Secrets of Leadership

By Robert Reed

The influence of leaders on business is irrefutable. Great leaders create great businesses. Average leaders create average businesses. Leaders are the ones that set the vision. They set the tone for the organization and lay the foundation for what's to come. Many leaders find that in order to achieve greatness they must not only bring wisdom to the table but also an air of charisma or charm. People long to find and follow someone they can believe in, someone that they trust, respect and admire, from near and from far. Entrepreneurs understand this and use their intelligence, integrity and class to speak for themselves, and make others want to speak more about them. Entrepreneurs are naturally great leaders and own successful businesses that increase in value and throw off generous cash flow. They are able to lead their companies to victory because they know the seven secrets of Leadership, which are as follows:

1. Have a Critical Eye - As the captain of your business, you must confront reality and recognize what's working and not working and make changes accordingly. Remember Pareto's Law - 80 percent of company profits typically come from 20 percent of the products and customers. You need to know where your 80 percent is coming from and focus on making them happy and consider getting rid of the rest of your clients and seeking more like the ones that are most profitable. Don't worry about hurting people's feelings or shaking up the status quo. Change is inevitable, but it is always easier to deal with if you initiate it. Remaining static in a changing market is actually riskier than actively shifting your strategy.

2. Accentuate the Positive - Focus on your business' strengths rather than diverting attention to correct problems. As the leader, you can't get bogged down in the minutia of the business, nor can you get distracted from the focused strategy. Delegate the task of correcting problems if you must, otherwise keep your focus on building your business' strengths and doing what you do best be it gaining new business or creating new products or services.

3. Accept the Coming Change - We all know from the classic business fable Who Moved My Cheese that it's best to anticipate change and move with it, but it's a constant battle to keep you and your company from becoming complacent. Accept the inevitability of change - it offers great opportunity. By accepting and anticipating change, you can stay on top of your market. How is the economy affecting your sector? How can you reposition your product or service to stay ahead of the competition? What can you add to your value to keep it relevant?

4. No One Can Sell Your Business Like You Can - Be passionate about your business at all times. If you're not convinced that the product or service you are providing is phenomenal, your customers won't be either. As the head of the business, anyone you talk to is a potential client and they will either be attracted to your business by your positivity and passion or repelled by your negativity. As a leader, you are always on, so wherever you are, you must always be ready to talk the talk, business style.

5. Consistency is Key - Consistency of promises and delivery builds confidence and signifies reliability. It is always best to under promise and over deliver to your customers every time. Consistently making patrons happy is what creates loyal repeat business. How can you track and make sure that you are reliably satisfying customers? Can you put out comment cards or poll your clients without bothering them? Can you have mystery shoppers put your team to test?

6. Play a High Value on Continuity - It takes know-how to do a job well over time. Keeping employees happy will keep them around and increase your level of continuity. A high value should be put into finding good employees, training them well, clearly explaining their role and the objectives that they are responsible for and keeping them happy and thus around. If you have high turnover, ask your employees for critical feedback. This can be done anonymously for the most honest answers. It's hard to make your customers happy if you are constantly dealing with employee loss and job dissatisfaction.

7. Keep the Faith - Replace your fear with faith, that is, belief in your ability to succeed. By working hard, pushing for superior value and customer service while keeping your employees happy, you will succeed. The path to flourishing has many twists and turns and can be scary at times. The true Entrprenuer stays strong and shows courage and determination throughout the life of their business venture. The positive people who hold on to this belief get through the hard times and make it in the cutthroat business world. Make sure that you keep the faith.

Written by Robert D. Reed, this article was based on the book, The Chic Entrepreneur by Elizabeth Gordon. Published by Robert D. Reed Publishers http://www.rdrpublishers.com

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Emotional Intelligence At Work

By Kevin Dwyer

Emotional intelligence is more than 90 % of what makes the difference between one leader's success and another leader's failure. Intelligence measured by IQ is less than 20% of what makes the difference.

This is a popular refrain of Emotional Intelligence devotees. Is it true? My experiences with a group of twelve people in a hospitality organisation strongly suggest it is true.

