One of the best ways to grow your business is to master leadership. Leadership mastery drives your team forward. When your team gives their very best, your business grows.
In this blog post, you’ll read about 5 simple yet foundational strategies to be a better leader. Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule? The 80/20 rule says (among other things) that 20% of your effort yields 80% of the results. These 5 foundational strategies are the 20%. Get these right and you’ll bring your team 80% of the way there. (If you want to read about these and many other strategies to give 100% to your team and get 100% from them, check out my book Secrets of Leadership Mastery).
Build a culture: Great teams are built because the company they work in have a great culture. Your company’s culture influences who you attract, how they interact with each other and with your customers, how they work, what they say about your company, and how long they remain with your company. When you have a great culture, you’ll build a team of superstars who work hard to serve your customers and celebrate with you as your business grows.
Raise the standard: This is a powerful concept because it’s so simple to do but so effective when implemented. You need to raise your standards. Instead of hiring just anybody, raise the standard of the people you hire; instead of tolerating substandard work; raise the standard of what you accept; instead of ignoring conflict on your team; raise the standard of what you expect from your team interactions. Raising the standard means increasing what you want to a higher level and expecting your team to step up to that. Those who don’t step up are transitioned out of the company and those who do step up reveal themselves to be your star performers.
Inspire your team: Average leaders manage; great leaders inspire. Average leaders instruct their team what to do and then micromanage them along the way, getting upset if there is any deviation from their instructions. Great leaders give a vision and set some basic standards and then get their team excited to perform, and then they unleash their team to do the work. Inspiring your team means putting your own focus on an excellent vision and sharing that vision with your team.
Set an example: This is a huge area of opportunity for business owners. Too many owners are “do as I say, not as I do” business owners. Of course they don’t mean to be but they have ideas about running an effective operation that just don’t get applied at the highest levels. Employees see that and unconsciously learn that your words and actions aren’t aligned. So before you ask your employees to do anything, make sure you are stepping up to do the same thing yourself.
Create feedback loops: Being a leader is a conversation. The communication you give your team includes inspiration, direction, training, reviews, and compensation. The communication your team gives back to you includes the quality and quantity of their work… but it should also include an opportunity to give you feedback. Some business owners fear receiving feedback because they don’t want to hear complaints from disgruntled employees; however, if you do many of the steps mentioned earlier in the post then you’ll likely hear more productive feedback, including ideas to become more effective as a company.
These 5 strategies are very straightforward but you’ll find that they are so effective at making you a powerful leader of a superstar team.
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P.S.S. – Troy got the knowledge and the know-how to make his business move forward. FTA Testimonial.
