Leadership Skills: 7 Steps to Creating Powerful Teams

Leadership Skills: 7 Steps to Creating Powerful Teams.  Ways to interact with teams to create engagement and understanding.

Smart Leaders Share Their Ideas with Others

It takes time and patience to share ideas and train team members. Leaders who invest this time to show team members shortcuts and special skills increase the success of the individual members of the team and the success of the entire team. Moreover, these members become more engaged as they implement the new ideas that smart leaders have taught them. Working on these leadership skills empower leaders to connect with their teams in meaningful ways.

Leadership Skills to Delegate Responsibility

Caught in the daily cycle of handling routine responsibilities, managers can procrastinate working with team members to take on additional responsibility. However, as team members take on new responsibility, they increase their abilities to take on greater roles. Delegating authority is the first step in succession planning and in increasing employee value. Not just having responsibility, but taking responsibility for the success of a project creates instant engagement.

To delegate responsibility requires the leadership skills for working with and trusting employees.

Develop Leadership Skills to Become a Big Picture Person

Good leaders know that a minor slight or small loss today often has no significance in the big picture. These leaders can respond from a point of view that their employees are assets.  Keeping perspective with a view of the long-term, leaders can see employee mistakes as opportunities to teach the people who work for them.

A case in point, I once became impatient with a secretary who was hesitant about helping me schedule a flight. When I pressed her on the matter, she confessed that she had never scheduled a flight. She had never been on an airplane. The fact was awkward for her. She was so bright and capable in so many ways. I apologized for my impatience. I explained the simple process to her. She booked the flights. A little bit of patience from me helped us both move on to the important things we needed to do that day and to helping her develop a new skill.

Each new skill enables employees to do more and opens the door to engagement. Using leadership skills, for me, was not always automatic.

Leaders Can Improve Their Communication Skills

Everyone can work on this basic skill every day. For me, the single best way to improve this skill is to become a sponge and not a waterspout. I can read more than I write. I can listen more than I speak. When I read and listen to effective communicators, I reinforce good habits that make me a more effective communicator.

Additionally, I can add to my vocabulary by finding the definition of words that are new to me. Expanding my vocabulary is especially important today.  New technologies require new words as well as a better understanding of words that writers use in a different way in different context.

For example, writers have used the word “protocol” about procedures governing state or diplomatic matters. With the emergence of computer networking, tech writers use the word to refer to rules regarding transferring data across an Intranet and the Internet.

The leadership skills for effective communications is the framework for being a successful leader.

Leadership Skills to Know How to Allow Others to Take Center Stage

Smart leaders can encourage others to take the lead.  By increasing how often team members take center stage, these leaders can increase the confidence and skills of team members to take on greater responsibility and increase their value to the team.

Show concern for people who are struggling to move to center stage.  Many wallflowers are quietly waiting to receive recognition. Giving them opportunities to take small steps to greater roles can turn wallflowers into leaders.

Giving Credit to other People is a Leadership Skill

Saying, “Thank you” is easy to do. People appreciate it when leaders say, “You did a good job.”

Additionally, it is important to recognize the correct person. When leaders give credit to team members for the work of others, the team suffers.

Leadership Skills: Walk the Talk

It is very easy for leaders to criticize people for their shortcomings. Likewise, it is easy for leaders to take the easy path of not rising to the standards they demand of their employees.  and ignore my own. For the people around me to respect me, I can’t say one thing and do another. I must walk the talk.

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Categorized as Leadership

Building Trust and the Role of this Trait in Leadership

Building Trust: What makes trust so valuable in leadership? What is the role of this trait in the relationship between leaders and their teams?

Great leaders may have the authority to demand that their teams follow. But by building trust, great leaders instill in their teams the powerful instinct to follow.  ~ www.jaywren.com  

Building Trust

There several traits that make leaders great.   Intelligence.  Emotional maturity.  High energy.  Decisiveness.  But the foundation of leadership sits atop the confidence between leaders and their teams. Leaders must have confidence in their teams. Team members must have confidence in their leader. Furthermore, team members must have confidence in each other.  Through training and direction, leaders can help team members build relationships based on trust.

The Benefits

Confidence in leadership strengthens a team.  Every organization has periods of greater challenge.  These periods create uncertainty.  Furthermore, periods of uncertainty create stress.  However, people will tolerate greater uncertainty and pressure in an organization where there is confidence in the reliability of leadership.

