Coach Mike Krzyzewski said leaders should be reliable without being predictable. They should be consistent without being anticipated. Coach K leadership needed simple things. Krzyzewski certainly understood the leadership qualities of the best leadership, didn’t he?
Spot on. I have been in the military and business world for forty years, and I often get asked what leader qualities contribute to the best leadership.
Developing these qualities is a lifelong learning process. You are never done learning. Every great leader always looks for ways to improve on all of these qualities.
Leadership can be especially challenging for entrepreneurs. Balancing the need to run a business (i.e., products, investors, customers, etc.) and the need to lead company personnel is quite a task.
Effective leader qualities as an entrepreneur mean that you can “make things happen,” instead of just “letting things happen.”
The quality of leader influence involvement is required in many activities. It is involved in a variety of situations and problems, from the very simple to the very complex.
Leaders must influence others to achieve goals, and they must gain the respect of followers to influence them. This is no easy task, but if you want to have the respect of your followers, you have many trusted leader qualities.
Here are 13 leader qualities Coach K uses with his team to improve their ability to develop to be the best leaders they can be:
Coach K leadership … foster teamwork
Drucker made an interesting point when he said that leaders don’t train themselves not to say “I.” He’s implying that leaders innately work with others and let the team get the credit. They don’t force themselves to say “we.” “We” is natural for them, and it’s the way they’ve always thought.
We believe that employing an “employee of the month” or a “who gets credit for what” attitude is not a good process. You work as a team when you don’t care who gets the credit.
Coach K leadership … encourage growth in others
Some companies follow the motto: “hire for character, train for skill.” You hire people that are eager to learn and are very “raw.” They don’t have a ton of skills; but as a leader, you teach them, and they become better. They grow with your company and contribute to its success.
You see this with football coaches. In football coaching, it’s almost unheard of for someone with no experience to be hired as the head coach of a team. Most people start in a low-level position (i.e., video coordinator, quality control assistant, scout, etc.) and gradually move up if they become successful in their roles.
Sometimes it takes more than thirty years before they finally get a chance to be the head coach.
The same can occur in business. George Bodenheimer is the former president of ESPN. He started out working in the mailroom of ESPN. It would have been very difficult for him to rise to the presidency if he hadn’t had a boss who wanted to help him grow and succeed in the company.
Coach K leadership … show courage
Always demonstrate your courage in making tough decisions, knowing that bad decisions will be penalized. Remember that doing nothing is always an option.
Coach K leadership … boost player confidence
Employee attitude is so critical that it can’t be overemphasized. It trickles down from employers. Your business isn’t optimized if you don’t optimize for employee happiness.
Leaders should make employees feel good about themselves. Constantly criticizing and pointing out the flaws in an employee is a sure fire way to decrease morale and performance.
Listens firsts and acts second
Someone who jumps to conclusions without first seeking to understand has made a fatal error—for themselves and their team. To lead people effectively, you have to take the time to listen and see things from their perspective. You have to put yourself in their shoes and fully understand the situation.
Coach K leadership … always empowers people
Many of my leadership philosophies were learned as an athlete. My most successful teams didn’t always have the most talent but did have teammates with the right combination of skills, strengths and a common trust in each other.
To build an ‘overachieving’ team, you need to delegate responsibility and authority. Giving away responsibilities isn’t always easy.
It can be harder to do than completing the task yourself, but with the right project selection and support, delegating can pay off in dividends. It is how you truly find people’s capabilities and get the most out of them.
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Get people to follow you
You earn leadership by what Anne Mulcahy calls “followership.”
On becoming a leader.
“I think sometimes we forget that we’re not anointed leaders, we have to earn it, and we have to have people that trust us and are willing to follow. I think that is the differentiator between great leadership and average leadership.”
-Anne Mulcahy, Former Chairman, and CEO of Xerox Corporation
Even if a leader is anointed, it doesn’t mean that they’ll have followers. The leader needs to gain the trust of the followers. It has to be earned because not many people will mindlessly follow a leader.
Coach K leadership … inspire people
Inspire and motivate to get the most from each team member and succeed based on your ability to work with others.
A quality of great leaders can articulate ideas and get people excited and inspired by them. It’s not selling people on an idea; it’s inspiring them.
Wear your passion and enthusiasm
Always wear your passion and enthusiasm for what you are doing. To do that, you must find those things that you love. Follow the passion; it is what gives you the strength to overcome the obstacles to everyday tasks. Passion is power. It is what keeps you going when everyone else gets tired and gives up.
Coach K leadership … be a continuous learner
Observing and learning from those around you makes you stronger, better. Never fail to see its value. Your peers, as well as competitors, can usually teach you more than your friends. Let them. Learn from them.
To be a great leader, you need to have a strong will and an even stronger stomach. You need to remind yourself that your job isn’t to make everyone happy, but rather to improve the organization as a whole.
Good leaders are constantly trying to improve, surround themselves with the ablest people they can find. They look squarely at their own mistakes and deficiencies, and they ask frankly what skills they and the company will need in the future.
And because of this, they can move forward with confidence that’s grounded in the facts, not built on fantasies about their talent.
Always work hard at being a little better than you were the day before. Continuous learning is one of the most important attributes in the work and personal environment.
Coach K leadership … show persistence
Always show courage.
Persistence is key. Always keep up the effort as you will never know how close to success you may be.
Think about your energy. It’s not just about what you like best, but about what feeds you and what depletes you. And who.
Do what you can to increase the good stuff and decrease the bad. You just need to realize you have the power to accomplish it. Much more than you may have imagined.
Limit your fear of failure
No matter how confident someone may seem, everyone is afraid of failing. All of us are afraid of screwing up or afraid of looking stupid.
But great leaders know that everyone they interact with is also afraid.
These people are successful because they act in the face of fear. They go after what they believe, seek change and, ultimately, make a difference.
They also believe they can take a risk because even if they fail, they’ll be able to learn from it and overcome it. Their fear doesn’t hold them back. Instead, it springs them into action, because they know not stretching themselves is worse than failing.
Coach K leadership … stay optimistic and positive
To achieve greatness, you must create a culture of optimism. There will be many ups and downs, but the prevalence of positivity will keep the company going. But be warned: This requires fearlessness. You have to believe in making the impossible possible.
The bottom line
A simple reminder is that business leadership skills, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it. It takes lots of consistent practice. You need to dive into the pool as soon as possible.
Great leaders know that every step they take, every decision they make, matters in the end. They know they must strategize carefully, and then act decisively. They know they must think ahead — not just to their next step — but to the many steps after it.
Practice these leadership behaviors often and think ahead for your greatest leadership advantages.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategyg?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Eisenhower certainly understood the concepts of the best leadership qualities and attributes, didn’t he? Spot on. I have been in leadership positions in the military and business world for forty years, and I often get asked what it takes to be an effective, influential leader. Dwight Eisenhower was only of many I studied over those many years.
Nothing really prepares you to be a leader. In most cases, you get the opportunity to lead by being good at something else. However, while being a strong performer gives you the credibility to lead, it says nothing about your ability to lead. Leadership is a skill in its own right and, for the most part, it’s one you learn on the job.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want to be done because he wants to do it.
– Dwight Eisenhower
Being such a leader is a lifelong learning process. You are never done learning. Every great leader always looks for ways to improve their ability to improve their leadership qualities and attributes.
If you read ten books on leadership, you could easily build a checklist of 50 or more leadership qualities and attributes. But more is not necessarily better for the best checklist. The following leadership checklist represents my favorite 15 leadership attributes.
It represents those 15 leadership attributes that I would least like to be without:
Not about you
Many of us want to be effective leaders … ones that can make a difference. But that doesn’t happen by talking about it or self-marketing. It takes time to build connections, by taking a genuine interest in people. In true leadership situations, listening comes first.
