Seven Secrets to Being
Leader Everyone Wants to Work For By Ed SykesIn this changing, challenging, and competitive workplace we can’t overestimate importance of good management. Good managers will consistently motivate you to perform at higher levels of productivity. Bad managers will drive you crazy and eventually out of organization. Managers with poor skills will frequently produce following results:
1. Decreased productivity 2. Increased turnover 3. Increased absences 4. Increased human resources mediation situations 5. Increased customer service complaints
The following are seven secrets to being “perfect” leader everyone want to work for:
1. Create a Vision The best leaders not only assign tasks or monitor performance. They plan for future and motivate others to see same vision so they can all thrive to accomplish that vision.
Instead of dwelling on limited problems, perfect leader looks at big picture. They live organization’s mission and implement, motivate, and dedicate all their efforts to accomplishing mission.
During hundreds of team building and leadership workshops, I have asked following simple question:
What is your organization’s mission statement?
If there are forty participants in workshop, thirty-seven will look down at their desk, one participant will make a feeble attempt at reciting what he/she “thinks” is mission statement, one participant will make a pretty good attempt and recite first one or two sentences of mission statement, and finally one student will volunteer to run to office (or car) to grab a copy of statement to bring back to workshop. Out of thousands of workshop participants I have asked this question, only three knew their mission statement word for word. The amazing part of this is that many of these workshop participants have been with their organization 5-10-20+ years and, they still didn’t know their mission statement. So my question is this:
How do you lead your employees to accomplish your organization’s mission if you (as a manager) don’t know what mission is?
The perfect leaders live, eat, sleep, and shower with their mission statement. They know exactly what mission is and understand its importance to team they lead and to organization. Most importantly, they communicate mission statement to their employees at meetings, coachings, feedback sessions, and even corrective actions. Their actions are related to accomplishing goals of mission statement and can communicate vision of organization.
Action Step – Take mission statement out of dark corner in office. Print mission statement and its vision on top of your meeting agenda and recite it at beginning of meeting. Then talk about how employees are helping to realize goals, values, and vision of mission.
2. Understand employees needs As old saying goes, “You can’t please all of people all of time.” However, perfect leader realizes that to be effective, they must cater to needs of most of team. Good leaders realize that work environment is not a popularity contest or, as I say, “Leadership is not Pleasership.” The perfect leader treats all employees with respect and are consistent in their actions and words.
At same time, they recognize unique needs of their employees and use that knowledge for motivation to achieve a common goal.
3. Communicate concisely and clearly Poor communication skills are probably Number #1 reason managers fail. If they can’t talk to and connect with their employees, they are not serving needs of staff.
What is good communication? The following are some examples:
Communicate job expectation and standards * Give ongoing feedback to employees. * Seek and acknowledge feedback from employees on decisions that effect them (and take time to listen to them). * Communicate mission (see Secret #1) on an ongoing basis. * Communicate “bad news” in a honest and timely manner. * Communicate using language that shows a positive expectation. * Communicate by a combination of methods: person-to- person, e-mail, phone, and meetings.