The Pillars of Trust

Guidelines

For people to trust their leader, they must know what leaders expect them to do.  Furthermore, they need to know how to do their job.  They must know the deadlines and what methods to use.  Guidelines must be specific and clear.  Furthermore, guidelines help team members engage and trust the process for completing their work.  The clarity of guidelines creates confidence that team members are doing the things leaders expect of them.

Relationships

Relationships in management run uphill and downhill.  It is not enough that team members have confidence in their leader.  Great leaders must have confidence in all the members of their team.  Furthermore, these leaders must remove team members who are not trustworthy.

A Safe Open Door

Team members must know that they are safe in giving feedback that is vital to the operation of the team.  Furthermore, team members must know that the door to management is open.

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Categorized as Success

Poise: Steps to Confidence and Increasing Your Potential

Poise is not always automatic. Nearly everyone feels uncertain and lacks poise from time-to-time. How do successful people restore their confidence and maintain their poise in challenging situations?

Poise starts between our ears and spreads through our heart and our gut and then outward through our face and our gestures. ~ www.jaywren.com

Situations that Weaken our Poise

Our insecurities can make it difficult for us to feel confident and poised.  A lack of experience or a bad experience can undermine our poise. Situations where we fear people are judging us weakens our confidence and poise. Especially public speaking plays with our fears that people are judging us and undermines our ability to speak effectively.

My Personal Experience
Although I feel confident to give a prepared presentation, I can feel uncertain when I know that people are looking over my shoulder and judging me.  When I first became a salesman, for example, I lacked the poise to give presentations in front of supervisors.  It took months before I had the confidence to relax and be more effective. Not only did my product knowledge improve and lead to more confidence. I also learned that my role was not to show how impressive I was. Rather, I learned that the purpose of my call was to help buyers understand what they needed to know to make an intelligent decision about my programs and products.

Even with the increased comfort of giving sales presentations in front my supervisors, I learned the importance of developing skills for restoring my confidence and increasing my poise.

Poise: Steps to Confidence and Increasing Your Potential

Over time, I have developed tools to help me feel more confident.  Some of these are simple. Others take time and practice.  Here are tools I have developed to create energy and confidence around other people.

Breathe

You don’t have to stop for a 20-minute mindfulness meditation to use breathing to gather composure.  Anxiety can suppress our breathing.  A lack of oxygen creates even more anxiety.  However, replenishing oxygen with a breath can reduce anxiety.

Breathe in slowly.  Mentally focus on your breath.  The process will give your body the oxygen to burn the adrenaline from anxiety.  Furthermore, focusing on your breathing redirects your thinking from your anxiety to a calming breath and allows you to become spontaneous.  You will return to an effective mental flow of your tasks. With the present moment mental flow, you will gather composure.

Listen with a Purpose

Focus on what people are saying.  Ask yourself why they are saying those things.  Think of how the information from other people is useful to you.  Seeing the benefits in another person’s message takes your focus off your insecurities and creates positive feelings about what you are learning.

Practice Intelligent Silence

Intelligent silence is powerful. Attending meetings and listening helps us understand the proposals, the discussion, and the decisions. Additionally, listening helps us give meaningful feedback and input. We appear more thoughtful and poised. When we do speak, we become a valuable contributor to the discussion.

Bring an Agenda

Come to meetings with a list of things that you want to know and things you want to say.  This approach is especially helpful when you are attending a job interview. Having the agenda in front of you creates focus and empowers you with confidence that you are at the meeting with a purpose.

Giving Support to Others

Giving your support to others in meetings takes your focus off your insecurities. In seeing how you can help others get their message heard, you create focus on the purpose of the meeting and not on how you feel about yourself.

Conclusion

Creating skills for poise can help us in every aspect of our careers. Additionally, these skills help us enjoy the times when we are with our friends and family.  Equally important, these skills even help us get out of our head and into the flow of the present moment. When we are working alone or simply relaxing alone, we can enjoy the pleasures of poise.

Career Change Commitment: Steps to Stay Engaged

Career Change Commitment: Hunting for jobs take a lot of work. It is easy to let up and let opportunities slip away. Finding a job is a business. Even when business is slow, you can act to increase your success of finding the job you deserve. Here are some things you can do during a lull in activity.

The Steps to Career Change Commitment

  1. Stay Connected
  2. Become a Resume Expert
  3. Gain Access to Power Players
  4. Read Career Books
  5. Expand Your Skills
  6. Build an Attitude for Success
  7. Protect Your Health
  8. Focus on Action

Stay Connected

Speak and write to your friends and business connections to let them know that you are still actively seeking a new opportunity. Each time you connect, thank them for their support and let them know that you welcome their support with referrals and job listings.