Perhaps the worst personal trait I’ve personally observed is ego. We all have an ego, but the ego I’m talking about is the ‘super-ego’ that dominates. I’ve found if a leader is really good at what they do, they won’t have to tell others about it.
Humility
Leaders teach us “Don’t think too highly of yourself.” How can you improve? We are not perfect. Your success is because of many team members’ contributions.
How can we up our leadership game?
Passion
You only live once. Give it all you got. Be the best so no competitor can keep up. Know your passion and live it. Let it drive you to be the best in your niche.
Do what it takes to make your team more effective and productive. Make each team member focus on putting the team before themselves.
Remember, whatever your role is, be a servant to the team and make your teammates better.
Speak appreciation
Gratitude must be a constant drumbeat of your dialogue. Infuse your conversations with an appreciation of your team’s acumen and determination to improve. Learn to be thankful certainly when there’s great success, but also be thankful for what you’ve learned through the hard times because there’s great wisdom in those experiences.
After you have been knocked down, gain your composure, reflect on why this occurred and make changes.
Push people
A good leader makes sure their team members never stop looking bad until eventually, they look good because they have improved.
Push them to be the best they can be. Be a great motivator.
Provide structure but encourage improvisation
Provide structure to the team but always encourage everyone to improvise. Inspire them could not do alone.
Show them by example and let other teammates help them do it; that builds a bond that lasts forever.
Build relationships and culture
Constantly build relationships with and between the team. It is the foundation of the culture you want to develop. Remember this: Five percent of what we do is to be sure we perform.
The other ninety-five percent is to create a culture that leads to the team effort.
Continuous improvement and learning
If you’re not doing, you’re not learning. Everybody makes mistakes. It’s what you do with them that counts.
Give people opportunity to input
It has to be the team’s game plan, not just the leader’s plan. Ensure you are giving everyone an opportunity for inputs and listen carefully. Do what you can to build a team plan.
Adapt your leadership to team
Not all teams are the same, and each requires and responds best to its leadership qualities. Focus on becoming a good reader of the team and adapt your leadership style to what is needed.
Leadership qualities list.
Develop other leaders
Leaders are measured not just on what they achieve personally but also on what the people they mentored go on to do as leaders in their right.
Take pride in people you have developed. It is a big ‘pick-me-upper’ if you let it.
Agree to disagree, but don’t be disagreeable
It is all about maintaining a positive attitude all the time, even when times are tough. People can agree to disagree, but need to avoid being disagreeable at all costs.
Character over reputation
Your reputation will vary. It’s your character that counts, and it’s what you can control. Encourage everyone to make an effort to do the best of which you’re capable and try to improve each situation that exists.
Your reputation is what you are perceived to be, and your character is what you are. The character is much more important than what you are perceived to be, isn’t it? It is for me.
Balance is everything
Keep this quality near the top of your leadership priorities. Preach it and live it.
Balance is everything. Be balanced … controlled action in all areas of life.
Don’t let failure be fatal
Keep going. Don’t let setbacks stop you. Carry your lessons forward, and change your approach as required. Don’t fear change … it is a fact of life.
Failure is not fatal, but often a failure to change can be.
Key takeaways
The moral of this story is company culture has a great influence on leadership development. If these different thoughts are possessed by your current leadership team or your emerging leaders, you will be in a good position for the road ahead.
Which of these leadership thoughts stand out to you? Do you have any other thoughts of effective leaders worthy of mention? Leave a comment and share your insights with others…
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz likes to write about the topics that lead to small business success. He also likes to share his many business experiences. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Baldwin hits the nail on the head with his quote on change, doesn’t he? He begs the question of the importance of knowing yourself. Knowing yourself is the key to undertaking life success lessons, isn’t it?
Not everything that is faced can be changed … but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
-James Baldwin
And often experiments are critical to knowing yourself, aren’t they?
An experiment gone wrong doesn’t have to mean someone goofed. In a culture of growth, it should say that you tried something new, measured the results, and learned that the change didn’t help you. If your tests are always successful, you’re probably not testing often enough or aggressively enough.
How you ever used checklists to improve your productivity … or perhaps your positive mental attitude? How well did they work for you? Do they refresh your thinking on important life success lessons?
We often use checklists to achieve our goal to create the attitude that can see opportunity in every difficulty.
After college, I spent almost two years training as a naval aviator. An essential element of that training was the use of checklists in the learning and refresher process. Checklist utilization remains an important part of my business life.
It is always a good idea to have a helpful list of reminders of improvements for your business or your personal life.
I keep a stack of 10 or so checklists that I rotate and update occasionally. This is one of them, despite the fact that I am a retiree (at least part of the time J).
I pull out one checklist to read and contemplate for five minutes as a way to start each day. I find it puts my thinking in the right frame of mind.
Here is the checklist example on simple reminders to improve the odds of success in any task that my team or I may be doing:
Your career is not your life
This is probably the most difficult of the lessons, particularly early to mid-career. At least it was for me. To be successful in this lesson, you should develop a breath to your list of activities and always put family and friends first.
To do both well, think about activities that maximize your friends and relatives, like coaching your children’s sports teams.
Don’t fear failure.
Get to know who you are
Your life will be in constant change mode, and that is a good thing if you lead change in the direction of your success goals.
To do that most successfully, you should have a good understanding of who you are and what direction you are going. Indeed, you must know your strengths and weaknesses pretty well.
Recently, I have started to listen to several playlists and podcasts with advice from “successful” people (“success” being used as a very personal term), and it has given me a lot to think about.
One of the quotes that stuck with me was “use adversity to your advantage,” which is a powerful statement for many reasons. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants,” he says the following:
“What is learned out of necessity is inevitably more powerful than the learning that comes easily.”
It is a powerful statement on how our struggles if used correctly, can be used to our benefit. For that to happen, though, we have to own our struggles.
Aim high
One of our most favorite quotations about aim and goals is one from Michelangelo:
The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
Michelangelo knew a thing or two about great intention and goals didn’t he? Need we say anything more?
Be a change agent
I am a big believer in adaptation and change. You should always seek to be flexible and keep several alternative paths in front of you. Always be on the lookout for ways to reinvent ways for self-improvement.
Our most favored quote on change and adaptation is from Charles Darwin:
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Just remember to substitute success for survival, and you will have a treasured tip.
Build on your strengths
Again this tip starts with knowing yourself and honestly acknowledging your strengths and weakness. Focus your work on building on your strengths and making your weaknesses irrelevant.
Learn kindness
All of these lessons on success get better when you have a strong foundation in knowing how to stay happy. One big part of being successful in happiness is learning how to share kindness.
It costs you nothing and you’d be surprised how much it can do for your happiness.
Simplify
Keep it simple in everything you do. And that is more challenging and significant than you probably believe. Our favorite quote on simplicity?
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple … that’s creativity.
That says it all to us.
Life success lessons … listening
It doesn’t seem like a lesson that should be in the top ten to most of the younger generation, or that difficult to be an active listener. But most of us are wrong on both counts.
Everyone needs to make listening their #1 core competency. (see our article on how to achieve this important goal.)
Wear your enthusiasm and passion
All of us can be enthusiastic and show love on our favorite topics and our best days. The secret sauce is to be as consistent as possible and make it contagious to friends and teammates.
There is a strong correlation to an item on kindness and happiness.
While we don’t want to put failure on a pedestal, all of us experience failures in our lives and our careers.
The secret sauce is all about learning from them and moving on in our lives as quickly as possible. Realize that careers and lives won’t fall apart from them.
Key takeaways
As I examine these lessons at the tail end of my career, it is easy to recognize how little I thought about most of them through at least the mid-career timeframe.
