Kent Ingle: Six New Year's resolutions every leader needs in 2020
Here are six New Year’s resolutions that are sure to enhance your leadership skills no matter where they currently stand:
Ringing in the new year offers a chance for a fresh vision and an opportunity to increase our quality of life. As leaders, this is an ideal season to start fresh and new. With New Year’s resolutions, we can begin to focus on those areas of our leadership and business that we desire to see improve.
While resolutions are certainly something we can do at any time of the year, the collective effort to better ourselves through New Year’s resolutions gives us the accountability and motivation to create real change. This season offers us the opportunity to examine our current performance as a leader, the quality of our skillsets and the overall health of our teams.
It is also an ideal time to listen and gather feedback from your teams to consider how they can be improved. When we start out the year seeking to better our leadership and our team culture as a whole, we are able to step into a new year with the confidence that we are putting our best foot forward.
Here are six New Year’s resolutions that are sure to enhance your leadership skills no matter where they currently stand:
- Spend less time in meetings. It’s easy for every team to spend a lot of time dreaming of possibilities or just talking in circles attempting to resolve issues. If your team tends to talk excessively about the same concerns or hopes, you are talking too much. See that your team is doing more than simply meeting, and you will see your productivity dramatically improve.
- Trust your team more. It can be difficult for many leaders to delegate or trust others to do the work. The more you, as the leader, try to take on yourself, the more you limit the potential growth of your team by underutilizing their skills and talents. You are also limiting your focus on developing your team. Learn to delegate more and trust your team to get it done.
- Teach others how they can develop. As you are learning and growing as a leader, pour back into your team members. Your team should be developing with you as you learn to lead better.
- Improve your listening skills. Taking more time to listen will drastically change how you lead. Improving your listening skills will give you more insight into how to lead. It will also develop stronger relationships among your team and increase your patience to listen and be more attentive to others.
- Create monthly check-ins with yourself, to gauge your progress. A study by the University of Scranton found, of those who set New Year’s resolutions each year, only 8 percent actually accomplish them. Make a habit to assess your own progress as a leader, your teams and your overall organization on a monthly basis to ensure real change is taking place.
- Make a discipline of choosing to be better. In his book "Good to Great," author Jim Collins says, “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.” Overall, if you are willing to make a conscious effort to change, you will see real transformation in your life. You can have every good intention in the world, but without your head consciously in the game changes will not be possible.
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If you wish to see your organization grow and develop, consider starting strong this new year. You will not only improve your level of production, but your work culture will greatly improve. Although statistics may prove that the majority of Americans struggle to see their New Year’s resolutions through, you can lead the way to real change if you choose to.
Dr. Kent Ingle presently serves as the President of Southeastern University (SEU) located in Lakeland, Florida. Southeastern University can be found online at seu.edu and their prayer community can be found on pray.com.