7 Ways to Become a Better Leader

Being a great leader is more than just having a high-ranking title and having some team management authority.

Even if you have the ability to delegate, if you're an ineffective leader, you won't be able to guide and motivate your staff to accomplish their goals.

Common scenarios of poor leaders can include:

• No one on your team has criticized one of your ideas in the past month.
• You spend more time planning your own career progression than planning that of your team members.
• You haven't had at least three completely non-work related conversations with a team member weekly.
• Different team members would provide different answers if asked your top three priorities for the year.
• Team members are afraid to fail.

So, if you aspire to be the best leader you can be, here are 7 ways to consider making improvements:

1.       Communicate

Leading a group of people requires a mutual sense of trust and understanding between the leader and the team members. This means that you’ll have to build your team’s trust and they’ll have to learn to trust you.

There’s no wrong or right way of doing this, but the best leaders communicate often and are transparent in their thinking. They’ll also take the time to figure out which communication mode is preferred by each team member and are authentically interested in any feedback received.

2. Know your team

Once you've mastered the art of communicating and connecting with your team members, you can really get to know them — who they are, what they're interested in and what their talents are.

You can know your mission and vision, but it is equally, if not more, important to know your people. If you care about and take care of your people, they will take care of your customers, and ultimately, you will accomplish your mission.

3. Encourage creativity

If you want your staff to do their best work, you need to give them the freedom to brainstorm and explore. Be open to your team's ideas and suggestions, and be ready to consider them and possibly develop them further.

A good leader also gives the team new challenges, preventing them from becoming bored and complacent while showing confidence in their potential.

4. Focus on the positives

As much as leaders wish that their team's day-to-day operations could run smoothly all the time, they're bound to run into the occasional obstacle. Whether it's a minor miscommunication or a major error, the way a leader handles a negative situation says a lot about his or her leadership skills.

5. Show, don't tell

An effective leader knows how to show others what is required, rather than simply telling them. Leaders should coach their team members toward a more collaborative, committed work environment — without coaxing them.

If you’re controlling people to do certain things in certain ways, you're not going to get the level of engagement that you're looking. Coaching is about helping the people you lead recognize the choices they have in front of them.

6. Be direct

Direct, honest feedback — even if it's criticism — is often the best way to guide your team in the right direction. You also need to know exactly where your business is headed, so you can give them the right advice.

If you're not direct, people won't know what you truly think about them and their work, and they will never be able to improve. Always share constructive feedback about anything that the team or each team player does. Positive feedback is as important as negative, and a good leader strives for balance.

7. Ask for feedback

Your team members aren't the only ones who can benefit from honest feedback. A true self-assessment of your own leadership can be difficult, so mentors, fellow professionals and even your own staff are invaluable in evaluating your effectiveness. Talking to friends and peers often brings needed perspective on your leadership approach and style. Leadership coaching can also help you discover areas that need improvement.

Here’s how to keep your team happy when it’s 25 degrees outside

Ever notice how hot and sunny weather can hit productivity and increase sickness absence? The human body is not designed to work in sustained high temperatures and lethargy can easily creep in to the working day, particularly if businesses aren’t flexible when hot days set in over the summer.

Here’s our top tips for maintaining attendance and performance in your team:

Plan ahead

Most businesses don’t test their fans and air conditioning until a hot spell arrives – but how do you know they will still work if they’ve been stored since last summer?  Be smart and test your systems in the Spring.

Know the rules

We’ve all heard the temperature myths from time to time – ‘if it goes above 25 degrees you are supposed to send us home’! Not so fast: The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 says that your employer must maintain a reasonable temperature where you work, but it does not specify a maximum temperature. There is, however a minimum temperature of 16°C, or 13°C if your work involves considerable physical activity.

Hydrate your workforce

In hot weather, it is important to make sure your staff have access to cold drinks. Hydration is crucial to happy, healthy staff, so consider giving staff extra breaks to rehydrate if they are not allowed to drink at their desk, or consider relaxing that rule for water.

Relax the dress code

Even where business dress is important, relaxing the dress code a little in hot weather will make staff more comfortable and therefore more productive. Think about short sleeved shirts and no ties. Customers will understand as they will also be suffering.

Small gestures go a long way

If there’s one way to get your team going, it’s free canned drinks, strawberries or even ice creams. Give your leaders a small budget now and again and these little gestures will go a really long way.

Introduce flexibility

Offering flexible start and finish times will help staff avoid stifling heat while commuting at busier times.  You might even permit home working for those staff who are able.  If, however, you do this, make sure everyone is aware of who is working, where and when and make sure sickness absence and staff holiday is still both accrued and deducted for remote workers.

The key to all the above is engagement. There’s no point in offering things to your employees if the team does not want them. Ask your staff what would make them happier and find the right balance. A happy team is a productive team, which offers a win/win for employers and employees.