And, of course, wish I had. From my personal perspective, I was most vulnerable to lessons 1, 2, 4, and 8. I should have spent a lot more time on these teachings.
What about you?
Remember to work on all the lessons … it is another great way to show people a positive mental attitude.
Could this checklist help you start your day?
Do you have suggestions to add to the list?
Be sure and walk the talk on these!
May you be so fortunate …
To be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your continuous learning performance.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on mentoring from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz likes to write about the topics that lead to small business success. He also likes to share his many business experiences. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Ever wondered how the best leaders handle being at the top so effortlessly? The truth is, these highly successful people do stumble, worry, and doubt themselves, just like the rest of us. But they are very good at mastering the way they are perceived. The higher you get in a company, the less time you’ll spend on executing tasks and managing projects and instead you’ll be focusing on people management.
As a leader, you must understand that your success depends on the success of your team. Note that people management skills will be absolutely critical.
My career spanned 40 years as a manager in large organizations before I transitioned into consulting.
In those years I was a manager of people in 37 of those years. 37 years of continuous learning on leadership and management.
The essence of a leader comes down to the fundamental values of the individual.
What behavior are you role modeling? How do you treat your team members?
Let’s examine these game-changing leadership behaviors for managing people that can help in the way you are perceived:
Get into action
It is critical that you learn the importance of the start, whatever you have been postponing.
Just do it, as Nike likes to tell its customers and potential customers. If you wait for the perfect time to start, it will never happen, and you will have accomplished nothing.
Great leaders don’t work in existing systems. They change the systems to give them what they want.
They don’t delay the start. They come up with new options for jobs, projects, and professional development that their bosses hadn’t even thought of.
They see an opportunity coming their way before most of the rest of us have even looked up from our laptops. They don’t hesitate to seize the initiative, do they?
Learn from competitors
Observing and learning from those around you makes you stronger, better. Never fail to see its value.
Your peers, as well as competitors, can usually teach you more than your friends. Let them. Learn from them.
To be a great leader, you need to have a strong will and an even stronger stomach. You need to remind yourself that your job isn’t to make everyone happy, but rather to improve the organization as a whole.
Good leaders are constantly trying to improve, surround themselves with the ablest people they can find.
They look squarely at their mistakes and deficiencies, and they ask frankly what skills they and the company will need in the future.
And because of this, they can move forward with confidence that’s grounded in the facts, not built on fantasies about their talent.
People management … ask for help
Never, ever, hesitate to ask for help in anything you are doing. You can’t possibly know and keep up with everything.
Ask, listen well, and learn.
Keep things in perspective
Find balance in everything you do in life.
A man should never neglect family for business
Having work-life balance is important. Never be so consumed in business activities that you neglect the individuals whom you need the most.
But aside from this, great leaders know they need a life so that they’ll learn more about other people, gain perspective, and grow their knowledge.
It’s easy to fall into the idea that our work is all that matters. You are not the center of all things important.
The lives of others don’t revolve around you. Don’t act as they do.
Persistence
Persistence is key. Always keep up the effort as you will never know how close to success you may be.
Think about your energy. It’s not just about what you like best, but about what feeds you and what depletes you. And who.
Do what you can to increase the good stuff and decrease the bad. You just need to realize you have the power to accomplish it. Much more than you may have imagined.
Eliminate whatever it is in your life that’s draining you, and replace it with something that inspires you. This will help your persistence.
How to manage staff effectively.
No fear of failure
No matter how confident someone may seem, everyone is afraid of failing. All of us are afraid of screwing up or afraid of looking stupid.
But great leaders know that everyone they interact with is also afraid.
These people are successful because they act in the face of fear. They go after what they believe, seek change and, ultimately, make a difference.
They also believe they can take a risk because even if they fail, they’ll be able to learn from it and overcome it.
Their fear doesn’t hold them back. Instead, it springs them into action, because they know not stretching themselves is worse than failing.
Dreams always follow those who dare to fail, get up, and reflect and learn from the experience
Wear your passion
Always wear your passion in what you are doing. To do that, you must find those things that you love.
Follow the passion; it is what gives you the strength to overcome the obstacles to everyday tasks. Passion is power … it is what keeps you going when everyone else gets tired and gives up.
Coordinating with others … continuous improvement
Always work hard at being a little better than you were the day before. Continuous learning is one of the most important attributes in the work and personal environment.
Great leaders know that every step they take, every decision they make, matters in the end.
They know they must strategize carefully, and then act decisively. They know they must think ahead — not just to their next step — but to the many steps after it.
Practice these leadership behaviors often and think ahead for your greatest leadership advantages.
Be nice
This should be pretty obvious, but the first principle when working in a team is to be nice. People don’t want to work with nasty or aggressive people, and such behavior will only hamper any collaboration.
Beyond a basic level of decency, you should also avoid a robotic focus on work and remember that your team is made up of human beings.
Ask them how they’re doing before launching into the tasks you need them to do.
Take a moment to ask about their weekend, show that you’ve got good manners and say please and thank you!
Show them you care
Still on the human being topic, leading a team means showing that you care about them as individuals.
So check in to see how they feel if they’re off sick, bring them a cupcake on their birthday, buy them a coffee from time to time.
These little gestures will demonstrate that you don’t just think of them as cogs in the machine and will make sure to keep spirits up. This is true especially when workload is heavy, or morale is low.
Be fair
Being fair to your team members means valuing each of their contributions, giving each of them the attention that they need, giving credit where credit is due.
It also means taking due responsibility for work on your side, and role modeling the behavior that you expect from your team.
After all, you can’t expect them to be careful with the company’s money if you’re seen to be frittering away the budget.
Focus on their growth
As a people manager, you are not just responsible for making sure that the work gets done.
You are responsible for helping each reach their full potential by getting the feedback and coaching they need, learning new skills, and finding the right assignment.
This also requires focusing on your performance so be sure to ask for feedback also from them.
Remember to keep growing as a manager by attending training sessions and getting coaching yourself.
Support them externally
Trust and solidarity are fundamental values when working in a team and sticking up for each other.
When the going gets tough it will help to maintain cohesion. Your team needs to know that you’re not going to throw them under the bus if they make a mistake.
You might need to talk to the individual who has made that mistake. But remember not to do it in front of clients, agencies or colleagues outside of your immediate team.
Engage them in your vision
People need to know what they are working towards, the bigger picture of what you’re trying to achieve. Sharing your broader vision will help them to understand the role they have to play and keep them engaged.
This will become all the more important as you grow more senior in your role. You can start even with a small project.
What will be the impact if you’re successful? Is there a metaphor or image that you can share that will capture the essence of what you’re trying to achieve?
Get your team energized and excited about the bigger goal that lies ahead.
Continuous improvement.
Be a good coach
Provide specific, constructive feedback, balancing the negative and the positive.
Have regular one-on-ones, presenting solutions to problems tailored to your employees’ specific strengths.
Empower your team and don’t micromanage
Balance is giving freedom to your employees, while still being available for advice. Make “stretch” assignments to help the team tackle big problems.
Express interest in team members’ success and personal well-being
Get to know your employees as people, with lives outside of work. Make new members of your team feel welcome and help ease their transition.
Don’t be a sissy. Be productive and results-oriented
Focus on what employees want the team to achieve and how they can help achieve it. Help the team prioritize work and use seniority to remove roadblocks.
Be a good communicator and listen to your team
Communication is two-way: you both listen and share information. Hold all-hands meetings and be straightforward about the messages and goals of the team.
Help the team connect the dots. Encourage open dialogue and listen to the issues and concerns of your employees.
Help your employees with career development
Identifying and exploring such opportunities with your team presents an opportunity to become the kind of leader who truly changes lives.
