How to think like a leader

There is no need to be a manager or to have a team to think like a leader. I’m a Business Analyst, I Don’t have a team, but I learned how to think like a leader, and this is what I learned.

As a Business Analyst one of the soft skills that you need to master is think like a leader. Thinking Like A Leader is flows around 3 axes. Think Like A Leader, Talk Like a leader and Act Like a leader.

Think like a Leader. One thing I learned is that thinking like a leader is not thinking for other but stimulate others for them to follow you. You need to think of other before thinking about yourself. You need to build a trust between you and the others, because trust is the foundation of leadership. You need to be altruistic and combine that with that trust, managers are asked to get results and leader are the ones enabling changes. You need to be optimistic, look to the future with confidence. It’s clear that nobody wants to follow a pessimist and that sometimes pragmatism can look pessimistic, but you need to transform the forecasts into foresights.

Talk like a Leader. It’s good to think like a leader but it’s better to share those thoughts. Talk like a leader is explain why we are doing things rather than how doing things. Teams often knows how to do things, but sometimes even if the environment change, they often get stuck in a routine and at the end, they lose the reason they are doing things. Think like a leader is give a direction to everybody and a purpose to each. If you want to enable change, the first person that you need to talk to and that you need to follow you is the one doing the day-to-day job, the one that would be the more affected by the change, that’s the principle of subsidiarity.

Act like a Leader. It’s good to talk like a leader but it’s better to practice what you preach. Act like a leader is translate all the goals in emotions. Only emotion triggers action, every thought needs to be translated in emotion to set off an action. You need to be able to simplify, prioritize, decide, de-dramatize conflicts and forgive mistakes. You need to be able to replace the “or” of a problem by an “end” even if in the execution both solutions do not happen at the same time. You need to be able to have your head in the clouds and their feet on the ground, to dream your plan and plan the execution.

I’m bad in conclusion but this is how you think like a leader by turning your thoughts in emotion to set off action.