Become a Resume Expert

Make your resume tighter. Reduce the accomplishments in older jobs and increase the list of accomplishments in recent jobs. Revise the objective of your resume to match the job for which you are applying. Even if you use a resume writer, you must know whether your resume is effective to meet your needs for applying for specific jobs. Ask everyone you trust in your job search to review your resume for effectiveness. Recruiters should be able to help you review your resume for jobs where they are referring you.

Gain Access to Power Players.

Work on the quality of your first-degree network. In many cases, there is nothing wrong to building a huge network. As your network grows, you have the power of audience reach. However, within your close network you must have the people who can empower you for success.

Specifically, build your database with people who have relationships in the industry and at companies where you want to work.  Being to make a direct application to an employer is far better than applying through a job board or a membership site.

Just knowing that you are connected with people who can help you create optimism for career change commitment.

Read Career Books

The most successful people become experts in their career. Likewise, the most successful people increase their potential for success with a lifetime of learning. As you go through your career move, you can empower yourself to perform each step as a well-informed professional.

Reading can help you become more interested in what you are doing in your career search and maintain your career change commitment.

Expand Your Skills

There are YouTube videos on nearly every subject imaginable.  With the Internet, you can take college courses without leaving your home.  Skills seminars and meetups can help you learn new skills as well as expand your network. LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Quora and other social media websites offer groups and forums to help you find answers for developing your skills. Some websites offer free subscriptions to articles on skills development. YouTube is especially helpful to show you how to advance your skills.

What you learn from these videos can get you excited about finding a new job.

Build an Attitude for Success

There is so much information on creating a healthy, productive attitude. My first exposure to creating a more powerful attitude came from reading the Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. Later, I found that listening to Zig Ziglar tapes help me feel more comfortable and confident about everything in my life. For most of my career, I have used forms of meditation to quiet my mind and think more clearly. This practice helps me understand and respond more intelligently to the people in my life.

A simple step to a better attitude is to avoid negative people and spend time with people who will help you feel motivated and positive throughout your career.

A powerful attitude can motivate you to be more aggressive and active in your career move.

Protect your Health

You are your greatest asset.  Eat healthy.  Get daily exercise. Sleep well. You will have more energy to work on your career.  With that energy comes a clearer mind that leads to better decisions.  Remember that the body in which you live is the same vehicle in which you achieve success.

A healthy body is a natural first step to an engaged mind and developing the energy for action.

Focus on Action

Focusing on your difficulties in finding a job will not help. It can discourage you from working on your career search. You build success by seeking and acting on solutions not focusing on problems.

Job Search Websites: Finding the Job You Deserve

Job Search Websites: Job Search Engines, Job Boards, Social Media Sites that List Jobs, and company owned job boards. How they work and where to find them.

Even on the Internet, everything is easier to find when you know where to look. ~ www.jaywren.com

The Types of Job Search Websites

There are four types of job search websites.

  • #1 Job Search Engines (Google for Jobs, Indeed, SimplyHired)
  • #2 Job Boards (Monster, Career Builder)
  • #3 Social Media Sites that List Jobs (Facebook with Targeted Ads, LinkedIn)
  • #4 Company Websites that List the Job within that Company

Job search engines, characteristically, promote their ability to search all websites as well as their own website for jobs. Because of their ability to scour the Internet for jobs, job search engines have gained tremendous popularity.  However, these job search engines naturally list their own job-listings first.  Searches across the web may be buried deep in the pages of the website.

Job Boards, characteristically, post jobs listed with their company. When you enter job search criteria into these websites, the results return only the website’s listing.

Social Media Sites post jobs listed with their company. Additionally, LinkedIn lets members post jobs on their profiles and in their groups. A third place to post jobs is on the LinkedIn homepage feed. For many recruiters, hiring companies, and job seekers, LinkedIn is a site to network for jobs.

Company Websites post jobs they have available. Responding to the company’s website can give you direct access to the recruiting department and, perhaps, the hiring manager.

Keywords and Refinements

Start your computer search with job title, company, or other keywords, and preferred location.

Keyword and location are excellent starting points for your job search in a job search website.  Other keywords might include might be phrases like these:

  • Best companies in [name of city]
  • Jobs in [name of city]
  • All companies in [name of city]
  • Name of job skills in [name of city]. 

Add refinements or filters.  Google for Jobs and SimplyHired offer refinements for things like job category or industry. Indeed.com offers refinements in the sidebar for compensation, job type, and a few other refinements.