Have a clear vision and strategy for the team
Even in the midst of turmoil, keep the team focused on goals and strategy. Involve the team in setting and evolving the team’s vision and making progress toward it.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on mentoring from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Coach Krzyzewski certainly understood leadership principles of being an effective leader, didn’t he?
Spot on. I have been in the military and business world for forty years and I often get asked which leadership principles contribute to the best leaders.
Developing these qualities is a lifelong learning process. You are never done learning. Every great leader always looks for ways to improve on all of these qualities.
Leadership can be especially challenging for entrepreneurs.
Balancing the need to run a business (i.e., products, investors, customers, etc.) and the need to lead company personnel is quite a task.
Effective leader qualities as an entrepreneur means that you can “make things happen,” instead of just “letting things happen.”
The quality of leader influence involvement is required in many activities. It is involved in a variety of situations and problems, from the very simple to the very complex.
Leaders must influence others in order to achieve goals, and they must gain the respect of followers in order to influence them.
This is no easy task, but if you want to have the respect of your followers you have many trusted leader qualities.
Here are 13 leader qualities Digital Spark Marketing uses with clients to improve their ability to develop to be the best leaders they can be:
Core principles of leadership … foster teamwork
Drucker makes an interesting point when he said that leaders don’t train themselves not to say “I.”
He’s implying that leaders innately work with others and let the team get the credit. They don’t force themselves to say “we.”
“We” is natural for them, and it’s the way they’ve always thought.
We believe that employing an “employee of the month” or a “who gets credit for what” attitude is not a good process.
You work as a team when you don’t care who gets the credit.
Leadership principles … encourage growth in others
Some companies follow the motto: “hire for character, train for skill.” You hire people that are eager to learn and are very “raw.”
They don’t have a ton of skills; but as a leader, you teach them, and they become better. They grow with your company and contribute to its success.
You see this with football coaches. In football coaching, it’s almost unheard of for someone with no experience to be hired as the head coach of a team.
Most people start in a low level position (i.e., video coordinator, quality control assistant, scout, etc.) and gradually move up if they become successful in their roles. Sometimes it takes more than thirty years before they finally get a chance to be the head coach.
The same can occur in business. George Bodenheimer is the former president of ESPN. He started out working in the mailroom of ESPN.
It would have been very difficult for him to rise to the presidency if he hadn’t had a boss who wanted to help him grow and succeed in the company.
Leadership qualities list.
Show courage
Always demonstrate your courage in making tough decisions, knowing that bad decisions will be penalized.
Remember that doing nothing is always an option.
Boost employee confidence
Employee attitude is so critical that it can’t be overemphasized. It trickles down from employers. Your business isn’t optimized if you don’t optimize for employee happiness.
Leaders should make employees feel good about themselves.
Constantly criticizing and pointing out the flaws in an employee is a sure fire way to decrease morale and performance.
Examples of leadership principles … be an optimist
People want to follow an optimist, a person always looking to prioritize and solve problems.
Be willing to be misunderstood
This isn’t an excuse for being a jerk to employees. To colleagues in your industry, sometimes an invention is at first misunderstood before it becomes a revolution.
So if you aren’t willing to be misunderstood, you may never be a pioneer in your industry.
A good example of a willingness to be misunderstood as a business leader is Netflix. It was a totally unique way to receive movies.
In the late 90′s, if you wanted to rent a movie, you’d have to go through your cable or satellite provider or get one at Blockbuster or something similar.
Getting rental DVDs via mail was unconventional.
Undoubtedly, Netflix needed to be willing to be misunderstood. They were pioneering and attempting to change the way people watch movies.
Get people to follow you
You earn leadership by what Anne Mulcahy calls “followership.”
“I think sometimes we forget that we’re not actually anointed leaders, we actually have to earn it and we have to have people that trust us and are willing to follow. I think that really is the differentiator between great leadership and average leadership.”
-Anne Mulcahy, Former Chairman and CEO of Xerox Corporation
Even if a leader is anointed, it doesn’t mean that they’ll have followers.
The leader needs to gain the trust of the followers. It has to be earned because not many people will mindlessly follow a leader.
Inspire people
Inspire and motivate to get the most from each team member and succeed based on your ability to work with others.
A quality of great leaders is being able to clearly articulate ideas and get people excited and inspired about them. It’s not selling people on an idea, it’s inspiring them.
Wear your passion and enthusiasm
Always wear your passion and enthusiasm in what you are doing. To do that, you must find those things that you love.
Follow the passion; it is what gives you the strength to overcome the obstacles to everyday tasks.
Passion is power. It is what keeps you going when everyone else gets tired and gives up.
Be a continuous learner
Be a continuous learner.
Observing and learning from those around you makes you stronger, better. Never fail to see its value.
Your peers as well as competitors can usually teach you more than your friends. Let them. Learn from them.
To be a great leader, you need to have a strong will and an even stronger stomach.
At the end of the day, you need to remind yourself that your job isn’t to make everyone happy. It is to improve the organization as a whole.
Good leaders constantly trying to improve, surround themselves with the most able people they can find.
They look squarely at their own mistakes and deficiencies. They ask what skills they and the company will need in the future.
And because of this, they can move forward with confidence that’s grounded in the facts. It is not built on fantasies about their talent.
Always work hard at being a little better than you were the day before.
Continuous learning is one of the most important attributes in the work and personal environment.
Show persistence
Persistence is key. Always keep up the effort as you will never know how close to success you may be.
Think about your energy. It’s not just about what you like best, but about what feeds you and what depletes you. And who.
Do what you can to increase the good stuff and decrease the bad.
You just need to realize you have the power to accomplish it. Much more than you may have imagined.
Limit your fear of failure
No matter how confident someone may seem, everyone is afraid of failing. All of us are afraid of screwing up or afraid of looking stupid.
But great leaders know that everyone they interact with is also afraid.
These people are successful because they act in the face of fear. They go after what they believe, seek change and, ultimately, make a difference.
They also believe they can take a risk because even if they fail, they’ll be able to learn from it and overcome it.
Their fear doesn’t hold them back. Instead, it springs them into action. They know not stretching themselves is worse than failing.
Be a good listener
You don’t gain insights by talking. Ideas can come from anywhere. Therefore it’s important to keep your ears open to new ideas and insight.
Focus on hearing everything that’s being said so you can make the most informed decisions.
Listening helps a leader get multiple perspectives. When making a decision, a good leader always listens to a number of different people.
They know they own the final decision but always make sure they get input from multiple people.
The bottom line
Here is a simple reminder. Business leadership skills, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about them. Tt takes lots of consistent practice. You need to dive into the pool as soon as possible.
Great leaders know that every step they take, every decision they make, matters in the end.
They know they must strategize carefully, and then act decisively.
They know they must think ahead. Not just to their next step; but to the many steps after it.
Practice these leadership behaviors often and think ahead for your greatest leadership advantages.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategyg?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
When we think about entrepreneurs, we usually think about young technologists in co-working spaces coming up with the next big smartphone app. Yet some of the smartest innovators aren’t working with code or looking for a lucrative exit. They are working to findsustainablesolutions to some of the world’s toughest problems. That is all about the entrepreneurdevelopment.
If you want to be successful in your entrepreneurship development, there is certainly a continuous “evolutionary” process that we must undertake. In other words, there are entrepreneurial skills that we must each practice, learn and re-learn. As our environment changes, we need to adapt skills to surroundings or be left behind.
Entrepreneurial skills development..
Before I tell you about the entrepreneurial skills to develop, I’d like to tell you a story to set the stage, so to speak.
The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday morning. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise. Perhaps it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.
A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in hand. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those important lifelessons. Let me tell you about it:
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a great signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about “a thousand marbles.” I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.
