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Truly great leaders never stop developing
their careers. There is always room to grow and adapt. Improving your skills in
this area benefits both you and your team, and can potentially advance your
company to the forefront of its industry.

How do top leaders manage their
responsibilities and continue to advance their skills, management style, and
careers? First, they assess their existing expertise to discover strengths and
weaknesses. Then, they find the best approach to improve their needs.

Do You Have What It Takes to Be a
Better Leader?

Your first step is to take ownership of your future career. It does
not serve you to believe you are entitled to a promotion or advancement based
on your current work history, particularly if you do not feel like you are
moving forward. To be a better leader, you must be proactively improving your
skills and ability to adapt to challenges that impact your work, team, or
company.

Once you take the step to move forward and
sharpen your leadership abilities, examine the qualities that make a leader successful
to see how you measure up, especially when managing teams. These traits
include: 

●      
Showing your team that you care
about their needs. It’s important to listen to your employees’ concerns to
improve productivity and team communication.

●      
Allow everyone to contribute by
delegating tasks appropriately and share the credit equally. When mistakes are
made, be willing to focus on finding a solution rather than assigning blame.

●      
Guide your team clearly but avoid
micromanaging them.

To improve in these areas, learn new ways of
managing your team. Just remember that there is always room to grow even if you
feel adept as a leader. Some ways you can achieve this include advancing your
education, updating your leadership style, and becoming a more innovative
leader.

Advancing Your Education

Successful leaders may think it’s a waste of
time to advance their education, but there are degree options that can provide
you an edge in your career. An executive MBA (EMBA) is an excellent choice
for mid-career leaders who already have plenty of work experience under their
belts. Some of the benefits it provides include:

●      
Networking with other professionals
can increase your business connections.

●      
Refine and adapt your current
skills to fit high-level business opportunities, such as moving from a regional
leader to a global executive.

●      
Growing confidence for jumping
into entrepreneurship.

Investing in an MBA can be costly and
time-consuming, but flexible options such as online and part-time programs can
help you develop the skill set you need in a manageable framework. 

Updating Your Leadership Style

In 2020, the business world had to adapt on
the fly as the pandemic forced many companies to radically alter their working
standards. Successful leaders updated their management style for today’s
business market. This is especially crucial if you’ve been in management for
many years.

Here are some ways that you can update your
leadership techniques for today’s marketplace.

Focus on Employee Development

It’s become critical for managers to put
employees more top of mind by becoming more sensitive to their needs and
concerns. And, just as you want to advance your career, your team members feel
the same way. Fostering employee development is a critical
way to foster employee engagement, loyalty, and productivity.

The modern business world is constantly
changing and adapting. Help your team stay ahead of the curve by offering
flexible learning options and development activities that help them grow too.
Regular group learning is a good way to support employees and strengthen
relationships.

Another way to build team rapport is with
extracurricular team-building activities that build trust and loyalty. These
can even include outdoor challenges or online problem solving. By focusing on
employee development, you can have great confidence that your staff won’t seek
that encouragement elsewhere.

Foster an Inclusive and Flexible
Workplace

Today’s workers expect to operate in an inclusive environment to feel empowered
and take ownership of their work. This may mean, for example, rethinking the
workspace to take down barriers and creating an open floor plan. Better
employee engagement and team building is a benefit of this type of redesign.

Diversity in business is also critical and can
even improve company performance overall. This means including people of all
races, genders, and ages when building a team. It also means ensuring that
people with disabilities can be hired and accommodated.

Another option that has become more widely
accepted since the pandemic is offering employees flexible work options.
Allowing team members to work remotely has been shown to improve productivity. Experience in managing several remote teams is
a key skill all leaders need to have in today’s marketplace.

Become an Innovative Leader

Employee development and inclusivity are just
two aspects of creating an adaptive business culture with
21st-century leadership. An adaptive culture supports flexible options for
employees, promotes transparency in leadership, provides an atmosphere of
growth for team members, and supports business sustainability. Start by making
these improvements in your teams.

Once you have gained some traction, share how
your team improved with upper management. You may need to convince management to make these innovative changes.
It’s best to have proof of success on hand when doing so but taking charge in
these areas will make you stand out as a forward-thinking leader in your firm. 

Continued growth in your leadership career is
always possible. By advancing your education, updating your leadership style,
and becoming more innovative in your approach, you can become a top leader in
your field. Help your company reach new heights as you advance your
expertise.