How to Be a Great Leader

Whether you are starting a new business or managing an existing business, you need to have great leaders in place. What makes those leaders great? Is it the ability to handle stress, remain cool in tough situations, or even controlling your emotions? Yes, but that is just to tip of the iceberg. Let us look at some qualities that make great leaders.

1)       Honesty

It is important to remember that your business and the employees reflect what you believe and how you act. There is no do as I say. If you make honesty and ethical behavior your main focus, your team will do the same thing. With that being said, hold yourself to a higher plane so you employees want to raise the bar.

2)       Ability to Delegate

A true leader knows every ones strength and weaknesses and capitalizing on them. People who do what they love will do a better job than someone who does not. This means you have to TRUST your team to make progress in the direction that you want it. Delegating tasks to the appropriate departments is one of the most important skills you can develop as your business grows. The emails and tasks will begin to pile up, and the more you stretch yourself thin, the lower the quality of your work will become, and the less you will produce.

3)       Communication

Have you ever had an idea in your head, but when you try and explain it to others, they don’t understand? If this has been your experience, then you may want to focus on honing your communication skills. Being able to clearly and succinctly describe what you want done is extremely important. If you can’t relate your vision to your team, you won’t all be working towards the same goal.

This is done through training new members and creating a productive work environment through healthy lines of communication. This can come from an open door policy to your office, talking to your staff on a daily basis, or making yourself available to discuss issues. Your team must trust and depend on you.

4)       Sense of Humor

When do you need a sense of humor? Of course it’s when anything small happens, but even more importantly it is when your website crashes, you lose that major client, funding dries up, or guiding your team through the process without panicking. When your morale is high, your productivity will be high too. Encourage your team to laugh at the mistakes instead of crying. If you are constantly learning to find the humor in the struggles, your work environment will become a happy and healthy space, where your employees look forward to working in, rather than dreading it.

5)       Confidence

You need to keep up your confidence level, and assure everyone that setbacks are natural and the important thing is to focus on the larger goal. As the leader, by staying calm and confident, your team will reflect you. The key objective is to keep everyone working and moving ahead.

6)       Commitment

If you expect your team to work hard and produce quality content, you’re going to need to lead by example. There is no greater motivation than seeing the boss down in the trenches working alongside everyone else. One thing I always teach is that a promotion is not a change in job description, but an addition to it. I change the trash and wash the bathroom just as often as I expect my employees to do it. I am not better than them I am them with more responsibility. You want to create a reputation for not just working hard, but also be known as a fair leader. Once you have gained the respect of your team, they are more likely to deliver the peak amount of quality work possible.

7)       Positive Attitude

You want to keep your team motivated towards the continued success of the company, and keep the energy levels up.  You can provide snacks, coffee, relationship advice, getting a beer, team night, playing sports, or any other activity where everyone has fun. Remember, if your team is happy they won’t mind staying that extra hour to finish a report, or devoting their best work to the brand.

8)       Creativity

Some decisions will not always be black and white. During critical situations that your team will look to you for guidance and you may be forced to make a quick decision. As a leader, it’s important to learn to think outside the box and choice the greater of two evils. By utilizing all possible options before making a rash decision, you can typically reach the end conclusion you were aiming for.

9)       Intuition

When new scenarios arise, you need to use your intuition to guide your team. Day-to- day tasks can be figured out to a science and done by memory. But when something unexpected occurs your team will look to you for guidance. Until you can trust your gut, you may want to drawing on past experiences or reach out to your mentors.

10)   Ability to Inspire

In the beginning stages of a startup, inspiring your team to see the vision of the successes to come is vital. Being able to inspire your team is great for focusing on the future goals, but it is also important for the current issues. When you are all mired deep in work, morale is low, and energy levels are fading, recognize that everyone needs a break now and then. Acknowledge the work that everyone has dedicated and commend the team on each of their efforts. It is your job to keep spirits up, and that begins with an appreciation for the hard work.

 Gagliardobc.com 

Empathy: Why is it important for leaders?

