Leadership Depends upon Building Relationships Based on Trust, Says this Expert Unless one has clear values and a strong character, people won't gravitate towards him or her

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Randy Sletcha, CEO, Leadership Management International, asserts that to become a better leader and use leadership skills more effectively in an organization, one has to go through certain stages of development. One needs to have core qualities such as confidence for personal effectiveness, personal leadership, motivational leadership and strategic leadership to lead the team and run the organization effectively in the present and future.

"The first stage is what we call as confidence for personal effectiveness. Of all the things, the first thing a leader needs to do is to learn how to manage himself/ herself, manage his/ her time and priorities. If the leader is not effective or productive, he/ she cannot train or teach others about the same," said Randy Sletcha, CEO, Leadership Management International to Entrepreneur India.

The second stage is personal leadership which is about developing your character - Who you are as a person? What are your values and your ethics? Leadership depends upon building trustful relationships with other people. That trust begins with your character, how trustworthy you are? Unless you have clear values and a strong character, people won't gravitate towards you; they won't trust you.

Motivational leadership is the third stage which is about how one leads the team and motivates others to become productive? How do you engage with people? How do you engage with your team? How do you drive them to become successful? This is a very critical component of the business. People's power is so important in the business today that if you are not effective in increasing their potential and ability then you are not going to be a force to reckon with.

Finally, the fourth stage is strategic leadership which is how you lead the organization. How do you create the right strategy, right goals and plan to lead your organization into the future and that's something which very few achieve. Around less than 10 percent leaders reach this fourth level of leadership

Being a motivational speaker himself, Randy Sletcha said, "One of the main stumbling blocks that we have is with people moving from stage II to stage III i.e., how to become leaders who can inspire others. Too many people try to motivate others for their own benefits."

However, true leaders find out how others can benefit from an opportunity which this helps in creating a win-win situation and you both are motivated towards the same goal, the expert added.

Sunil Pol & Vanita D'souza

Correspondent and Senior Correspondent, Entrepreneur India

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