Success Impulse: How to increase your fun in leadership

What is it about? Most of the leaders I meet have fun in their job. They love the technical work. But for the vast majority, the fun of leading people is much less.

When fun is missing in leadership...

Many associate leadership with a burden rather than the opportunity to achieve great things together with others. Thoughts turn to difficult "appraisal interviews," salary negotiations, conflict resolution, remembering deadlines and tasks, and so on. These are all topics that are, of course, less fun. And that's also management rather than leadership.

Here's the thing: The journey to fun leadership starts in the mind, with what I associate with leadership and how I see myself as a leader. So what can you do to significantly and sustainably increase your fun in leadership? Here are three concrete ideas:

Idea #1: Have a vision

It's a classic: If you lead people (and yourself), you need to know where to go. Leadership always means changing the status quo, it means development, it means achieving significant goals. Optimizing the current state, on the other hand, is "management". That is something different.

Developing strong visions and advocating them to others is an exercise I do over and over again with my clients. That's why I know that for many it is anything but easy.

My tip: Answer the question where exactly you want to be with your team in 3 years - and ideally. What do you dream of? What will you have achieved then?

Idea #2: Learning to love human challenges

Yes, you can learn to love the problems that inevitably arise from working with others. Of course, this requires changing beliefs if you've been more introverted and rational in nature. In fact, this is what you learn as a leader needif you want to be successful. In many cases, it is very difficult for you to do this alone, but you need one or more sparring partners.

Idea No. 3: Continuous development

Most of the things we don't like to do, we're not very good at either. In other words, a lack of competence usually leads to a lack of fun. Therefore: make sure that you are constantly developing. Practice dealing with people until you get real enjoyment out of it. Develop your vision repeatedly until it comes naturally to you. And keep educating yourself on all the other leadership topics.

So here are three ideas on how you can massively increase your fun in leadership - and incidentally your success. Now all you have to do is apply them. Have fun with it!

To the author:
Volkmar Völzke is a success maximizer. Book author. Consultant. Coach. Speaker. www.volkmarvoelzke.ch