was in your shoes at one point. Even the busiest and most successful people recognize the value of passing on their knowledge and experience to the next generation who will eventually take over for them one day!
Final Thoughts:
What questions do you have about developing leadership skills early in your career? Share any questions or tips you have in the comments! Feel free to email me directly at problog@apartfromblonde.com if you have any other questions!
Check out this and more posts on my Medium account HERE!