5 Tips For Effective Leadership
Unfortunately, most of my previous leaders have led by example of what NOT to do and how NOT to be an effective leader. Currently I have good leaders which has been a wonderful change. Below are 5 simple steps for becoming a better leader.
- Admit when you are wrong: There is no more sure sign of weakness in a leader than one who cannot admit when they are wrong. It is a sign of cowardice and foolishness. Ironically, they believe it is a sign of power and authority; however, since others know they are wrong it ends up proving that they are egotistical and cowardice. It is very easy to admit when you are wrong. No one expects you to be perfect and most people prefer a leader who is honest and humble with them so admitting when you are wrong is the first step to being an effective leader. My previous “leader” taught me this lesson very well by being the opposite of what he should have been. See here.
- Do not lie: One would think this would be obvious but it has amazed me at how many leaders believe lying is good. There is a difference between not telling the complete story and lying. It is not always necessary to share every piece of information with employees as sometimes the information may be confidential but there should never be a reason to lie. My previous “leader” called a company meeting to chew everyone out because a database had been lost. The network services team had not been doing the backups they were supposed to be doing and the sandbox server crashed. My “leader” tried to make us all feel bad for screwing up by telling us that we had lost $1200 per person of profit sharing because we would have to give money back to the customer. To make a long story short it turns out we found an old backup of the database which was exactly what we needed and even funnier was that the backup had been emailed months ago to our “leader” per his request and he had forgotten. Not only did he never apologize but he never paid out the profit sharing since he did not now have to pay back the customer. He never had any intention of paying us that profit sharing, he just wanted us to feel bad. Don’t lie. Eventually it will bite you.
- Provide clear vision of direction: The main function of a leader is to “lead”. Leaders need to let people know where they are going and then to lead them there. At my previous job we never had clear direction of where we were going. We simply worked on project after project and none of them related to each other in any way so we always felt like we were bouncing around. Leaders need to lead. Employees will be much more effective if they understand what they are working towards.
- Communicate effectively: See a recent Dilbert strip. My previous “leader” was terrible at this which is why it has made my top 5 list. We could rarely understand what he wanted and were always confused by his emails since he very often contradicted himself in the email. Unlike the Dilbert strip, my previous “leader” was very technical and should have been able to communicate with us well. He was full of fancy wording but never really said anything. Often I would send an email that required a one word or one sentence response and would get several paragraphs of “marketing” material back. In fact, I was supposed to have been given a raise and had not yet so I asked him in email when I would and his response was “we are making minimal adjustments among managers to create additional parity.” When I asked him to explain he quoted himself and said he had already answered me. That was an answer? Wow. Turns out the answer was yes, I was getting a raise and it would be in the next paycheck but it took many paragraphs and several back and forth emails to finally get to that simple solution. Too funny. Even funnier was that he often lectured our team on needing to do a better job of communicating.
- Be a team player: You win as a team and you lose as a team. A former “leader” of mine claimed that “When we win, I give you all credit and when we lose I take all of the blame.” That is a great statement; however, in this case it was not true. Years ago when I worked in the grocery business I had the best manager I have ever seen. He worked right along side of us and truly lead by example. He was a team player and because of that he was greatly respected.
These 5 steps are easy to implement and should be done. Effective leaders will self-assess from time to time and make adjustments as necessary.