The twelve people were part of a leadership development programme. In two groups of six, they attended face-to-face training over six months consisting of:

Leading yourself (two days)
Leading others (two days) and,
Leading change (two days)

During the three months between the face-to-face training, each team of six was required to complete a project in their own time, which would take them out of their individual comfort zones. As a team, they had never worked together before. Their backgrounds were as far apart as massage therapy, financial control, event management, kitchen and golf course maintenance.

As part of the two days on leading yourself, they completed an analysis using the Simmons EQ profile ably administered by Bob Wall.

Over the six months of training and the following three months after the training I came to a number of conclusions from observing their behaviour and relating it to their EQ profile.

The "after you" team

One of the teams had the following profile of Assertive, Tolerance, Considerate and Sociable attributes on a scale of one to ten:

Assertive: mostly unassertive - five at or below 5, one at 6.5 (10 is very unassertive)

Tolerance: very tolerant - six at 7 or higher (10 is very tolerant)

Considerate: generally not considerate of others - four below 5 and two between 5 and 7 (10 is very considerate)

Sociable: at the extremes of sociability - three at 4 or less, three at 7 or more, (10 is very sociable)

The first three months of their project meetings were depicted by no-one leading. Everyone refused to make an assertion about what they thought should happen and who should do it.

The sociable group met separately from the non-sociable group. Whilst they were not willing to assert what they believed they were coincidentally the group who were less considerate and spent much time criticising other's commitment.

They achieved little during those three months. All bar the project manager had a courage score of less than 5. Being risk averse as a group and generally unassertive, they did not want to challenge others at the property to get information to them on-time and in the manner they needed it.

Team selection was made before the EQ profiles were completed. If, however, their Emotional Intelligence could have been tested before selection, this team would not have been selected to achieve the difficult outcome they were given in their project.

At the end of three months they were required to make a report on their project progress. It was not pretty. They did poorly and the general manager let them know.

Their reaction to the feedback was dramatic. They changed both as a group and as individuals. The next three months were much more productive as they worked on improving their individual limitations, having experienced what impact they, as individuals, were having on the group.

The "Let ME do it" team

The other team had the following profile of Assertive, Tolerance, Considerate and Sociable attributes on a scale of one to ten:

Assertive: mostly very assertive - one below 5, five at 6 or higher (10 is very unassertive)

Tolerance: at extremes of tolerance - three below 5, three above 5 (10 is very tolerant)

Considerate: mostly inconsiderate of others - five below 5 including two below 2 and one above 5 (10 is very considerate)

Sociable: mostly sociable - one at less than 2, one at less than 5, four at 6 or above (10 is very sociable)

This team was expected to interact better because of the diversity of attributes and the combination of sociability, low tolerance and high assertiveness of most individuals. They did. They started with the speed and power of an express train. The very afternoon their project was explained to them, they started work contacting people, setting up appointments to get information and brainstorming ideas.

They all had high (greater than 6) change attribute scores and coped well with new ideas and changes in direction over the first three months. Their high work scores (five well above 5) and energy scores (five above 5 with two above 6.5) predicted they would work hard. They did.

Their mid-term project review was excellent. If we rated it out of ten, the score would have been seven or eight. The first team would have scored two or three.

With the positive feedback they received one might have expected them to power on. They did not. The general work environment outside the project was challenging. Time started to become difficult to set aside and fatigue was a factor. The low consideration levels kicked in and self preservation became the order of the day for four of the team.

This manifested itself in two ways. Two people withdrew, doing the minimum required to stay attached to the programme. Two people shifted their focus to where they thought the highest level of recognition lay on any one day. The other two, which included the project manager, soldiered on to complete the project as best they could, maximising their learning along the way. The project manager was the only one with a high consideration score.

The learners versus the deniers

The group of twelve as a whole can be split into:

those who learnt a lot about themselves and who are, today, better leaders,

those who learnt a little and can talk about what's needed to be a better leader and,

two who did not identify with the work required to change their profile and made no progress.

The common attributes of the two who did not learn were low consideration, very high assertiveness, low optimism, moderate work, and low detail.

When life got tough, they worked for themselves only.

Overall learning

What I learnt during this six month period was that before people can utilise their emotional skills and have the drive to improve where they are weak, they must have a sense of direction. The sense of direction must first and foremost be personal. Without a personal goal people get lost. They have nothing to calibrate their current status in life against and no creative tension to drive the formation of skills, including emotional skills.