5 staff training ideas that actually work

Regular training and learning experiences can help employees refine their skills and continually improve their talents. A fulfilling job is usually one that evolves with the team or individual, so it’s important to keep your workforce moving forward.

But, here's the rub. When you're trying to engage your team, how do you get them interested in you, rather than their mobile phones?

Creating training goals is relatively easy, but the hard part is finding a training method which is actually going to work. Whilst a Powerpoint and handout is often the quickest way to convey your message, chances are it's normally a waste of everyone's time.

Here are 5 alternative training ideas to help inspire:

1. eLearning

With busy diaries and shorter attention spans, finding the time for learning and enrichment activities can prove tricky. That's why eLearning, and particularly micro-learning, can prove so effective. By breaking down training into segments from between 3 and 10 minutes, you will be able to engage employees to learning at their own pace and in their own time.

The CPD Certification service is naturally a big backer of eLearning and says that; “online courses provide flexibility and convenience, allowing an individual to plan their learning around their other work priorities, instead of the other way around.”

2. Hands-on shadowing

If you’ve ever read anything about being a good teacher, you’ll have heard this before: If you tell someone how to do a task, you may not be as effective as if you ask that person to do the task themselves, whilst you run through it step by step.

By using a shadowing process, you can ask employees to apply learned skills in real time and translate them to their daily tasks very quickly. This will help new team members find confidence with bigger responsibilities, all whilst controlling the risk.

3. One-on-one meetings

Structured, regular meetings between employees and managers can be a very effective training method.

By showing that your management staff have time to dedicate to more junior members, you’ll be helping to build trust and an acknowledgement that the team as a whole is worth the investment.

By committing time to help your colleagues, they’ll start to appreciate that you are not just out for yourself.

4. ‘Lunch and learn’ sessions

Not everybody learns in the same way. And some employees could associate learning with being at school and being ‘talked down to’. Therefore, you might consider making the teaching less formal by introducing a relaxed environment.

Many business are adopting ‘lunch and learn’ sessions as a method of more casual teaching. In these events, you might provide some food – not even a whole lunch – and invite a speaker to engage with your audience. Often these sessions will invoke group discussions and brainstorming techniques to get the ideas flowing.

5. Video recordings

Whilst live training sessions can certainly be engaging, you can run the risk of the employee forgetting what they've learned after it's over. Recording any of the above sessions and and making them available to your team can serve as a great refresher, or as a convenient ‘catch-up’ for those who missed the meeting.

Making your training stick

It’s important to convince employees that training programs are for their benefit, just as much as yours. The best method of doing so is by asking them for feedback on your initiatives and tailoring future programs to suit your different audiences. By adapting your training to your employees, they are much more likely to retain the information you are trying to share.

Why it’s time to scrap annual performance reviews

Whilst monitoring career progress has always been a useful reference tool for both employee and employer, the advancement of digital technologies in recent years has significantly transformed the way that individuals and teams can impact business change.

As a result of this continuously accelerating pace of development, a new heightened level of organisational agility is not only desirable, but critical to survival in a growing number of industries. Employees with the highest levels of digital skill will be instrumental in a helping a business to stay flexible and ultimately to prosper. However, the methods of highlighting and managing the best talent are often lagging way behind.

Could employee mental health improve?

It’s no wonder then that some of the largest digital organisations, such as Microsoft, Accenture and Adobe are embracing more regular and informal performance management. In 2015, the Wall Street Journal even reported on how this could improve employee mental health as well as recognition. It seems that reviewing what staff did a year ago (or even six months ago in some cases) is simply not efficient enough in the context of the change which the business needs to master.

Performance management therefore needs to allow for more responsive behaviour changes by employees. By facilitating smaller course changes more often, a higher rate of return is more likely. Deloitte famously discovered that two million management hours annually were being spent assessing staff performance and discussing the outputs of the process. Yet, the majority of staff felt that the results gained by conducting these reviews didn’t match the hours put in.

Deloitte have instead moved to a system that involves regularly asking team leaders about their future actions related to particular team members, helping to ensure consistency. When combined with what they call frequent ‘check-ins’, employee work and productive behaviour can be better supported, ensuring greater clarity, alignment and employee engagement.

Try OKRs instead

A number of other high profile businesses including Google, LinkedIn, Oracle, Twitter and The Guardian have moved to a system of OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results. This methodology for connecting company, team and individual goals and measurable results was originally introduced at Intel in the 1970s. The system involves setting quarterly measurable, definitive objectives at a company, team and individual level, and then supporting those objectives with quantifiable key results, against which performance is measured.

OKRs are often made transparent (at Google for example, everyone’s OKRs from Larry Page the CEO down are available to see on the internal directory) but provide a clear directional focus and expectations, ensure alignment at every level, and a high level of awareness of what others’ priorities are. This brings greater empathy and understanding for individual or team priorities, and giving focus to how an individual might make their own priorities align with someone else’s in order to get stuff done.

