5 Tips To Find And Develop Your Leadership Voice

Before we get into the guide, you must know about some things that you have to identify prior to working with your new leadership voice:

• Values: Knowing your values will give you a kind of direction. Your values will influence your decisions, judgments, and views. Knowing your core set of values will help you become a better leader and find your leadership voice faster.
• Outcomes: Establish the outcomes you want to get from your new leadership voice. To make your vision a reality, you must clearly know what you want the result to be. Think of what you want to achieve with the help of your leadership voice.
• Courage: Every leader must be able to demonstrate courage even in the hardest of situations. If you are struggling with finding your courage, try to make your will stronger and look for strength in other people.
• Lasting Impression: The kind of impressions you make will determine how much of a leader you look like in the eyes of other people. Whether it is a first impression or a hundredth one, you must always ensure that people see you as who you want to be seen as.

1. Identify Role Models

The first step on the path to finding a leadership voice is to identify your role models. Who do you admire? Who inspires you? What motivates you and makes you continue what you are doing? Ask yourself these questions.

These can be people from any field or industry, and not necessarily someone you know personally. Look at celebrities and watch their manners. Think of what makes others listen to what they have to say. If you don’t have anyone in mind, you can watch some videos from the TED Talks YouTube channel as there are many leaders having a speech there.

Once you identify your role models, you must decide what characteristics you like the most about them. Maybe these are certain personality traits or habits that you noticed and would like to adopt. More often than not, you won’t be able to find someone who appeals to you entirely, so it is totally fine to find different characteristics in different people.

2. Determine Your Strengths & Values

After you know who you want to be like, it is time to look at yourself and see who you already are. You must always remember that you can never be someone else, but rather an improved version of your current self.

Think of it this way: there are some things you can get rid of and some that you can acquire, but you can never become a complete copy of someone you admire. Similarly, there is no need for you to become a copy. It is better to be someone completely different, someone that is not like anyone else.

Think well because maybe you are better off without some characteristics. Likewise, look at what you already have. Determine your strengths that are already helping you out a lot. By knowing your values, you will be able to improve and maximize these strengths. And just like improving your strengths, you will be able to minimize your flaws.

3. Find Your Leadership Voice

Now comes the most important part: find your leadership voice. You already know what kind of traits you want to possess, what habits you want to develop, and what mannerisms and body language you want to start using. Finally, it’s time to put that all together and build your leadership voice.

Keep in mind that it is okay to have several versions you like. Think of it as compiling your customer personas, if you have ever had experience in marketing. But unlike customer personas, you will be using only one of your leadership voice versions.

If you can’t settle on one, test them out in a low-risk environment. Choose situations that will not have catastrophic consequences in case your leadership voice doesn’t work. After you test the different leadership voices, you will be able to easier determine which one you like more and which works best. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes though, since these will only help you to learn.

4. Practice Your Leadership Voice

Once you know what you want your leadership voice to be (after the testing, of course), you can start practicing it. Make sure that you are following the path you want to take though so that you don’t make any mistakes.

You should start with those same low-risk situations you chose when testing your leadership voice versions. Then, move up to more complicated situations. This will ensure a steady and smooth learning curve.

Once again, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Everyone makes them, but that doesn’t mean that they are the end of the world. After all, once you’ve practiced enough, you will stop making them entirely or they will become a rarity. The only thing you must keep in mind is that you should learn from them rather than discard them immediately after the issue is settled.

One more way to perfect your leadership voice is to use it while communicating both in your native and foreign languages. For example, you must make a presentation for international investors who don’t speak English. In this scenario, it would be ideal to translate your speech with the help of translation service such as The Word Point and then present your plans in the corresponding language while using your new leadership voice.

5. Invest In Leadership Training

Last but not least, you have to invest in leadership training. What this means is that you can never stop learning and perfecting your leadership skills, and courses specially designed for this could be of great help to you.

You can either visit some local training centers to listen to lectures and participate in workshops or sign up for online courses for distance learning. The second option is more suitable for those who don’t have a fixed schedule or simply don’t have any leadership courses nearby. Besides, online courses usually cost less than face-to-face ones, and with the likes of edX and Coursera available to everyone, they have become a usual practice.