The 4 Essentials of Effective Leadership

Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way!

As a leader when is it time to follow? Here are 4 items I’ve found along the way to keep in mind when aiming to be a great leader:

1. Communicate. Communication is a 2-way street, be responsible for your part then listen for the response whether  it’s verbal, mail, e-mail, or something else if you don’t get the outcome you seek the responsibility lies with you the sender. The process: confirm, gain commitment, and solicit feedback to improve.

2. Make decisions. Don’t be wishy washy the world has enough indecisive leaders, be part of the 20% who make the call, right or wrong. Delaying a choice is not what you’re being compensated to do, gathering what info you can, avoid perfection paralysis, and make the call. Everybody else on the team is looking to you for this strength, don’t let making a decision become a handicap in leading the team. Jump on opportunities before they slip away because you took to long to make a move. Even if you make a move and it’s wrong, or didn’t make a move because you decided not to, you’ll have your reasons and still have a confident team behind you.

Three step recipe for respect: admit when you make a mistake, take corrective action, and move on.

3. Delegate. Once you make the call, it’s time to share the workload. Don’t try to do everything yourself, dividing the work multiplies the results. This builds trust within the Team and fosters individual growth.

Rule to remember: share the credit with those responsible when those great results come in.

4. Hold others accountable. Do what you say you’re going to  do and expect the same from others always. Remember you expect what you inspect, so follow up and follow through. If you have kids, you know that behavior that is recognized is behavior that gets repeated. Guess what the same goes for any team that you lead, the team knows what you historically have paid attention to and what you overlook.

So remember, change your behavior and you change your results. Or you can sum it up into one sentence: “Be the change you want to see in the world” – Gandhi