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    How can I reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses as a leader?

    Being able to reflect on your own strengths and weaknesses is a key part of being a good leader, and essential to continuing your development. However, making the time, or even knowing where to start when it comes to reflecting on areas you could improve upon, can be difficult. Luckily, plenty of leaders have struggled with a similar situation, and their advice and guidance makes an excellent starting point for your own self-reflection.

    Ways to help you deal with it:

    Action plan

    Assessing your own strengths and weaknesses

    Effort: Medium
    Impact : High
    Knowing your strengths and weaknesses creates an opportunity for you – and your business – to grow. Our five-point plan will get you started.

    ACTION PLANS are a structured list of steps designed to help you approach tackling a particular business challenge.

    • We explain why each step is important
    • Customise by setting your own completion dates and assign tasks
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available

    Action plan

    Understanding where you add the most value as a leader

    Effort: High
    Impact : High
    Our five-point action plan will help you identify where you add value, so that you can be more effective in your role.

    Action plan

    Creating a roadmap to evolve as a leader

    Effort: Medium
    Impact : High
    Being proactive about the steps you need to take to develop as a leader means you can support your company’s growth. Follow our five-step plan to create a roadmap for your development.

    Action plan

    Create an environment to improve leadership

    Effort: High
    Impact : Medium
    Recognising that there’s always room for you to develop is the first step to improving as a leader; the next step is to create the right environment.

    Action plan

    Encouraging employees to give feedback on company leadership

    Effort: High
    Impact : High
    Getting honest feedback from employees is important if you want to develop as a leader and run your business or department effectively.

    Action plan

    Applying external learnings to part of your business

    Effort: Medium
    Impact : Medium
    It’s vital to scrutinise the advice you receive and decide what’s suitable before you apply external learnings to your business.

    Guide

    An introduction to evaluating your strengths and weaknesses as a leader

    Business leaders are used to spending time assessing the strengths and weaknesses of others but it’s crucial to be able to reflect on your own capabilities.

    GUIDES break a challenge down, providing important context and real-world experiences.

    • Based on SME experiences, not corporate jargon
    • Filled with real-world stories
    • Achievable steps every business can take

    Other support that's available

    Overcoming leadership weaknesses

    Overcoming leadership weaknesses

    It’s not a weakness to admit that you need to work on your leadership style – in fact, it’s a strength. Indeed takes you through some of the most common weaknesses and how to improve.

    Discover your potential

    Discover your potential

    This self-assessment from the Harvard Business School to help you understand your leadership style and how you can improve.

    How other businesses have tackled something similar

    Real business story

    Stepping back from running your business frees you up to improve it

    Getting out of the day-to-day running of a business frees leaders up to focus on strategy and growth. But first, it’s vital to get solid foundations in place.

    Real business story

    How one accidental business leader learnt to successfully guide her company

    Accidental business leaders don’t set out to spearhead a team. But when leadership falls on your shoulders, it is vital to learn how to steer your company effectively.

    Real business story

    Staff perform better when they’re engaged with your company’s vision and values

    So, you’ve decided on your company’s values and might even have the perfect vision statement. The next step is getting employees to engage with your vision, something that's a common challenge.

    The questions lots of businesses are trying to answer

    What issue is keeping you awake at night? A bit of targeted support is often all you need to overcome those challenges.

    Select a topic

    Digital

    How can I improve the digital presence my business has? How can I streamline and automate some of our business processes? How can I understand what digital tools or support my business needs? How do I effectively seek external digital support? How do I know if my technology is robust enough for growth? How do I assess and choose the right technology to improve business operations? How do I work out the best digital sales channels to use? How should I best budget and plan for new technology investments? How should I go about collecting data to improve my business? How should I use the data I have to improve decision making?

    Leadership & Strategy

    As a leader, how do I learn to trust others within my organisation? How can I balance short-term needs with long-term targets? How can I reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses as a leader? How do I learn to become a better leader? How do I improve the communication in my business? How do I apply learnings from other businesses to my own company? How do I get better at noticing and reacting to warning signs? How do I get staff interested in our vision and values? How do I give my team autonomy and get better at delegating? How should my role as a business leader evolve with the company’s growth?

    People & Team

    How can I develop career paths for my staff? How can I develop the skillsets of my workforce? How can I improve my hiring and onboarding practices? How can I increase staff engagement and motivation? How can I keep my best members of staff? How can I reduce employee turnover? How can I run a better appraisals process? How do I deal with a challenging member of staff? How do I manage an effective remote workforce? How should I performance manage my staff?

    Planning

    How can I balance ambition with setting realistic goals? How can I get staff interested in the financial situation? How can I work out what required skillsets are missing in the business? How can I define and communicate my vision for success? How can I get better at looking internally at my business? How can I make my business more resilient to change? How do I ensure my business can navigate a dip in trading? How do I better inform my business plans? How do I know when to invest in my business? How do I know when to scale up my business?

    Sales & Growth

    How can I get a better return on investment from my marketing? How can I identify new customers to target? How can we better serve our most loyal customers? How can we develop new products and services? How do I create targets and KPIs for my staff? How do I benchmark my business against competitors? How do I build a network to support my business? How do I develop a clear unique selling point? How do I financially plan for new opportunities? How do I make sure my team and processes are ready for growth?
    All