1. First, lead yourself
The true leader understands that if you cannot lead yourself, you will not be able to lead others. This involves self-discipline and personal discovery. Understand your personal strengths and your weaknesses, and how these qualities affect your relationships with clients, employees – even your family. Leading yourself makes you a living example for employees to emulate and respect. Be the person you would want to follow, and others will come to recognize your leadership.
2. Keep the communication lines open
Make sure you’re accessible to the rank-and-file. Workers who know you care about them are more loyal. They’re also more willing to give you the truth when you need it, such as their perception of front-line customers’ needs, and their own needs for more training or resources, which directly affects their service to those customers. Avoid putting up artificial barriers to communication.
3. Maintain your focus
Honestly, do you really want to be the lone ranger in your enterprise? It’s a fact that if you don’t multiply your effectiveness through appropriate delegation, you will miss opportunities for personal growth, a balanced lifestyle, and ultimately, the expansion of your business. Look for ways to “farm out” any tasks and even projects that don’t require your personal attention.
4. Balance responsibility with authority
Do you freely delegate responsibilities to employees, while guarding the decision-making authority for yourself? It’s common for small business owners to want to control every aspect of their enterprise, but if you never give up the reins, you will be forever micro-managing every detail, and not be effectively defining the “big picture.”
5. Cultivate leaders in your business
Identify the potential leaders around you, and make yourself available to them. Share your vision for the business, give them increasing responsibility, and test their ability to solve problems. If others readily follow them in completing tasks, ask yourself why. You may be observing your next top manager, perhaps even a successor.
6. Don’t be a people pleaser
Get over it. You’re not going to please everyone all of the time. You have to be willing to make the right decisions for the company, not just for a favorite individual. Leaders understand that if it’s not right for the whole team, then it’s not a good decision.
7. Expect the best
Don’t confuse being good to your people with expecting less of them. Maintain a high standard of performance and you will attract the best people. Equip them with the resources to succeed, and motivate them to follow through with excellence. Like any leadership trait, expecting the best begins with demonstrating it yourself; live it out in front of employees, and you will draw it out of them.
8. Base rewards on performance
The flip side of expecting the best from people is to resist the temptation to praise indiscriminately and thereby dilute the power of praise. While you should look for opportunities to recognize workers’ performance, you should also reserve the highest praise for those who do a really great job. If you say to someone, “That was an outstanding job you did today,” make sure your statement matches the contribution.
9. Mind the details
The best visionary strategy can fall flat if you fail to pay attention to details in execution. Though you have delegated these details to others, make sure you observe operations and track results against your plan. Remember that you cannot succeed at what you do not measure. Your employees are likely closer to customers as they work the process out in execution, so welcome their challenges to the process; use their input to evaluate its effectiveness and efficiency, and ultimately its evolution.
10. Build a “commitment” vs. “compliance” culture
It’s been said that sophisticated automation and computerization threaten to displace the human element. Though there is truth in this statement, mere machines lack the ability to tell you what they really think of the process, your product, or your personality. Despite their intelligence and ability, People won’t want to contribute if you have conditioned them to tell you what you want to hear. Blind obedience will erode their confidence in you, and ultimately will make it difficult for you to lead them. On the other hand, when you encourage employees to learn, grow, and evolve with your organization, you demonstrate your commitment to them, and engender behavior from them that embodies commitment in return.