“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. It’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It’s a shame you missed your daughter’s dance recital,” he continued; “Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a “thousand marbles.”
“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.
Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52, and I came up with 3,900. That is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m getting to the important part.
It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail,” he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy.
So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1,000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack.
Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the paramount things in life.
There’s nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.
Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday, then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a bit more time.
That was fun to meet you, Tom. I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75-year-old man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!”
You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.
Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. “C’mon honey, I’m taking you and the kids to breakfast.”
“What brought this on?” she asked with a smile.
“Oh, nothing special, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some marbles.”
Below are 11 essential entrepreneurial skills for today’s business men and women whether they ever become an independent entrepreneur or not:
Entrepreneurship development … have fun
Have fun.
You won’t find this skill on many lists because many people would not consider it a skill. We not only consider it a skill (fun doesn’t often happen without working at it!), but we believe it so fundamental to all the other skills on the list that it is our top priority. The corollary to this skill must be mastered as well … when you dislike something, stop doing it.
Decision Making
No one can deny that the ability to make decisions is a core skill that every business person must possess if he or she wants to be successful. Decisions on how to proceed with marketing, funding, product production (in some cases), vendor selection, and a host of other judgments need to be made. The key is to learn from mistakes.
Avoid Fear of Failure
Remove fear rather than fearing mistakes to the point that you avoid decisions. This is a skill that is tough for some people to master.
Be disruptive and change the playing field
Don’t settle for the ordinary or the mundane, even if it means a little controversy. Don’t be afraid of ticking someone off. Make those around you think.
Entrepreneurship development process … people skills
Entrepreneurship development.
It’s often said that no matter what business you’re in, you’re in the people business. How true that is! Whether dealing with customers, vendors, investors, the press, or employees, well-developed people skills can mean the difference between success and failure.
Entrepreneurial skills … innovate and iterate
Car models change every year because customers want something different. This goes in all industries. Be sure to innovate on your thinking often … be creative and try new ideas.
Entrepreneurial skill characteristics … planning
Being able to project into the future and build a plan to accomplish your objectives is a skill that can take any entrepreneur far. Effective planning is what will guide your business and ultimately define what you’re all about. The experienced business planner knows that planning is only a practical skill when combined with action, so they don’t get bogged down in planning rather plan with flexibility in mind. Don’t exclude strong time planning and management here, as without it; little else can be designed well.
Entrepreneurship development book … Be Decisive and Just Do It!
The Nikeslogan is not just for sportswear. Stop sitting around talking about your “great idea.” Get out there and pursue it. As Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
Don’t believe you know as much as you think
Find an experienced entrepreneur like a mentor to help and guide you and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Listen to feedback from your mentor and others. Sure, you’ll get some bad inputs, but learn to filter.
Successful business people … avoid the time killers
This includes constant email monitoring, meeting just to meet, having in-person chats when phone or Skype will work. Your time is treasured, make the most of it.
Communication
If ever the term “last but not least” was appropriate, this is it. The skill of communication (all forms) plays a role in the execution of all of the other skills above. If you don’t have this skill, none of the other skills will be fully developed, no matter how hard you try.
Of course, there are other essential entrepreneurial skills you will need, but these are the key ones in our opinion.
The bottom line
To be effective in this new era, we as entrepreneurs need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.
It can be hard to make the most of your time when you’re running a business, especially when you’re wearing a lot of different hats and trying to complete a lot of different tasks.
There are others who have been there, and they’ve found some methods to improve productivity.
We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.
There can never be enough focus on continuous improvement on entrepreneurship, independent of how well the business is doing. It seems we all are looking to take our success to a new level. This is an excellent time to make a statement with our business. Changing before you have to is always a good idea.
What would you add to the list? Please share one or two entrepreneurial stories with us.
Need some help in finding ways to grow your customers? Such as creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers? Or perhaps finding ways to work with other businesses?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with innovation and creativity efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
Check out these additional articles on business and its performance from our library:
More reading on small business from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Business Partnership …13 Insightful Examples of Partnership Ideas
Small Company … 20 Struggles that Are Easily Understood
Business Plan Structure … 5 Keys to Writing Usable Business Plans
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
What skill matters most if you are a leader of a small business? Or perhaps for any business leader? We believe it is the ability to motivate. For a small business, to develop the best motivationalleadership qualities is more critical to the daily operations than larger businesses. Why? Because there is much less leadership to be involved. And fewer employees so you need everyone fully engaged and motivated.
Motivational leaderhip qualities.
The key to successful leadership today is INFLUENCE not AUTHORITY.
– Ken Blanchard
So … you need to pay attention to the development of your own motivational leadership abilities if you are a leader of a small business.
Here are some important motivational leader qualities for your thinking and improving your ability to influence.
Motivational leadership … put people first
People should always come first, they are your business. No matter what the job is, leaders always want to look for the best people and then take care of them. They are the lifeblood of the business.
When you’re leading a business or an organization, you’re leading people. Many leaders work to have relationships with their employees. Taking them out for coffee and getting to know them better is common, an important element in being a leader. Here are two additional perspectives from exceptional business leaders:
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
Focus on recognizing and developing strengths of your people. Build on strengths … work around weaknesses.
Some companies follow the motto: “hire for character, train for skill.” You hire people that are eager to learn and are very “raw.” They don’t have a ton of skills; but as a leader, you teach them, and they become better. They grow with your company and contribute to its success.
You see this with football coaches. In football coaching, it’s almost unheard of for someone with no experience to be hired as the head coach of a team. Most people start in a low level position and gradually move up.
The same occurs in business. George Bodenheimer is the former president of ESPN. He started out working in the mailroom of ESPN. It would have been very difficult for him to rise to the presidency if he hadn’t had a boss who wanted to help him grow and succeed in the company.
If you’re a leader, help your employees grow. You might have a greatemployee waiting to be a star, but if you don’t help them grow, you’ll never see it. Worse, they might leave the company to go to an employer who will help them grow.
…effective executives do not start out by looking at weaknesses. You cannot build performance on weaknesses. You can build only on strengths. Make weaknesses irrelevant.
– Peter Drucker
Develop self-esteem by mentoring
Mentor and develop self-esteem and a positive attitude. We have written on employees’ positive attitude on several occasions. Employee attitude is so critical that it can’t be overemphasized. It often trickles down from leaders, but it needs to happen more by design. Your business can never be what it can be if you don’t focus on employee happiness.
If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll have dozens of people criticize you. Customers, current and former employees (whether you know it or not), and family and friends may give you constructive criticism. It can be stressful to hear or read, and it can be easy to pass on criticism to employees. But it doesn’t help that much. As a leader, you should ensure employees have high self-esteem in their job.
Leaders should make employees feel good about themselves. Constantly criticizing and pointing out the flaws in an employee is a sure fire way to decrease morale and performance.
Listen and observe
Listen, hear, and observe closely. Find the unspoken messages. Make listening and observing your core competencies.
You don’t gain insights by talking. Ideas can come from anywhere, so it’s important to keep your ears open to new ideas and insight.
Leaders need to be good listeners for everyone, from customers to employees to business colleagues. They need to listen to what other people say and not just hear it. Listening also helps a leader get multiple perspectives. When making a decision, a good leader always listens to a number of different people. They know they own the final decision but always make sure they get input from multiple people.
It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president.
He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say.
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect
Example of inspirational leader.
Be a connector
Be social … walk around and connect on multiple levels. Connected leaders quickly become multiplier leaders. Multiplier leaders know that at the apex of the intelligence hierarchy is not the lone genius, but rather the leader who knows the importance of bringing out the smarts and capabilities in everyone around them.
We love to use this quote from Marty Kohr, as it is key to being a connected, multiplier leader:
The key is to be part of people’s lives. People will always prefer to do business with friends.