The behaviour of people in both teams changed for the better when they had a goal to believe in and for the worse without one. The first team as a whole, improved greatly. They developed skills and improved their emotional intelligence. When they knew they had done poorly in the first report out, their goal was simply not to feel that way again.

The second team tasted too much success and praise too early. After receiving the praise most of the team had a goal of completing the project with as little disruption to their normal work hours as possible.

The project leader of the second team had a goal to learn as much as he could about financial planning, project and people management. He wanted to improve his emotional intelligence attributes where he thought it would improve his people management skills. He remained constant, learnt the most and grew the most.

What I have also learnt is that emotional intelligence does indeed have a large bearing on how people cope. Not just with day-to-day life, but more importantly in times of stress. What I also unexpectedly learnt was that The Simmons EQ profile is an accurate predictor of behaviour and competence at work.

Kevin Dwyer is the founder of Change Factory. Change Factory helps organisations who do not like their business outcomes to get better outcomes by changing people's behaviour. Businesses we help have greater clarity of purpose and ability to achieve their desired business outcomes. Visit our website to learn more or see more articles on Leadership ©2008 Change Factory

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Roadmap to Leadership Success Checklist

By Natalie

Leadership success is the foundation of High Performance organizations. Being a successful leader is crucial to the success of your company. Being a successful leader is not just leading and delegating jobs to people. There is much more involved in leading a team successfully. It requires a desire to be a leader and to participate in continuous learning. Do you want to be a successful leader? Listed below is a leadership success checklist for you to consider when contemplating this question.

A checklist for successful leaders:

• Recognizes that building a solid team is critical to a successful business. Developing a solid team enables people to collaborate more effectively, more creatively and more productively with the guidance of a leader.

• Gets to truly know the team members. Makes an effort to learn who they are and what their beliefs are.

• Communicates clearly and effectively. Communication is not only about talking! In fact, communication has a lot to do with "not talking." Listening is the key to effective communication. When you take the time to listen, you will not only learn what is happening, but why things are happening. In order to handle a situation effectively, you need to understand the entire situation. If you just make demands, without fully comprehending the circumstances, this could have a detrimental impact on your company. Take the time to listen to your employees, vendors or customers. You never know what amazingly profitable idea can come from one of your team members. So, close your mouth and open up your ears to the many possibilities of successfully listening.

• Considers resources when making decisions. When making any type of decision, it is imperative to consider your resources. Not only should you be able to understand the finances, you should be able to consider the resources of your team members. Knowing your team and their strengths and weaknesses will allow you to effectively make knowledgeable, efficient decisions for your team and the company.

• Creates a positive environment and recognizes accomplishments. People are more motivated to do their best for a company that they feel truly cares about their needs. Positive morale among team members will ensure increased productivity. Recognizing people for their accomplishments, no matter how big or small, will go a long way in creating a positive environment.

• Leads by example. People are more willing to work hard for someone they respect. Show respect for your team, consideration for their feelings and opinions and be knowledgeable in what you teach.

• Helps people grow. Helping people grow and develop skills and capabilities is an asset to your company. Consider expanding their skills by offering classes or on-the-job learning. A knowledgeable person will only add to the success of your company.

Make the commitment to continually work on and improve your leadership and communication skills. Evaluate how you portray yourself as a leader. See yourself through your team's eyes. Be a leader that people want to follow. After all, you can't be a leader unless you have followers. You won't have followers unless you can gain the respect of others. Apply these checklist tips, watch your leadership skills grow and reap the benefits for your roadmap to success in your career and life.

© Copyright 2008 by Natalie Manor. All Rights Reserved. This article may be copied and used in your own newsletter or on your website as long as you include the following information: "Written by Natalie R. Manor, CEO, author, speaker and executive coach, creator of The Roadmap to Your Extraordinary Success series, The Roadmap, Natalie Manor & Associates is your ultimate resource for leadership and communication development success for managers, emerging leaders and executives to maximize your potential and increase your productivity. Success@The-Roadmap.com, (800) 666-2230, http://www.NatalieManor.com

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