Browser Tip

A helpful tip is to open the job listing links in a separate tab or separate window.  By using that technique, you will be able to work your way through the search results without having to re-enter you search.

Risks in an Internet Job Search

There are risks in using job boards. What’s on the Internet is available to anyone who has access to that information. Anyone with access to the website’s database of applicants can see your resume listed there.

Finding New Industries for Your Job Skills

Finding New Industries: If you find that you have skills that are no longer needed in your current industry, it is natural for you to feel discouraged.

Skills Requirements Continue to Change

The ever-changing employment landscape often leaves people with industry-based skills and no employment market for those skills.  If you are one of those people, you are not alone. Additionally, you do have options.

The first week I worked as a recruiter I received a call from a salesman who had just lost his job from a reduction in force.

The man faced a large challenge, because companies across his industry were merging divisions and merging with other companies.  However, he was fortunate to get a sales job in the medical industry.  The training at his former employer gave him the skills to sell.  A medical company considered those skills as transferable skills for selling their equipment.

This person was not the last of the applicants I saw who transitioned to other industries to relaunch their carriers.

The Challenges of Finding Industries

Most people have transferable skills. However, they face challenges finding new industries for these skills.

For example, headhunters, hiring managers, and staffing people often face mountains of resumes.  They are focusing on close fits.  Scrutinizing resumes closely for crossover skills is a challenge for these people.  The first decision that these people make is to eliminate people based on a match in industries.

A second issue is that the network people have in their industry does give them contacts when they try transition to other industries. To find jobs in a new industry, job seekers must develop new networks to reach people who have job openings.

Steps to Finding New Industries

Here are some steps that might help you find jobs in new industries.

  1. Make a list of companies and industries that appeal to you.
  2. Determine if other people at those places have a similar background to your own.
  3. Evaluate the overall experience of these people in terms of other skills and experience that you might have in common.

Tips for Expanding Your Network

The second challenge is expanding your network to the new industry.  You will probably find better success in getting an interview if you know the hiring manager and can get your résumé directly into that person’s hands.  Here are some suggestions.

  1. Ask a member of your current network to give you an introduction to the hiring manager.
  2. If you cannot get an introduction to the hiring manager, attempt to network directly with the hiring manager.
  3. Join professional organizations that can give you introductions.
  4. Attend trade shows where you can make new connections.
  5. Backtrack through your network to find people who have transitioned from your current industry to a new industry.
  6. When you do send out your résumé, make sure that it markets your skills that are useful in the new industry.
  7. Edit your résumé and interview agenda to highlight your qualifications for each specific company you are seeking to join.

Expand Your Skills to Match Skills in New Industries

A third challenge is that your skills are just not as strong as those of people already in the industry you are seeking to join.

  1. Strengthen your marketable skills with more training.
  2. Become an expert on the new industry you are seeking to join. Write your cover letter and résumé to show what you know about that industry.
  3. Head back to school to get a diploma, degree, credential, certification, or advanced degree.

In Conclusion

Remember that you are not alone nor unique.   Many people find that they need to consider transitioning to a new industry.  You are not alone in your trials.  If you concentrate on building your network and your skills, you do not have to work alone in your efforts.

Bias Dictates the Thoughts that Govern Us

Bias dictates to our reason and wisdom, but is it always bad?  What role does it play in decision-making and in governing our actions? Knowing that we have bias and learning how to manage our bias empowers us to act intelligently to the world in which we live.

The biggest challenge is managing our bias is recognizing that they exist, and that fact is not a bad thing. Biases create an awareness that we are dealing with things that are important to us.

How Bias Dictates Our Decisions

Bias is the visceral, negative, or positive feelings that we have about a person, place, or thing.  These feelings simplify our lives to interpret the world to our liking.  It bypasses our ability to reason.  Also, it is that noisy voice that drowns out wisdom. Biases drive the way we want to see the world.

This voice is an essential element of human nature.  Patriotism, faith, political ideology, and fandom sit atop our biases.  The powerful effect of bias can bring us together to form successful groups.  In sports, business, or other matters of competition, the voice of our bias motivates us to support our team and defeat or competitors.

Additionally, these feelings can make life fun.  The excitement, love, and joy we feel for our sports team, political party, religion, or family members come from these feelings.

We hear the word “biased” often from the proud parent who brags about a child.  The parent closes with, “Of course, I am not biased.” Nod, nod, wink.

