Top Tips On How To Become A Super Leader

Becoming a Super Leader requires a whole new set of skills and a new way of operating in order to guide other leaders and inspire them to deliver results through their teams.

Jean Gamester, from Toastmasters International, has been training the organisation’s ‘Super Leaders to be’ for the past five years on how to lead the leaders of their clubs.

Check out her top tips – based on some of her favourite leadership books – on how to become a Super Leader.

Lead With Authority – Ditch The Detail

There are a range of leadership styles and the most powerful style is “The Authoritative Style” which focuses on inspiring people to come along together to achieve a goal. 

The leader describes the outcome and gets buy in to that outcome, but leaves the method to the leader on the ground.  We ask them questions about what would help them achieve rather than giving them our own answers.

When we rise above the day to day and energise our people to focus on how they can get their people to find ways to achieve the goal, then we can all grow, we can all play a role in achieving.

Work To Strengths, Fill The Gaps

We should stop sucking the energy out of ourselves by trying to fix everything we are not good at.  Instead, let’s work out what we are good at, get really really good at those things, and build teams around us of people who have the other skills we need.

Create A Learning Environment

When we seek to help our leaders make things happen, we need to build a relationship of trust between us and them, so that we can coach them and give them feedback. 

We should create an environment where it is normal for people to be giving each other feedback. Objectively observe what people are doing and identify what they do well so that it can be reinforced and celebrated.

Only then, do we start to provide tips for how they can be more successful in the future.  As we continuously take action and receive feedback, we get better and better at what we do.

Being A Super Leader

Leading leaders is a lot harder than being a leader on the ground.  We need to not only have developed the skills to do that front line leadership, we also need to be able to support others to do it, without constantly interfering.

That requires great emotional intelligence – the ability to understand and manage ourselves as well as the ability to understand and manage our relationships with others. 

To achieve success, let’s lead with authority and create a learning environment. Let’s work to our own strengths, and the strengths of those we lead.