Did you know that frontline leaders manage over 80% of company employees? However, only 10% of these leaders are ready to take a leadership role as they need proper training or have the confidence to be a manager.
When we are allowed to grow, we always feel excited. However, how many of us are ready to take up a position where we have to handle a large group of employees and manage the life cycle in the workplace? We must be great motivators, communicators, strategists, and organizational managers. 60% of frontline managers do not receive leadership training before their first management position. This accounts for their slow growth and performance. Frontline leadership is all about using your intuition, creativity, and critical reasoning skills to manage frontline workers and to be able to make quick decisions by assessing the situation and analyzing the opportunities.
Frontline Leadership Skills
To take up frontline leadership positions, you need to have specific skills, and in 2023, the top four skills that will be the focus are:
- Being self-aware – To be an effective leader, you must know your strengths and weaknesses. You need to control your behavior and your preferences so that you can use them when the situation demands them. Understand your personality to make it easier to understand other personalities around you.
- Being Agile - Frontline leadership is all about flexibility. These leaders are fearless in taking up new challenges and growing from failures. These leaders can quickly analyze problems and detect opportunities.
- Being a communicator - To manage other frontline leaders, you must be a good communicator. With the help of your skills, you can impact how your members think and align their values with that of the organization.
- Being an influencer – Like being on social media in real life, you need to be an influencer to your employees. You must influence their thinking and motivate them to work harder towards their goals. You need to encourage them about their skills and abilities to take care of any critical situation quickly.
Combining Frontline Leadership with Self-Leadership
Frontline leadership and self-leadership are two similar concepts. Self-leadership is the primary basis for the development of any leadership initiative. Any frontline leader must know their ability to influence communication styles, emotions, and behavior to reach the objective or goal. Self-leadership is a tool to increase performance in the workplace, as believed by many researchers.
- External features:
- Social Awareness – A self-leader is always socially aware of the feelings of others around them. When it comes to a leader should be mindful of the employees' feelings and be careful whenever they reprimand or provide reviews regarding their performance.
- Relationship Management – Self-leadership is all about getting training on how to manage emotions and how to influence them in the right way. Leadership training will teach you how to utilize different styles to influence others' thoughts and motivate them in the right direction.
- Internal feature:
- Self-Awareness –Leadership is about knowing and understanding our own emotions and behavior. You should know the limits and capabilities when handling situations or facing difficult people.
- Self-Management – Continuous training and incorporating education regarding current trends is an effective way of controlling our behavior and emotions. Managing the self is about nurturing a positive attitude and motivating ourselves to improve and grow professionally.
Conclusion
Becoming a self-leader or a frontline leader is all about control. It is not only about controlling ourselves; this should translate into our behavior and ability to communicate with the employees. Consistency and self-control are the main components of becoming an effective and self-aware frontline leader.