Inspire and energize
Share your passion. Show compassion and share positive energy always.
A quality of great leaders is being able to clearly articulate ideas and get people excited and inspired about them. It’s not selling people on an idea, it’s inspiring them.
Getting a person to work with a leader when they’re not obligated is more than just inspiring them. It’s about ensuring people have fun and are energized with passion.
Many charities get people to volunteer for them by inspiring and energizing a noble cause. They say that if you donate, you’ll be spending your time working toward something greater than yourself. This inspires people to take a few hours to work for a charity promoting a cause they believe in.
People want to be part of something larger than themselves. They want to be part of something they’re really proud of, that they’ll fight for, sacrifice for, trust.
Be a problem solver. Resolve issues before they become problems. Let people know you care about their problems enough to clear them out of the way.
Have balance
Your job is just a part of your life. It is not your life. There is much more to life than work … find things you love outside of work. Find a balance that works for you and then show it works to your people.
Follow these tips and you will be well on your way to becoming a more motivational leader.
Our favorite motivational leader of all time? There would be many we like and studied. But our favorite would be Abraham Lincoln. He worked to achieve mastery in law and politics. He gave his toughest rivals power and autonomy. In fact, he surrounded himself with rivals who excelled in areas where he was not strong. He gave credit where it was due and wasn’t afraid to accept the blame. He genuinely sought out and listened to other people’s point of view.
His motivational leadership style was rooted in two higher goals: freeing the slaves and keeping the nation intact. Big motivators for most of Americans, yes?
Who would be your example of the best motivational leader? Any questions or comments please ad them below.
Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategyg?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Are you aware of the impact of habits highly successful leaders share? You know, the ones for positivethinking and your personal development? But how to best build these habits and this positive attitude is another matter, isn’t it?
Habits highly successful leaders share.
People often lament that despite their best efforts, they just cannot seem to get, and stay, organized. Even though they’ve been working at it diligently and have tried many strategies, nothing seems to stick. So how do organized people stay organized?
People often say that “nothing succeeds like success,” and, to a certain extent, that’s true. Successful companies get good press, find it easier to win new business as well as procure and retain top talent.
However, with success also comes growth and that brings its own set of challenges, especially for young companies. Often, it sends promising new stars into a tailspin from which they never recover.
There are lots out there to advise companies on how to be successful, but very little about how to manage the growth success brings. I’ve spent most of my career building entrepreneurial companies, done several turnarounds after things went awry, and uncovered some common problems as well as some successful solutions.
Over the years, I’ve noticed they have twelve habits in common. Here they are:
Listen much more than you talk
The most likable people know that it’s not worth offending people by expressing everything they know, even if they are true. You should pay close attention to someone speaking to you.
Keep an open mind
Those who close themselves off from certain ideas and associate only with like-minded people are missing out on not only personal growth but also opportunities for advancing their careers.
Elaborate organizational systems are hard to maintain and not worth the effort most of the time. It’s not necessary to color-code file folders by subject or activities on a calendar by a relative. The effort far outweighs the benefits.
Trying to keep your child’s toy reptiles separated from his toy mammals is also not worth your time. A bin for plastic toys will do. If the way you’ve organized something is too complicated and requires too many steps, it will be frustrating to maintain, which is the opposite of what you want.
Exceptional leaders.
Develop routines
Develop a morning or evening routine for tasks that happen daily or weekly. Maybe you open the mail every night after dinner or update your calendar and to-do list each morning before breakfast. If your mornings are hectic, make sure your work bag is packed before you go to bed.
Recycle yesterday’s newspaper each morning when you get a new one. Pay your bills every Saturday morning. Regular maintenance and short spurts of organizing will save you a lot of time later. Do your best to stick with your routine. But if you skip a day or two, that’s fine. Just try to resume as soon as you can.
Maintain patience
The proper timing of your words and acts will give you a big advantage over people who are impatient.
For example: Don’t click send on the email right away — breathe and reread it. The classic example would be getting irate and sending something with hostility.
Much of real happiness is a matter of being aware of what you’re doing while you’re doing it — and enraged people aren’t typically conscious of their actions.
Have a place for everything, and put everything in its place
This sounds easy and obvious, but it is neither. Establish a spot for a specific category of stuff, because it’s impossible to put things away if you don’t know where they belong. Make sure the spot is convenient, practical and has enough space to accommodate the items you want to put there.
If your dresser drawers are overflowing or there is no room to hang clothes in your closet, then your clothes don’t have a “place.” Likewise, if your filing cabinet is crammed and you can’t fit new papers inside, you’ll be less likely to file. Also, don’t set something down temporarily. Take a few extra seconds to put it where it belongs. Every time.
Keep a current and detailed to-do list
Even though it may seem as if organized people manage their lives with little effort, it takes a fair amount of planning. One of the secrets is keeping detailed to-do lists for daily tasks and longer-term projects. If you prefer to write things down, a small notebook works best because it keeps everything together and allows you to reference old tasks.
Avoid using loose sheets of paper that can be lost, and carry the notebook with you. If you use the tasks or notes features on your phone or computer, keep your lists current and consolidate them with your paper lists regularly. Give yourself deadlines if that helps you to complete items.
Habits highly successful leaders share … don’t fear failure
People admire those who grow from failure rather than wallow in it. Express your gratitude for having gained a measure of success.
The most likable people use conversations as an opportunity to learn about another person and give them time to share a story.
Be genuine in praise
Praise the good traits of others without being excessive.
Don’t get bogged down by perfectionism
There is a common misperception that all organized people are perfectionists. Although this may ring true for some, many organized people realize they can’t possibly do everything perfectly and get everything done.
They prioritize tasks and learn where and how to take shortcuts and how to complete tasks quickly. They don’t get mired in projects that will be impossible to finish on time. In other words, they don’t let perfection get in the way of progress.
Toss things daily and purge routinely
Organized people don’t wait for a free weekend or an upcoming move to get their homes in order. They are constantly throwing things away, reevaluating their possessions and tidying their houses.
They may take five minutes each night to clear papers off the kitchen counter or 10 minutes while dinner is cooking to clean out the refrigerator. When they return home with groceries, they quickly scan items in their pantry to toss any expired or nearly empty containers and clean off their desks at night’s end. Organizing is not a separate event. It is a part of their day.
As you dig out of the chaos of the holidays and begin to think about how to be more organized and efficient in the future, try to make one or two of these strategies your standard practice. If you can do that, you’ll be on your way to an organized year.
Successful leaders in business … always keep their cool
Maintain your composure in all circumstances. Overreaction to things either positive or negative can give people a poor impression. Always remember that silence may be much more effective than angry words.
Successful people don’t pretend to be likable; they are likable because they show care for others. Having a confidant who can be completely honest with you allows continued growth.
Reflect at the end of every day
Most of the time, heading out of the office is the time for rehearsing everything that went wrong that day. We recommend also reflecting on what went well. That way you do not deny that some things went poorly, but you’re getting a richer picture of what happened.
The bottom line
Many of these are habits that we already know, of course. They are not rocket science and shouldn’t be.
This list of little things simply reminds us of what we have forgotten. Then it is up to us to put these lessons (or reminders) into daily use through persistence and practice.
Remember … your experience and learning trumps all!
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategyg?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
James Baldwin once said: Not everything that is faced can be changed … but nothing can be changed until it is faced. Baldwin hits the nail on the head with his quote on change, doesn’t he? He begs the question on the important tips to improvelifesuccessskills. Knowing yourself is the key to undertaking to improve life success skills, isn’t it?
If you were a new employee in any field, and you were posed with a new challenge or problem, what would you do?
Improve life success skills.
