Effective Leadership #4 - Gaining Experience

Hello Steemians! Hope you are all wonderful. Welcome to yet another article on Effective leadership. In this article lets understand the importance of gaining experience in detail. Gaining experience is important to grow in an organization. Leadership positions in the company are usually high-level positions in the company's hierarchy. Growing to leadership positions will need good experience in various aspects of the project. Continuous dedication to the project that we work can help in becoming a ladder to gain experience to improve leadership skills. There are training programs and training courses available to understand leadership skills. The actual skill is obtained only with the help of practical experience in projects.

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Experience from Project teams

Project teams are a wonderful source of knowledge. A person can gain lots of experience by being a part of a project team. In the growth of a company project teams are usually setup now and then based on the necessity. In an existing organization when there is a new project emerging, a team will be set up to work on that project. These teams are independent of the vertical hierarchy of the company and the members of the project team will stay as a permanent resource and will continue to work on the project requirements when the project takes off. During the full course of the project life-cycle, the responsibilities can change and learning can increase. This is the best way to gain experience. Based on the project duration the roles of the team members will change. If the project lasts longer, there will be a dedicated leader leading the project.

Taking initiatives as a subordinate

Taking initiatives is very important in gaining experience. If a subordinate is taking lots of initiatives for the project team, a good visibility will be created to the upper management thus making the person potential choice for being the next leader. In other words, this can also be said as exposing their presence. A good exposure to multiple areas within an organization is also important to gain experience. A project team can initially start in low level and later can have a good growth in the expansion. A person joining the team at a subordinate level will have the opportunity to become a leader for the team as the project grows and team expands. Short-term projects will give you good experience and knowledge but may not give you the opportunity to get a leadership role. The opportunity for leadership is dependent on the size of the team. If the team is larger the change is also high to change roles and become a potential leader.

Gaining experience from other departments

During the course of the project, it is not necessary that you have to gain all the knowledge from your own team or own projects. Observing other project teams and gaining knowledge from that team can be really helpful in becoming a successful and effective leader. Gaining the necessary knowledge from our own project or a project from a different department can give you the experience to run your own team when there is a necessity. Understanding the operating procedures of the other teams in a different can be very helpful in growing. Making friends in other departments and frequent interactions with them can help in getting a knowledge from their experience and implement it in our team.

Leading about being flexible

Being flexible is one of the most important characteristics of a leader. Leaders should be open to any opportunity. A leader of an organization is usually passed from one group of people to a different group of people. The leader should be able to gel with every team member. In some companies, the leadership can move from a department like production to a completely new department like sales. This becomes a pathway for learning crucial lessons during the course of your journey as a leader. Collaboration and organize with the new department and functions can be really challenging at times. An effective leadership is to be flexible and learn the operating procedures of the various department. That is the reason why making friends with people in other departments can help in understanding their operating procedures.

Widening the knowledge

General business skills can be broadened with the help of the knowledge accumulated from different project teams. A person can stay as a specialist very easily. Being a specialist in just one area may not give proper exposure to a different area of the business. A leader should always be a good businessman or woman. With that skill, they should be able to lead any part of the business successfully. When a leader moves from one department or project team to another, it is important to gain all the knowledge and operating procedures of the current leading team. If the leadership duration is very short, at least a high level of understanding about the team and their functions is vital. By doing this, a leader can prove his excellence in any area. Knowledge can always provide good dividends in future. Knowledge can be obtained by reading a lot about a particular department or by just observing people and talking to people.

A person can never sit in the leadership chair without any experience. Even if that happens by luck, their day to day work can be really challenging. Gaining relevant experience can always take you to places.

My previous articles in this series:

Effective Leadership #1 - An Introduction
Effective Leadership #2 - Focusing on Quality
Effective Leadership #3 - Learning From Others

Stay tuned for future articles on effective leadership.

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