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What's Contagious In Your Business?
Ever get frustrated because it seems that when one person in your office gets sick, everyone gets sick? The person next to you comes down with the flu, and the next thing you know you're at home calling your manager to let her know you will not be in today. Working so close with other people, we tend to catch everything that is going around. So how can you use this to your advantage as a leader? Do you know that people are taking home your 'attitude' every day?
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Leadership Mindset For Team Motivation
A shift took place in the American workplace a about 10-15 years ago, going from 'compliance' management to 'partnership' management. We started to see phrases like "self-directed work teams" and "empowerment" in nearly every article and book published. Today, there are still a very large percentage of leaders that have the 'compliance" mindset as a leader, thinking their primary role is to "keep everyone in line" and "enforce policies". So how do we know where our mindset is?
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Do You Use Manipulation As A Leader?
Do you use manipulation to motivate your team? Most of us would say no, but the pure nature of our position should tell us that we do. Manipulation would be defined as causing our team members to perform in desired way, in order for them to receive compensation or other rewards (or punishments) for positive (negative) behavior. We may never be able to remove all the manipulation from our actions, but we can bring another motivator into play as the primary driver.
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5 Steps For Effective Feedback
Providing feedback as a leader is critical to direct your team towards success. If you do it correctly, you educate and motivate your team members all at the same time. Get it wrong, and you send them into a downward spiral towards poor performance and possibly even their departure. Here are 4 key areas to focus on when providing feedback effectively.
1) Focus on the behavior, not the person. Feedback is not "personal". We should not be attacking the person, rather describe the behavior that you have documented or observed, and then share your observations with the team member. The key here is to clearly coach the behavior and keep the self-esteem as high as possible while changing the behavior.
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Weed Management
I was outside pulling weeds this morning in the front yard. It's frustrating to have to go out every week, pulling weeds, just to have others sprout up in their place. And I realized that my problem is that I am pulling the larger weeds out, but the smaller ones that are harder to see are left to grow. Those are the ones for next week!!
That's a lot like the many problems we face as leaders. Every day there are several fire drills that we deal with. The one's that have the most impact to our performance or the "loudest" one tend to get the immediate attention. But what about those 'small weeds' or smaller issues that are out there. Left alone, those issues tend to grow and become next week's big weed.
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Are Your People On A Chain?
I watched a video that makes the comparison of how a leader "manages" his prize hunting dog and his new employee. And after I watched the video, I had to laugh because I have experienced many similar situations in the workplace.
The dog is not allowed to go into the water, he must stay on the grass. One day the "leader" drops his hat into the water. His dog immediately jumps into the water and brings the hat back to his master, hoping to receive praise for his efforts. What he gets is a loud voice telling him that he is never to leave the grass.
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Leadership In The 'Gaps'
We often talk about the big debate about whether leaders or born or made. Are we just born with the all the skills and traits necessary to inspire others to want to follow us, or is it more of a process of learning these skills? While that debate will go on and on, there's one thing I do know, you define yourself as a leader in the "gaps". Those seconds between something happening and your response.
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