Master Leadership Skills At Home. 5 Practical Ways To Live Life & Learn

We learn most of our facts in school, with social and cooperative skills on the playground and other places and cultures from books, movies, and television. But most everything else we learn from home.

We learn from our parents and siblings. We learn from the rules that are and aren’t enforced. And we learn from our mistakes. Ideally, home is a safe place to try new things and make mistakes.

As with the above, learning how to be a better leader and picking up important leadership skills also begins at home.

Companies, for instance, spend a lot of money on leadership training, getting people up to speed on the basics, and providing tools for employees to improve and grow up the corporate ladder. However, leadership is not just for the corporate world. Even if you work from home, you need to develop leadership skills that come through in your virtual meetings and relationships.

However, once you’re out of school, the general thinking is that you either learn on the job or go back to school for a degree (MBA) or obtain some specialized training.

Here, we’ll discuss refocusing on the learning and developing key leadership skills from the comfort of your home.

How To Hone Leadership Skills At Home

1 – Develop Discipline Through Fitness Goals

Exercise is a great way to start developing discipline and get into the habit of starting a task/goal and seeing it through.

Start by assembling your home gym with whatever you think you’ll need. Start your project with some dumbbells and work your way up to a 35 lb barbell. Next, get some equipment that you think will be most useful for you and your fitness goals.

Whatever it is that you do, and however much you invest in it, take it on like you would a work project. Have a plan, a budget, and a timeline, and then start using it! Sticking to a regimen builds discipline, and then you get all the side benefits of reduced stress, improved sleep, better health, and clearer thinking for all those work decisions!

Plus, if you can motivate yourself to do something like this, think of how it affects your ability to motivate and inspire the people you work with.

2 – Study Successful Leaders

One of the qualities of a successful leader is that they study the habits of other successful leaders. Set aside 20 – 30 minutes of time each day to read something that relates to your work, leadership skills, or that’s just a little more mentally inspiring. You never know where a skill or lesson will come from.

In addition, pay attention to the different leadership styles of the leaders you are learning from. Everyone is different, and their approach will vary depending on where they worked and what they were trying to accomplish. Understand what it took for them to gain credibility and build trust so that they could be effective.

3 – Teach What You Learn

If you want to make yourself a better person, learn as much as you can. If you want to make the world around you a better place, teach someone else what you’ve learned.

Everyone has something to teach, and great leaders share their knowledge with others. Truly, it is one of their most important functions. It partly explains why companies are hesitant to promote their top salespeople. What they want from that sales leader is to duplicate themselves by training others. If that person can’t teach, they shouldn’t be promoted.

So whatever you learn, be sure to put it into action and share it with people in your life outside of work (as well as at work). It’s a great way to practice your speaking, become a better communicator, test your depth of knowledge and further hone your skills.

4 – Practice Conflict Resolution

Another thing a leader does far more often than they would like is to resolve conflicts. Whenever you manage other people, there will be conflicts. Those conflicts can range from cubicle turf wars to companywide schisms that could destroy the business. Those battles between teammates are common, and if you don’t know how to deal with them, they can destroy the productivity of your department/business.

Learn to be a peacemaker at home and practice those problem-solving conversations. It’s important for leaders to build great teams, and every great team will have its conflicts. Your strong communication skills will serve you well and create a fruitful and productive environment for those you work with.

5 – Volunteer Your Time

One of the hallmark traits of influential and authentic leadership is the ability to get into the trenches and lead by example. Rolling up your sleeves to help your team to get things done. Volunteering your time outside of work is one way to hone this skill.

Get involved in your community or with local schools to help out with whatever is needed. The time spent will help you gain perspective, allow you to interact with many different types of people and personalities, and give you some practice in rolling up those sleeves!

Final Thoughts

Not all people are born leaders. Leadership skills are learned from an early age from within our environments and from our parents. For some, these skills come naturally, and for others, they gain experiences quickly that allow them to solidify themselves in leadership roles.

No matter where you are in your career, these five simple areas can help you to improve leadership & management skills, teach you, and prepare you for how to be a better leader right from the comfort of your home.