Preparation is the key to success in everything that you do. This is especially true of leadership roles, as this means that people will be looking to you for guidance and instruction. Once you accept a leadership position, it becomes your job to help your team and organization grow and prosper, making sure that your competitors don’t pass you by. As you can probably imagine, this isn’t exactly an easy task to undertake; leaders need to prepare for the future while staying diligent in the present, something that can be difficult to accomplish thanks to the distractions of our daily lives.

Preparation isn’t something that should be allowed to slide, though. A leader’s failure can often be attributed to their lack of preparation, which can then negatively impact the company they’re working for as well. In order to keep from becoming that sort of leader, here’s how you can better prepare as a leader.

Be Accountable

As a leader, you are the one who’s responsible for what goes on under your watch. You’re held accountable for both the good and the bad that happens with your team, and when things go wrong, it’s because you stopped being accountable long enough for inefficiencies to surface. Preparing for the unexpected will propel you forward to success; don’t let the unexpected stop you in your tracks. Keep moving forward.

Pay Attention to Your Employees

Though you have a lot of responsibilities to worry about, you can’t let those responsibilities cloud your vision to what’s going on with your employees. You are working for your employees, not over them, and you can’t truly be prepared if you don’t know what to expect out of your employees. Oftentimes, employees won’t tell you if they need support, tools, resources, and so on, so it’s on you to take notice of these things and act upon it. Don’t aim for a quick-fix either—it won’t last. Dive into the problem to see what’s going on so that everyone can be prepared for the workload ahead.

Listen Carefully

Just as you should pay attention to what’s going on with your employees, you should listen to what they have to say, rather than listening to yourself. Taking the time to do so will let you better prepare yourself and your team for things you otherwise wouldn’t have accounted for. Additionally, taking the time to listen to others rather than just yourself will let you set the right tone for the project or meeting, creating a more positive atmosphere rather than a negative one. 

Everyone has bad days, no matter what position they’re at in life. To expect someone to be on top of their game 24/7, 365 days of the year, is an impossible expectation, but unfortunately, sometimes life demands that we keep moving on. There will be times when you’re having a horrendous day but need to go to work anyway, or you’ll need to run important errands when all you want to do is curl up in bed and take a nap. 

This can be particularly frustrating for people in leadership positions because sometimes that position is the reason you’re having a bad day in the first place. Maybe you’re dealing with an unexpected conflict between team members, or you got an email that completely ruined your mood. Whatever the situation, not knowing how to handle these emotions can lead to poor reactions and future regrets.

As a leader, it’s important that you try to avoid as many regrettable actions as possible, so learning how to deal with a bad day is crucial. Thankfully you aren’t alone in this endeavor—you’re not the first to lead despite a bad day, and you won’t be the last. Here are some tried and true ways that could help you get through your bad days. 

Build Emotional Intelligence

To be emotionally intelligent is to be self-aware of how your attitude and actions affect others around you. Normally you’ll be able to use this to further your team in their goals and ambitions, but if you’re having a bad day, you can use this intelligence to keep your attitude from impacting others negatively. It’s important not to drag others down with you, so being aware of your state of being and compensating for it can help make sure that, despite your bad mood, the day still goes smoothly.

Don’t Make Important Decisions

The last thing you want to do when having a bad day is to make any important decisions. When you’re making these kinds of decisions, you need to be fully in the game, and intense emotions can easily take you out of it. Often, intense emotions can lead you to make decisions you’ll regret in the future. “Don’t make tomorrow’s decisions based on today’s emotions.”

Call it a Day

It might feel like you’re giving up, but calling it a day when you’re having a really bad day is actually a smart choice to make. You’re not helping anyone if you’re staring at your computer for hours on end, getting absolutely no work done. Don’t think of your value in terms of how many hours you put in with work—your value comes from what you produce, not how many hours you put in. Two productive hours is worth far more than four hours where you struggle to get anything done.

In a disruptive world, leaders should be curious to succeed. Since time immemorial, the most celebrated innovations, such as self-driving cars, electricity, and computers, to mention a few, were developed out of curiosity. It’s a human attribute to seek new information and explore new possibilities. Curiosity is now more crucial in business than ever. When leaders are curious, they tend to think rationally and deeply about business processes and create more viable solutions.

On the other hand, curiosity helps leaders to earn respect from their team members and encourage them to establish and maintain robust work relationships with their colleagues.

Here are the benefits of curiosity in leadership.

Increased Innovations

Curiosity encourages employees to seek critical information from co-workers, thus boosting creativity. When a leader encourages his members to be curious, there is a likelihood of workplace improvements. Curious leaders take challenging situations more creatively. Therefore, curiosity fosters better performance by encouraging people to address a problem most appropriately.

Team Motivation

Team motivation is one of the essential pillars of a successful team. Leaders are encouraged to involve their teams in activities that require creativity. This can be achieved by designing a thinking workshop where every staff is requested to come up with the most viable solution to a problem. Successful leaders utilize mind mapping to bring about unique ideas.

According to scientists, curiosity is as essential as intelligence. It helps leaders to innovate and improve the existing ways of capturing information constantly.

Prevents Group Conflicts

When a leader models curiosity, members are likely to be empathetic too. They are encouraged to put themselves in another’s shoes and consider another’s ideas rather than focus only on their own. That enhances collaboration, thus eliminating heat among group members. Curious people are empathetic because they choose to understand the situation at hand before reacting.

Curiosity Encourages Learning

Without curiosity, leaders wouldn’t have the drive to capture new information. As leaders delegate duties, they are encouraged to get curious to stay up to date with the current industry trends. The leading problem solvers are those who think outside the box.

When curious leaders face unique challenges, they ask themselves relevant questions. They listen to other team members, thus setting the right mood for constructive discussions. Curiosity makes leaders open-minded because they know that there is always something to learn about.