Leaders are born and made. Like any skill it takes time, effort and attention to improve.

The following 5 steps can be used to build not only your leadership (or parenting, or work, or employee, or management) skills, but also the coherence of your team, and those around you.

1. Make your clear goal and instructions.
Make your goals clear and give reasons. Once you’ve done this, ask for questions. You can find what I think are the questions to ask [1] here. If you screw this step up (and many people do) it undermines your leadership and damages your teams ability to do their job.

2. Establish open communication.
This is commonly called the ‘open door policy’. Allow everyone to come to your with their problems. That doesn’t mean you fix the problem, just that you are at least aware and can act. Having open communication gives you direct feedback to ensure you don’t fall into one of [2] the biggest risks of leadership.

3. Act quickly with problems.
This shows everyone how to deal with problems. Everyone in your team looks to the leaders how to act. If you float around, unable to make a decision, it will kill morale and confidence. The problems you avoid get bigger. You are a leader, and leaders solves problems and [3] remove limits.

4. Insist the team report all the news.
Good and bad. If you get only good news, you are unable to fix the problems. If you get only problems, you also damage morale by not celebrating the wins. And the worst case is when you get [4] no news.

5. Use crisis as a method to develop people.
If a crisis happens, don’t take the problem from the person. Help them solve it. Help them find the opportunity in crisis. Help them develop, design and implement good solutions. This helps you, as they are able to be comfortable and deal with bigger problems in the future, and also give them more confidence in you as a leader.

Through using these 5 points you are leading by example and doing what the very best leaders are renowned for; Developing the people around them.

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