One of the most important skills we have as a leader. It is teachable to children, but as adults it’s almost impossible to learn. Empathy is the ability to see and value what another person is feeling or experiencing. When we see someone in pain and feel that response in our own gut, that’s empathy. When we see someone crying tears of joy at an important reunion and notice ourselves choking up, that’s empathy. When we see someone struggling with a problem and feel an emotional pull to help, that’s empathy. It’s a core skill for what psychologists call “pro-social” behavior – the actions that are involved in building close relationships, maintaining friendships, and developing strong communities. It appears to be the central reality necessary for developing a conscience, as well. As leaders this allows us to see build our relationship with our team, family, and friends. It shows that we have their best interests at heart when we make decisions.
One thing I always find myself saying to my daughter is, “think about how what you did made your sister feel,” we are training our kids in empathy and inviting them to recognize the importance of taking others’ feelings into account. Why is this important? How we treat others depicts how we will be treated. As leaders we need to feel for our co-workers and what’s going on with their life, so they will do the best they can to work harder and more efficiently.How can we show Empathy?
•Put words to the emotions. Feelings are complex bio-chemical realities that take place in our whole bodies, but not necessarily involving our logical brain! Naming them can be trickier than we sometimes realize. We have a great many words in our language to try to express the various shadings of sadness, anger or fear.
•Feel out loud. Modeling the behavior you want your team to emulate is one of the best Leadership strategies around. Employees are watching us all the time and what we do influences them as much or more than what we say. Share your thoughts and feelings about situations in the family, what friends are going through, what that kid at school your son is complaining about might be feeling, what you see on TV. No need to be heavy-handed or lecture about it. Simply share what the other person may be feeling or going through and how that affects you, makes you consider how to help.
•Include empathy as part of discipline. Make sure you include conversation about how people are affected by a problem in the creation of the solution. Get your team members to consider how their aggrieved co-worker might have felt when they got hurt or when someone took something without asking. Show empathy to the perpetrator, too, so they see how this empathy can guide consequences, as well.
•Reward empathy. When we notice your employees doing the right thing, a reward “out of the blue” can be a powerful way to influence their behavior in the future. Pay attention to when your teams are responding out of empathy, reaching out to help, changing their behavior out of concern for another, and let them know you value and support what they’re doing. Recognition and affirmation are often reward enough.
•Be patient. None of us is perfectly empathetic all the time, even as adults. To ask your team to put others first or even to be able to have the emotional energy to notice what someone else is feeling when they are upset is asking a lot. As with all things human, progress is slow and accumulates over time as skills (and brains!) develop. Just keep pointing these moments out and modeling the skills the best you can.

 

Gagliardobc.com

What every Project Manager Should Ask

I was thinking of questions every project manager should ask themselves before starting a project in order to be successful.

1) What is the opportunity? Why are we doing this?

2) What are the objectives? What will be delivered to the customer?

3) What is the approach?

4) What and who do I need? For how long?

5) What is the timeline?

6) What do other people need to know? When do they need to know it?

What do you guys think? Can you think of any more questions that are important?

Be a Team Apart- Be a Team Together

When you work in a team, everyone needs to share the same point a view that demonstrates Leadership, Integrity, and Respect. Once that decision is made, each member needs to support that view publicly and privately. Trust needs to be intact that everyone has positive intentions for the team. Never forget you need to keep you promises to yourself, team, partners, and your company.
What do you get as a result?
1) Support and reinforce a collaborative effort
2) You have an active team that likes to share ideas and provides input
3) You have a positive working environment
4) You have healthy debates and open discussions
5) There is support from a unified team, when together and apart
6) You will never conduct business with uncompromised ethics
7) Valuable diverse points of view
8) You will listen for understanding

I heard you like to Micro Manage. Why?

Gagliardobc.com

I have worked with many companies where they micro manage their employees. Personally, I never understood it. I enjoy when my team makes mistakes. I embrace it as a learning experience and allow them to grow from it.

I worked with this one company where the store manager was micro managing everyone in the building. That was about 20 people a day. The end result? Decrease in production, lower moral, higher turnover rate, and bad attitudes. It is the opposite of the desired results, so why micro manage?

After conversing with a lot of micro managers, here are the top three reasons why they did (no longer after working with me) micro manage.

1) Over whelmed- They themselves had no idea of what they were supposed to do and how to do it. What do they do? They Panic! Just like a fish out of water, the manager flops around trying to grasp onto anything they can.

Solution: Take a step back. Talk to your team about what they do and why they do it the way they do it. From there offer suggestions, ideas, and feedback to make their job easier. You do not do their job day to day, so you will not understand why they do something if you do not ask.

2) Perfectionists- “Everything has to be perfect.” “Failure is not an option.” “If I don’t keep an eye on them they will screw it up.” All expressions I have heard before. The manager feels if they stay on top of someone and stop them from making a mistake they are going to be perfect. Wrong! Being constantly watched builds paranoia and fear of messing up, which causes you to make mistakes.

Solution: Let your team make mistakes. It’s how we grow. When you were learning to walk did you just stand up and walk? No. you took a few steps and fell. Then you got back up and took a few more steps… and fell. At that point did your parents at that point take a walker and never let you leave it? Of course not. How else will you learn? Let mistakes happen and learn from them and you will end up being perfect!

3) Bad vision – The manager often is pushing people to accomplish something that no one buys into or won’t work. Sometimes it’s time to move forward, but the leaders hanging onto a sinking ship. If no one buys into what you want, it is for one reason. LACK OF COMMUNICATION. Maybe you didn’t explain it well enough, express the importance of it, or train effectively. It all comes down to communication.Solution: Simple. Communicate. Listen to concerns, objections, and find solutions. If you do not know why you are offering a service, how can your team? Learn about it, teach it, and then live it. Lead by example and show your team that you buy into it and they will too!

Building impulse. You see it everyday and yes, you fall for it.

How do I know my impulse Factors work? Groupon uses them too!
Lets see how…
1) Jones Effect- How many other people have bought the product already?
2) Indifference- They don’t care if you buy it or not. A new deal will be there tomorrow.
3) Fear of Loss- You are running our of time. Act now!
4) Sense of Urgency- When is this deal? Today? Tomorrow? Time is money, and today is the day to make the deal!

Now it time for you to join the other 2,000 people in learning how to make impulse factors work for you!
Right Here