Behind every great business is a great leader. Behind a great leader are other great leaders – working through the structure of the business. In terms of a smaller business, a leader will have to be great by default, with so much relying on them, they will have to knock it out of the park each and every time that they step up to the plate. That’s hard work.
If you’re a leader, a business owner, or a manager, you need ensure that you’re aiming to be the best leader that you can be. The productivity of your ventures and your business depends on it.
The first thing that you can do to be a great leader is to start communicating. Be transparent with your employees – in fact, actively seek out employee feedback to measure your personal impact. While you may think that you know best, you might not and you’ll be surprised at the type of feedback that you get. Communication is key in the place of work and it allows you to see what your employees are thinking and work with them for a better business. They want to be productive, but if they don’t feel happy at the workplace, they won’t be. If you refuse to communicate with your staff, you’ll certainly make them unhappy.
What’s an unhappy employee? Well – what’s an unhappy person? People are all unique, and a lot of different things and subjects can upset them. The same applies to your employees and your team – they are people too! If an employee is happy, it’s likely because they feel overworked, underpaid, unhappy with the job, or a whole bunch of other reasons. Do you know what you should do here? Once again – open the door and talk to them. You can spend hours doing all the guesswork in the world, or you could communicate with someone, identify the issue, and then work to resolve it. There’s being proactive and then there’s being lazy – and that guesswork? It might just be laziness. Don’t just guess.
A leader should also notice good work. A great leader? They will recognise good work, reward that good work and encourage repeat performances. Rewarding staff is tricky as cash incentives don’t often work. You can pick up Trophies plus medals to make a more physical mark of respect for hard work, so visit their site for some ideas. Cash incentives encourage a more temporary boost – which isn’t what we want, not ideally. This good form is temporary, but class is permanent, and you can encourage that through good development as well as rewarding good work.
The best leaders around try to develop their employees. Training is something you should take an active role in – and employee engagement is something that shouldn’t just be targets-based, it should be about career development as well. A great leader will want to see their employees flourish, instead of stagnate.
Being the best leader that you can be is all about one thing – taking an active role. So don’t take a backseat, not if you’re the one who should be at the steering wheel.