Ultimately, whatever performance review methods are implemented within your business, it’s important to keep agile. Reviews should be regular, clear, simple and time-efficient to get the best out of your staff.

This blog entry was adapted by an original post by Neil Perkin at Only Dead Fish.

5 tips to engage your audience when presenting

Presentations are a common part of business, whether internally or as part of a pitch. Usually, this can evoke the thought of dread between staff – sitting through an endless series of PowerPoint slides can even drive a few people to sleep.

So, how do you make presentations land? And why do speakers frequently face tuned-out listeners, who are too busy checking their phones and watches to pay attention to the important information being conveyed?

With a combination of powerful data and the right messaging strategy, you can hold your audience's attention and make your business presentations a success. Follow these five tips to keep all eyes and ears on you:

Know your strengths

Before you start preparing, take the time to reflect on your personal style of presenting. If you’re not an overtly funny or bubbly person, it’s advisable to stay clear of forced humour and over-enthusiasm. Work out your particular strengths and capitalise on them.

Tell a story

Statistics and facts are important to any presentation, but without a good story behind them, the charts and tables you painstakingly created will mean nothing to your audience.

Using a story is a great way to make an audience receptive to the content - but don't tell stories just for the sake of telling them: Make sure they have a point. A confusing story will only lead to a disengaged audience.

Most importantly, don't just read off of your slides. Your presentation should support the slides, not the other way around.

Be aware of your body language

Nerves can be a real problem if you’re speaking in front of a large audience. Particularly if you’re not used to being the centre of attention. But, remaining calm and in control of your body movements and tone of voice is imperative to establishing yourself as a strong presenter.

Try and look people in the eye, keep smiling and don’t be afraid to use your hands to express yourself - or even move around a little. Being natural instead of stiff can transfer through to your voice. If you’re standing rigid, chances are your voice will be stiff and monotone too,.

Let the situation guide you

Every presentation will be different, and as such, it’s wise to tailor yours towards each situation. If you’re in front of a small audience, who know your topic and who know you, it will be a lot easier to connect than if you’re presenting in front of 200 people, who are coming in cold.

Have a think about your presentation goals and what you’re trying to achieve. Is there an opportunity to have dialogue with your audience, or is there only likely to be a chance for a monologue? The success or failure of your presentation will depend on how well you can adapt.

Practice, practice, practice

They say that practice makes perfect, and this is especially true for presentations. Before you go up in front of the audience, go over the data you're presenting and the notes you've written. If possible, test out the technology you'll be using to make sure it works. Rehearse your speech in front of a test audience, and ask for feedback. The more prepared you are, the more likely you are to gracefully handle any unexpected hiccups, tangents or audience questions.

Finally, whether you're giving a guest lecture at a convention or just presenting some company data, remember to be passionate about it. If you’re not interested, your audience won’t be either.

6 Leadership Qualities to Develop If You Want To Be a Great Manager

These personality traits can be developed and nurtured to help further your career and your role as a leader, at work, in your community, or in life in general.

Even if you’re not currently a manager, or don’t wish to be, these qualities can still be really useful in the workplace and help you on that road to promotion:

1. Empathy

The ability to understand and share the feelings of another is incredibly important in any workplace environment and can help manage conflict. However, it’s become even more important as businesses compete to better understand the needs of their customers. Customers don’t want to be analysed. They want brands to understand what they want and need. Empathetic leaders tend to function better within a company and can fuel growth by bringing the team together more efficiently.

2. Optimism

You might think that, if someone is being optimistic, it indicates confidence (and in some cases arrogance) in a successful outcome. Whereas blind optimism and egotism isn’t a good thing, optimistic leaders can inspire and motivate teams with energy and positivity.

3. Forgiveness

No one enjoys the boss who lords every mistake they’ve ever made over their head. There is real power in allowing employees to take calculated risks, but they have to know it’s not going to be held against them later. Doing so kills creativity and motivation. It causes people to think twice before bringing a new idea to the table, or experimenting with a new process or product. Learn how to forgive mistakes to nurture creativity and inspiration and your team will pay you back ten-fold.

4. Altruism

Looking after colleagues and helping them to do better, feel better, and perform better will create a good, productive atmosphere in the office. Famously, no man is an island. Shared credit will help you all look better to board. Although this isn’t a traditional leadership quality, those with great power and strength will always look to those around them for help.

5. Eloquence

The ability to speak and write persuasively has gained importance in the age of digital communications. People expect leaders to communicate and they want to be “wowed.” An eloquent speech can close a deal. An eloquent memo to staff can quell fears, dampen dissent, or inspire people to reach new heights. Practice your writing and speaking to become a more effective, persuasive leader.

6. Modesty

No one likes to hear how awesome someone else is all the time, especially when it’s someone blowing their own horn. Let your work speak for itself. Confidence can a great trait, but should be tempered with modesty to gain the most respect.

This article was based on an idea by Larry Kim.