From my experience, people in newer positions are more likely to try a change. They are more likely to try to figure out a solution or show a willingness to learn something new. Why? From my experience, as they are new to the organization, and they want to show their willingness to grow.
How you ever used checklists to transform your ability to succeed … or perhaps your positive mental attitude? How well did they work for you? Do they refresh your thinking on important life success lessons?
We often use checklists to achieve our goal to create the attitude that can seeopportunity in every difficulty.
After college, I spent almost two years training as a naval aviator. An important element of that training was the use of checklists in the learning and refresher process. Checklist utilization remains an important part of my business life. It is always a good idea to have a helpful checklist for reminders of improvements for your business or your personal life.
I keep a stack of 10 or so checklists that I rotate and update occasionally. This is one of them, despite the fact that I am a retiree (at least part of the time J). I pull out one checklist to read and contemplate for five minutes as a way to start each day. I find it puts my thinking in the right frame of mind. Here is the checklist example on simple reminders to improve the odds of success in any task that my team or I may be doing:
Entrepreneurs are often celebrated for wearing multiple hats and logging numerous hours. But working without letup is a bad habit that can jeopardize business, health and the life you’re supposedly working toward.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of overdoing it, since capital in the early days is tight, but also because few ambitious achievers understand one of the biggest secrets of productivity–the refueling principle. It comes down to this: You get more done quicker when you step back and recharge the brain and body. Studies show that performance increases after breaks of all durations: from extended vacations down to microbreaks of 30 seconds.
Improve life success skills … keep your life simple
Did you know that he wears a gray t-shirt all the time? Here’s his explanation: “I want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community. I’m in this really lucky position, where I get to wake up every day and help serve more than a billion people.
Here’s my point: simplify your life. Reduce the number of trivial decisions you have to make every day so that you can focus your energy on the really important ones. Pull a Mark Zuckerberg. Oh, did I mention that Steve Jobs does this too?Just saying.
Only priorities on daily action list
To make your day ultra focused and productive, ask yourself, “What are the three key things I need to accomplish today?” Before you do anything else, make sure you crush those three objectives first. Prioritize ruthlessly. No matter how crazy your days get, make sure you carve out and ruthlessly protect just 90 minutes—20% of an eight-hour day—for the most important tasks.
Life improvement skills … managing mental resources
Most of us wouldn’t think twice about taking a breather after an hour of basketball or Zumba, but mental fatigue is another story. The brain is usually seen as an ethereal realm that exists apart from the body and the laws of physiology.
Gray matter tires well before the body does. Since almost all of us are doing mental work these days, managing cognitive resources is not a nice thing to be able to do; it’s essential.
The brain is “like a muscle. You can strengthen it or deplete it,” Gabriel says. “If you let this muscle recharge and replenish, you’ll feel better mentally and see improvements in your performance.”
Regular refueling–input–is a prerequisite for quality output, because the brain is an energy machine, consuming 20 percent of the body’s calories, even though it’s only 2 percent of total body mass. The energy that gets expended must be resupplied.
Batch mundane actions
For tasks that are not urgent, batch them. For example, how many times do you check your email every day? A lot of people will click refresh on their inbox and then respond to emails as they come in.
If your job doesn’t require an immediate response on those emails, batch and check them every 3 hours throughout the day. This way, you won’t constantly be reacting to every email that comes in, and you can prioritize your activities for the day. Don’t let email run your life.
Life improvement tips.
Life improvement tips … use the team
We get it. You want to be the hero. You want to be the one to deliver on that big project. You want to get the applause. After all, who doesn’t love the recognition? You want to work hard. You want to do a great job. What you don’t want is to burn out. Make sure you leverage the team to get the job done.
If someone else is more talented and skilled than you in a certain area, collaborate with them to drive better results. For example, when I was working on our iPhone app, I tried to design it myself in Photoshop. Did I mention I suck at Photoshop? It turned out terribly. So what did I do next?
I tapped my friend on the shoulder for help (he’s a rockstar designer), and within one day we had an amazing design that was ten times better than the original. By the time we went live with the app, we had a design that was amazing. Want proof? The app hit the top 100 in the Lifestyle category. Remember, teamwork makes the dream work.
Motivate people by being more human.
Maximize tool use
Ever tried virtual assistants? They can help to take on a lot of the administrative tasks that you may be overwhelmed with. Whether it’s data research, writing or language translation, there’s a ton of skills they bring to the table to help you scale your work. They improve your success by giving more time for your tough tasks.
How to improve my life skills … go 100% digital
If you don’t have to have a paper copy, create a digital one and store it in the cloud. There are a ton of cloud providers that offer a large amount of free storage like Evernote. For example, for my business receipts, instead of keeping the physical copies in a cabinet, I’ve created a folder in Evernote for all of the digital copies. I can then search for a specific receipt if I need to. It makes life so much easier.
Here’s another great example: when I want to show someone marketing material, I’ll have it available on my mobile phone or i-pad through the Evernote app. This way, I can look at it with them, and I can also share it with them afterward by sending a link right away. That’s a sure way to improve success, isn’t it?
How to improve my life quality … follow your heart
Life’s short. Do you want to work on stuff you don’t enjoy? When you work with passion, your energy will be better, your focus will be more intense, and you’ll have a sense of purpose in what you do. It’s a game changer. Don’t underestimate the power of happiness in work.
Right now, I’m typing this article with a huge smile on my face and bobbing my head to music on Spotify. I’m so passionate about writing that I can often write multiple articles in a few hours. And it feels great too. It doesn’t even feel like work! It feels like a mission. A calling. A journey. Do what you love.
Experiment often
Your ideas are just that: ideas. Don’t spend too much time trying to come up with the perfect idea. At the end of the day, the only way to know if it’ll work is to test it. The data will tell you if it’s a good idea or not. Want to know how many apps it took for me to make 4 top 100 apps? 14 tries. When I first started out, I thought all of them could be big hits. That’s why it’s critical to test.
Maximize exposure to outside
An office with a view sounds like a recipe for mind wandering. Access to sunlight boosts productivity. In a study by the California Energy Commission, workers who sat near a window performed better, processing calls 6% to 12% faster and performing 10% to 25% better on tests that involved mental function and memory recall.
Focus on the customer
Focus on a “user” centric approach.Whenever people run into a tough challenge, you’ll often hear a couple of different suggestions on how the problem can be solved. One of the best ways to solve hard problems is to ask yourself, “What’s best for the user?”
Having a user-centric approach as your guiding force will often drive you to the best answers. Put yourselves in their shoes. How do you make their lives better? How do you bring a sense of delight into their lives? How do you bring a huge smile to their face?
The bottom line
These are things that we already know, of course. They are not rocket science and shouldn’t be.
This list of little things simply reminds us of what we have forgotten. Then it is up to us to put these lessons (or reminders) into daily use through persistence and practice.
Remember … your experience and learning trumps all!
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on learning from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
The Nine Most Valuable Secrets of Writing Effective Copy
How Good Is your Learning from Failure?
10 Extraordinary Ways for Learning to Learn
Continuous Learning Holds the Keys to Your Future Success
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Dwight Eisenhower certainly understood the concepts of being an effective, influential leader, didn’t he? Spot on. I have been in the military and business world for forty years, and I often get asked what it takes to be an effective, influential leader. And often leadership is not what you think. It is about lessons from the school of hard knocks.
Being a leader is a lifelong learning process. You are never done learning. Every great leader always looks for ways to improve their ability to lead and influence.
Related: Increase Influence through Good Leadership Qualities
Leadership can be deceiving if you let it, however. Consider these different thoughts on lessons from the school of hard knocks:
Understand expectations
It’s so easy to launch yourself into a project, to get straight to business when working with a new boss, and think that we’re productive. Take the time to clarify expectations upfront. This can avoid a whole lot of time wasting.