Furthermore, these feelings bring us peace.  They help us overcome doubt and fear.  Bias can create healthy, positive emotions that carry us through periods of uncertainty.

At other times, bias can create tension when our feelings conflict with the thoughts and feelings of other people.  Discussing religion, sports, politics, and any other feelings about our core beliefs with people who don’t share those beliefs can undermine the bonds of loyalty within a team or among co-workers who interact with each other.

Emotional Intelligence: A Healthy Relationship with Our Bias Dictates

Since bias has beneficial effects and adverse effects on how we think, having a healthy relationship with these feelings is important.

The first step is recognizing that we have biases.

Unlike the emotions that float through our daily lives, biases become hard-wired to our beliefs.  These feelings respond to triggers. When we hear or see things that instantly and subconsciously stir our emotions, the noisy voice of bias can drown out the voice of reason.

We believe in the things that we like.  We get angry when we hear or sear things that we don’t like.  When we interpret the world as good or evil based on our emotions, it is difficult for us to know what is true or false in the world.  Likewise, it is easy for biases to deceive us into making bad decisions.

The second step in having a healthy, productive relationship with our bias is learning to pause. We can let our emotions settle. From there, we can attempt to take an objective look at the things that are happening.

Additionally, we can speak with other people who are not involved in the situation. People who are not driven with the same bias as you.  From their thoughts, we can create a plan based on emotional intelligence.

Rebel: The Power of Being Different

Rebel: The world is full of successful people who conform to the norm. However, a rebel can blow past the norm and change the world.

I have never known a rebel who was boring. ~ www.jaywren.com

Companies have guidelines and rules.  But what do you do when the guidelines block you from achieving your goals? Do you have enough of the rebel in you to change your life and, perhaps, even the lives of people around you?

Rebel: Is Conforming to the System Killing Your Career?

Following policies and procedures works great for many people.  They go to work on time and do what the company asks. To the best of their ability, they try to get along with everyone.

But what if you are frustrated with squeezing your way into the norm?  What if you want to break out of the mold in a bold and dynamic way? The way of the rebel may be the answer.

Every Pathway Involves Risks.

There are people who have great careers.  They work at a company for twenty or thirty years.  Some of these people are fortunate enough to move on to another great job.  Others have the good fortune of being able to retire early.

On the other hand, for other people, the life of the conformist moves along fine until they discover that their company no longer needs them.  Even worse, they learn that their skills are obsolete long after it is too late to develop new skills.

In fact, most people find that the security of a large company disappears long before they reach financial independence.

Rebels Find Success Through Their Authenticity.

The most successful rebels are authentic to themselves. They easily sustain and succeed as rebels, because what they are doing feels authentic.

The simple writing style of Ernest Hemingway, the descriptive writing style of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the complex writing style of William Faulkner, and the clever, honest writing style of J.D. Salinger are all different. What these different styles have in common is that they are consistent in the work of these different writers.

Furthermore, their styles are not only different from the style of each other.  Their styles were different from the styles of any other writers.  All four adhered to their idea of authenticity in their writing.

Moreover, don’t force yourself to be different. Simply, let your authenticity shine through your performance.

Rebel: Examples of Success

Cultural icons like Gorgeous George, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Muhammad Ali, Madonna, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and hundreds of others risked controversy to create success their way.

Innovative icons of technology: Nikola Tesla to Steve Jobs to Elon Musk have never let conformity to restrict their ability to fulfill their visions.

Iconic rebels of art: Van Gogh, Picasso, Jason Pollock, Joan Mitchell, and countless other great artists. A commitment to be innovative, sometimes shocking, and consistently authentic empowers great artist to change the way we view art.

In every field of endeavor, there are rebels who step out to create new pathways for others to follow.

Bad Bosses: How to Excel In Spite of Them

Bad bosses can destroy your career as they make your life miserable before you get away from them. Here are ways you can protect yourself and your career.

If you are working for a bad boss, you have my understanding and empathy.  I have had a couple of bad bosses.  One had no interest in his job and was a roadblock to my career.  The other one was verbally abusive.  In the first case, I left the company for a better opportunity.  In the second case, I adjusted to my supervisor’s difficult behavior.  He promoted me before he went to another job.

The Mental and Physical Risks of Working for Bad Bosses

Working for long periods of under the stress of a bad boss damages your health and your life.  Common experiences include:

  • Fatigue
  • Impaired mental ability
  • Depression and anxiety
  • Mental and physical damage that may continue for years after leaving the bad situation

Bad Bosses

How can You Protect Yourself and Your Career?

