A proper leadership can make all the difference in team performance. Even if you are working with the well-synced team of people for a long time in a company, your ability to inspire, organize and drive them forward can result in a huge boost in your overall productivity. The best thing about effective leadership is that it is bound to give consistent results, regardless of the circumstances. With this in mind, here are five leadership strategies that can indeed improve your team performance.
Lead by example
The greatest problem with leading by example is that most people interpret this idea the wrong way. For instance, they assume that you need to be more tech-savvy than your IT guys, better negotiator than anyone in your sales team or more creative than your designers. This is both absurd and impossible. Do you really think that the CEO of steel manufacturing company knows more about the steel production process than their chemists or technicians? Of course, not. Everyone has their task, which means that all you have to do is show dedication to your assigned duties.
As a leader, there are various courses you can attend to hone your skills, which is vital seeing as how you might want to inspire your employees to keep improving their skills and knowledge, as well. Apart from this, you should also be the first one to arrive at work and the last one to actually leave. In this way, you will be a good role model, lead by example, and send the right message.
Work on transparency
Expecting from your team members to always take your words at the face value is a horrible idea, which is why you need to start working on transparency as soon as possible. You’re the one who sees the bigger picture, but your team members are the ones who are expected to do all the hard work in order to make this happen. Why not show them how the tasks they do on a daily basis affect the company as a whole.
Better yet, be honest about how all of this affects them. Mention the perks of giving a boost to their work experience and the ability to learn from new projects and procedures. Tell them how this helps their career in the long run, regardless of whether they choose to stay within a company or not. Ironically, indicating that you’re willing to let them go will demonstrate that you care about their well-being. In turn, this will significantly boost your talent retention efforts.
Learn a bit about financial planning
In the first section, we stressed out the importance of self-improvement, as well as your inability to master all the tasks of your company. On the other hand, if you are willing to upgrade your knowledge, you should probably start from finances. For entrepreneurs, in particular, the best choice is taking financial planning courses or acquiring diploma of accounting , due to the fact that running a business is, at the end of the day, the game of crunching numbers.
Learning any of the skills that are required for your business (at least basics) will help you understand your staff better. On the other hand, by learning about financial planning, you will develop a better understanding of your company as a whole.
Give recognition to exceptional workers
One of the greatest mistakes that most leaders make is believing that giving a recognition is something to be taken lightly. In fact, the everyone-gets-a-trophy mentality is currently a greater problem than not recognizing the work that has actually been done exceptionally. You see, recognition needs to mean something. So, does it make sense to publicly applaud someone for cleaning up their desk before they head home and do the same with a person who came up with a cutting-edge idea on a major project?
Sure, this doesn’t mean that you should only give rewards for major breakthroughs. After all, this isn’t something that happens every day. Moreover, you should probably be more eager to reward team behavior rather than individual performance since the latter can backfire. There’s no rule but there are some indicators this tactic often creates an unhealthy competition in the office.
Find a mentor
Just because you’re at the top of the hierarchy in your company doesn’t mean that you don’t have someone to learn from. This especially goes for young business owners and first-time entrepreneurs. Learning from your mistakes is an incredibly effective learning method but it is also an expensive one. Bear in mind that making a mistake as a leader of the company can cost you dearly. By finding a mentor, you can acquire some of these skills without over-exposing yourself to unnecessary risks.
Conclusion
As you can see, this is one of those situations in life where, by improving your own skills, you get a chance to influence others to follow in your footsteps. The best part is that these positive business practices will be very useful throughout your life. What this basically means is that, regardless if you stay on that position or within that company, you get to benefit from acquiring a universally useful set of skills. In other words, you get to adopt practices and abilities that benefit both you and the company you work for. A clear and win-win scenario, without a doubt.
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