How To Make Yourself the De Facto Leader on Any Project

from Dav​e​Hess​.Com

If you want to lead, here are five steps to get you there.

Do your work

Basics mat­ter. If you can’t deliver your work on time or do qual­ity work, there is no way for you to lead. Lead­ing is about doing and lead­er­ship by exam­ple is one way to show leadership.

Doing your work on time also means your team can rely on you to do your part — they don’t have to cover for your fail­ings. Doing your work is the base­line for lead­er­ship. If you don’t do the work, you won’t get to lead.

Be pre­pared for all meetings

This includes group meet­ings, team meet­ings, meet­ings with your man­ager and meet­ings with your indi­vid­ual team mem­bers. If it’s sched­uled, be prepared.

Being pre­pared means hav­ing your part done for what you are to present. It means hav­ing thought through the agenda so you can offer con­struc­tive input to the issues or solu­tions being pro­posed. It means hav­ing data to back up your posi­tion so that it isn’t just your opin­ion about what is on the table.

Most peo­ple walk into all sorts of meet­ings, includ­ing the meet­ing lead­ers, not ready for prime time. Being pre­pared gives you sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on the out­come because you can offer solu­tions, peo­ple will grab onto and mod­ify those solu­tions and work will get done.

If an issue is com­ing to a deci­sion, it is crit­i­cal that you know everyone’s posi­tion on the issue. Know­ing the posi­tion before the deci­sion is made helps you under­stand where the power is for the deci­sion and where the objec­tions are for the issue.

This means you need to talk with each per­son about where they stand on the deci­sion in ques­tion and ask per­ti­nent ques­tions about their posi­tion. This includes “what if” ques­tions like “If we did it your way and then added on these two things, what would you think of that?” By ask­ing ques­tions, you can tell where there is room for a bet­ter solu­tion over­all — or where the objec­tions will kill a decision.

By know­ing the posi­tions, you can pro­vide a syn­the­sized solu­tion that matches the major­ity while accom­mo­dat­ing those with objec­tions. Or you can take where peo­ple are at and work out a new solu­tion that is bet­ter than what is pro­posed, build­ing on what is said in the meeting.

Or you can be in a posi­tion to just be quiet while two sides blow up the whole thing and you can be in a posi­tion to help put it back together in a dif­fer­ent way that helps everyone.

But if you don’t know everyone’s posi­tion on an issue, you can’t get into a posi­tion to lead.

Offer an agenda if no one has one

How often have you gone into a project meet­ing and no one has an agenda for the meet­ing? My rule is this: he who has the agenda gets 80% of what they want out of a meeting.

So walk­ing into every meet­ing with an agenda — what needs to be accom­plished from the meet­ing and here is your solu­tion — should be part of every meet­ing prepa­ra­tion. Plus, if you ask about the agenda before the deci­sion meet­ing is held, you can offer con­struc­tive crit­i­cism about the agenda — what to include, what to add, and what to take out.

You won’t get every­thing you want — but you’ll get most of it because you offered an agenda and a way for peo­ple to con­struc­tively han­dle their time.

Offer con­struc­tive sug­ges­tions behind the scenes

Behind the scenes, offer­ing con­struc­tive sug­ges­tions about the project to the decision-maker and influ­encers on the project draws you closer to a hav­ing a place at the deci­sion table. The rea­son is sim­ple: most of your cowork­ers haven’t thought through the issues well enough to know the con­struc­tive solu­tions to prob­lems. Man­agers and lead­ers want solu­tions to problems.

Per­haps your entire sug­ges­tion won’t be the final answer; that’s OK. But if your sug­ges­tion starts the dia­logue to get to a final solu­tion, and you con­tinue to add con­struc­tive sug­ges­tions along the way, you will be seen as a thought leader on the sub­ject and get­ting results.

Cubi­cle War­riors don’t punt on leadership

Most of your cowork­ers sit back and wait for who­ever has the title of “leader” to make a deci­sion. They think lead­ers do that with­out any input. They don’t do the work to fig­ure out the best way of accom­plish­ing the project’s goals. They sim­ply wait to be told what to do for their part of the project and then whine about the work that needs doing.

Cubi­cle War­riors don’t shy away from the work and use their busi­ness judg­ment to get the project to a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion. Along the way, they make the project bet­ter because they engage with the work by get­ting ready, prepar­ing, and work­ing behind the scenes to get the best solu­tion for the business.

Are you ready to be the de facto leader on your next project?

[from CUBERULES​.COM]