There are things you can do to reduce the stress and to work more effectively with bad bosses. Here are some of them.

Keep a Journal

Writing about your experience helps you in several ways.  The process helps you clarify your thoughts and find solutions.  Additionally, writing help you process the emotions and reduce the sting of dealing with your boss.

Keeping a journal with the details of your experience can help you to protect yourself.

List the details:

  • Include documents, including emails, text, and memos.
  • Track the details with dates and times.
  • List what happened and how you responded

Respond with Emotional Intelligence

Discuss your situation with your mentor or other people you can trust to keep the information private.  Through these discussions, you can find comfort and solutions to handle the situation and reduce the stress of working for your boss.

Do not retaliate.  If your boss criticizes you, criticizing your boss in turn will create greater tension.  If your boss yells at you, yelling back will only heighten the confrontation.  Reply to your boss in a normal tone.  Listen to the criticism and say that you will make the changes your boss is telling you to make.

Develop skills to work with your boss.  Learn the way that your boss wants things done.  For example, your boss may like options or choices before making a decision. Make recommendations with choices of action or material.

Seek New Ideas for Dealing with Bad Bosses

Going over your boss’s head is not always a good idea.  At some companies, bosses will fire you for going to their supervisor or other people in the company.  The ill will alone can cost you support for pay raises and promotions.  However, building relationships and learning how other people are working with your boss can help you. Don’t talk with everyone about your issues with your boss. However, chances are that you are not alone.  Some of the other people in your company, people who are your peers, may have found ways to work more successfully with your boss.  You can learn from these people.

Showing Support for Your Boss May Reduce the Pressure.

Recognize times when you can show support for your boss. Give your boss credit when he or she deserves it.  The reason that a supervisor benefits from an employee doing a great job is that the results benefit the boss.

Additionally, you can show support for your boss by doing what they ask you to do without discussion. Making your boss justify their decision will only heighten tension.

Are Your Problems Temporary

Bosses come and go.  Do not ruin a career over a passing situation.  Try to see the bright side of things.  Your boss cannot eat you.  He or she may even promote you or give you a pay raise.  Eventually, your boss may just go away.

Find Another Opportunity

Explore your options to getting another job.  If there appears no end to the madness of dealing with a bad boss, look for opportunities to transfer within your own company or ways to get another job.

Leadership Qualities that Create Great Teams 

Leadership Qualities: Some teams have a manager but still suffer from a lack of leadership.  What qualities help leaders raise the team standards and increase team success?

Four Leadership Qualities that Create Great Teams

Leaders have many qualities that make them more effective.  For example, a leader with charisma easily draws people to them and creates focus on what these leaders do and say. Leaders who are more intelligent and have greater experience help the team make better decisions.

Here are leadership qualities that you can claim today.

Self-honesty

Not just honesty, but self-honesty.

Self-honesty is about you recognizing and correcting your mistakes.  It’s the honesty to recognize your weaknesses.

It is burying your ego so that you can accept the truths that stand between you and success.

To be successful takes more than overcoming lying, cheating, and stealing.  For that matter, there are successful liars, cheaters, and thieves.

But even successful thieves benefit from honesty about their mistakes and their weaknesses.  Otherwise, they will never become more effective, successful thieves.

Open-mindedness

A closed mind is the wall between ignorance and learning.  It is also a wall between the shared intelligence of the team and the mind of a boss.

Of all the leadership qualities, open-mindedness might be the most important quality for creative, responsive teams.

Emotional Intelligence

First, learn to understand ourselves. Then we can begin to understand others.

Emotional Intelligence (sometimes abbreviated “EI” or referred to as Emotional Quotient “EQ”) is the ability to understand our own emotions as well as the emotions of other people.

People who have emotional intelligence know how to read people.  They have an intuitive sense of why people do things and how to motivate people to do things. With a combined understanding of themselves as well as an understanding of others, these leaders can make decisions and take action with greater intelligence.

Ability to Grow

A final quality in this discussion is the ability to grow.

Leaders who continue to grow become a source of continuous growth for the team.  Developing knowledge and skills, these leaders bring greater value to teams and increase the value of these teams to the organization. Effective new as well as tried methods, when introduced to the team, create both a greater understanding as well as more efficient ways of using new methods.

Leaders who develop the quality of continued growth can clear the clutter of methods that reduce the effectiveness of a team. Just knowing to evaluate procedures as time passes makes for greater effectiveness.

Teams that grow make the leap from short-term survival to long-term success.

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Categorized as Leadership