The same applies as an independent consultant. You can dive straight in and try to solve everything you think needs fixing, but that may or may not be what the client wanted. Clarifying those expectations at the beginning of the relationship, identifying three main areas where you’re going to focus your time and deliver results, will allow you to deliver the most value while making sure that the client is getting what they want.
Understand expectations.
Clear communications
At IBM in my early days, there was a whole system of words and expressions and those dreaded TLAs (three-letter acronyms) that you needed to understand to be able to communicate. Once you have the lingo, this will give you shortcuts to getting your point across and will ultimately get things done more quickly and in a way that everyone agrees with.
While this language code can be useful, we also need to remember the poor souls who aren’t quite up to speed. This can include new hires, of course, and external agencies, but you’ll be surprised how sometimes even the more experienced managers won’t have a clear idea of what you’re talking about.
Agree on a common definition upfront, and you’ll be more effective in delivering something that everyone is happy with. In fact, this goes beyond language to encompass fundamental values as well – establishing these upfront will ensure that everyone is on the same page.
School of hard knocks … take ownership
At school, we had parents and teachers telling us to do our homework – at work, not so much (especially when we’re freelancers or business owners). Of course, we have our managers and clients, and if we don’t deliver our projects we’re going to hear about it, but what we’re not going to have is someone leading us by the hand and telling us exactly what to do. We’re responsible for getting the job done in the time that we have and in whatever way we deem appropriate.
Even then, though, there are different levels of project delivery, and taking real ownership means going beyond just the bare minimum. Taking real ownership means being proactive and taking the initiative, staying on top of all the milestones and deadlines, following up with others to get their input, and looking beyond the obvious of what you’ve been asked to do to deliver added value. (In fact, you may remember that ownership is another of P&G’s top values.) This is again how you meet and exceed expectations.
Consistent goals and priorities
This is a big one! As “keen bean” junior managers, we bombard people with emails, we interrupt them at their desks, and we get huffy when they don’t deliver to our schedules and our specifications. Following up relentlessly shows commitment and drive but what it doesn’t show is emotional intelligence. Your priorities are just that, your priorities.
At IBM in particular, the whole organization was built on a system of checks and balances, which by definition meant that each function had a different set of priorities. Finance, of course, would have one set of success measures, marketing another, and the consumer research department yet another.
Working effectively with a multi-functional team means being sensitive to the context, understanding the particular perspective of each and what their goals are both globally and in specific reference to the topic at hand, and adapting our behavior accordingly. Step one here is treating the individual as a human being! Build a rapport and seek to understand where they are coming from and you’ll be much more effective working together in the long run.
More than performance
There was a “secret” model at IBM that we weren’t supposed to tell junior managers for fear that they would misunderstand it and change their behavior in an ill-advised way. The model was PIE and told you the “formula” for how promotions and salary increases would be applied. ‘P’ stands for ‘performance’ and this is what you’d expect, how well you do your job.
There are two more elements, however, which are ‘I’ – ‘image.’ This is how you are perceived by your peers and most of all your seniors – and ‘E’ – ‘exposure’ i.e. it’s no good doing wonderful work if no one knows who you are or what you’re doing.
So the trick is not to become a political animal and forget about doing any actual work, but likewise, there’s no point in putting your head down and getting on with it like a good girl and expecting someone to notice and reward you accordingly.
Instead, you need to be aware of these other two parts of the puzzle, image, and exposure, and make sure that while you’re delivering excellent work you’re also thinking about who needs to see that work and what impression you’re giving more generally in the organization. If nothing else, you never know who will be your next boss!
Do not rest on past successes
There is nothing more dangerous to life success than a great last result, is there? We are ‘only as good as our next result.’ Stay paranoid.
Make yourself a project
Hairdressing icon Vidal Sassoon was famous for having said: “The only place you’ll find success coming before work is in a dictionary.” We have to work on ourselves. Put pressure on ourselves. Critique our days. Give back to society. Be our very best coaches and cheering squads. All of this applies as much to our personal lives as for our business lives.
A priority ‘ninja’
Getting more of the important things done every day. Be obsessed with getting priorities rights, on what’s really important, every day, and make sure you spend the majority of your day on these priorities.
Darwin said it was not the strongest of the species that survived, but the ablest to adapt to change. There will be more change in the next five years than we’ve seen in the past 50. Get excited by change. Be part of the most movements that you can. Help shake things up.
Accountable for continuous learning and development
At IBM, we changed assignments every several years, giving us an opportunity to gain experience in different aspects of our function (in my case, what we called marketing “design” and “delivery”) as well as different business units.
I was a superstar, of course, and I expected the offers to be falling at my feet – but I quickly learned that I needed to go out and look for the roles that I wanted. In doing so, I looked for something that would challenge me and let me learn new things while exposing me to different people (see #5!) and giving me broader experience that would stand me in good stead for future roles.
I also took ownership of my learning early on, making sure that I signed up for every possible training that I could benefit from in one way or another. Your boss will be busy, and may not be on top of exactly which courses you have and haven’t been on.
Personal growth and development are a top value for me, so this was particularly important in my case, but it’s something that is important for everybody in both their personal and their professional lives.
Woody Allen said: “85% of the secret of success is just turning up.” Turn up to events. Make that phone call. Read that book. Do that training. Have the courage to ask that question. Make an effort. Stay connected to what’s happening around you.
Focus on strengths, not weaknesses
Training and development are great, but while it’s admirable to try to get good at everything this is simply not possible, and both you and the business will be better served if you learn to focus on your areas of strength.
Of course, when we first start in a company or a role there will be certain things we need to learn to do – project management, time management, and so on – but beyond that, there will always be some freedom to discover what we’re good at and use that to our advantage.
IBM did this well: in our annual rating sessions we were asked to highlight our three biggest strengths and only one weakness, and even then we didn’t call it a weakness but an “opportunity.”
So you’re good at public speaking and delivering training workshops? Maybe you’re a number-crunching guru and a superstar at drawing up possible scenarios? Or what about creative brainstorming, getting the team excited behind a common vision, or mentoring interns?
Find opportunities to use your strengths, and you will shine.
Power of effective communications
I was amazing at writing at school, in fact, I was so good that my English teacher would make copies of my essays and hand them out to the rest of the class. Get me!
So it was a bit of a shock when I started my first job at P&G and found that essay writing was not the same thing as business writing. On top of that, an international environment where most people were not native speakers meant that simple and unambiguous communication was crucial.
Effective business writing had a specific objective, used clear and concise language, active tense rather than passive; it wasn’t about sounding clever or being poetic.
Learning to write an effective business document – a recommendation, a report, or just an email for that matter – will allow you to get your message across quickly and effectively, to influence people with a more persuasive argument, and to impress people with your convincing business results.
The ability to distil complicated matters into a clear and well thought-out message is a useful skill in all areas of life, above and beyond the corporate world.
Lessons from the school of hard knocks … making tradeoffs
Ah, choices. This is a biggie. The long-time guru of IBM, Tom Watson wrote about this frequently. We even had a made-up word, “choiceful,” that every manager worth his salt would drop into any given conversation. We have to be choiceful.
So what does this mean? Well, you can apply this at a couple of different levels. First, look at your project list. You need to identify which projects will have the biggest impact and then focus your time on those projects. It’s far too easy to get bogged down in little tasks and trivial details.
Second, at the macro level, a brand strategy is a choice: we’ll focus on this market OR this market, we’ll invest here OR there, we’ll prioritize this OR that. Giving a laundry list of every possibility, or saying that “it’s all important,” is the path to failure.
The bottom line
Being a leader is a lifelong learning process. You are never done learning. Every great leader always looks for ways to improve their ability to lead and influence. Never stop learning and relearning.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on mentoring from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
