3 Secrets to Mastering Leadership Excellence

Leadership

We’ve all come across them. Those leaders who people naturally gravitate toward. Though it seems counterintuitive, the magnetic effect these leaders have on people is not because of how people feel about the leader. It’s because of how the leader makes people feel about themselves.

These leaders have mastered the embodiment of two basic facts about people:

Fact 1: Every person matters.

Fact 2: Every person wants to feel valued.

By keeping these facts in mind, you can master the skills necessary to achieve leadership excellence. Here are three skills that will have the highest impact:

1. Help People Connect the Dots. In my post, “A Pharaoh Walks Into a Bar,” I illustrate why team members need to understand how their daily jobs fit into the big picture. It is your responsibility as a leader to help your team connect the dots. You may use formal tools like strategy maps, or pull up to your nearest whiteboard. Regardless of your delivery method, take the time to sit with your team members to help them visualize their role in the success of the organization.

2. Help People Grow. I know a CEO who likes to joke that, “The only thing worse than training your people and then they leave is not training your people and they stay!” All joking aside, one of the main reasons people give for leaving companies is that they stop growing. Growth brings energy, vitality, life, and challenge. Without growth, we’re just going through the motions. Create a culture of learning and growth to maximize the collective talent of your team.

3. Give People Sincere Appreciation. People who don’t feel appreciated are often the first to burn out or jump ship. It only takes a minute to recognize a team member for making a positive contribution. But, doing it right requires more than the occasional “Attagirl!” Give timely and specific praise to show your team members how you value their contribution. Here’s a quick demo to show you how.

One final secret to mastering leadership excellence – you can’t fake it. Leaders who genuinely care about their team members will invest the time to help each one feel valued. Be committed to helping them connect the dots, helping them grow, and giving them sincere appreciation. Every day is an opportunity to help people see the best in themselves and achieve their highest potential.

Why It’s Okay to ‘Friend’ Your Employees

Leadership

Lisa manages a group of people at a marketing agency.  Like Lisa, most of the team is in their mid-30’s.  They work long hours together and often go to dinner or drinks after work.  Recently, over lunch, an older colleague told Lisa to be careful about making friends with her staff.  “Don’t cross the line between being a manager and a friend,” she warned.

Good advice? There was a time when the answer was yes.  For decades, it was considered best for managers to keep a personal distance from their employees. The school of thought was that friendship was a slippery slope to favoritism.

Today, however, organizational structures are losing their rigidity. Reporting lines are becoming fluid.  Companies are decentralizing authority and moving toward team-based networks. According to a recent study by Deloitte University Press, “only 38% of all companies and 24% of large companies (>50,000 employees) are functionally organized today.”

As reporting lines blur, so do the lines between our professional and personal selves. It’s now considered okay, even healthy, to work with friends. Gallup’s State of the American Workplace poll found that workplace friendships increase employee satisfaction by 50%. Companies like Zappos, Google, and Dropbox encourage employee bonding.

Leadership is no longer about having positional authority.  It’s about relationships.  Leaders who build strong relationships with their team are in a better position to empathize with the needs of their diverse workforce and to handle the dynamic shifts in business cycles.

This doesn’t mean that you should become BFF’s with your staff. Save the sharing of innermost thoughts and crying-on-the-shoulder for close, lifelong friends. What it does mean, is that your team wants to be able to laugh and commiserate with you – to see you as both a leader and a human.

If you think about it, there are several similarities between being a good friend and a good leader:

• We all want friends and leaders who can hold us accountable without being unkind, and with whom we can be honest.
• We want friends and leaders who genuinely solicit our advice, but who are strong enough to take decisive action.
• We want friends and leaders who we can confide in and trust, without worrying that they will gossip about us with others.

You don’t have to be bossy or distant to be an effective leader. When you apply the principles of being a trusted friend to your leadership role, you’ll find that the line between friendship and leadership becomes invisible.

Question:  Do you let your employees see you as human, or are you a never-let-them-see-you-cry manager?

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How to Lead Behind a Glass Door

Leadership

“You will work all the time. If you’re very, very lucky you may sleep or eat.”

That’s an actual quote pulled from a review posted on Glassdoor – a site where employees and job candidates can anonymously post pros and cons about your company.

What’s that again?

Like TripAdvisor and RateMyProfessors, Glassdoor is taking advantage of the transparency revolution.  It’s a database of company reviews, CEO ratings, and benefits information that lets the world know what it’s like behind the curtain of your organization – from interview to exit.

How big is it? 

If you thought that Glassdoor was a small social media platform for people to complain about their jobs, think again.  Launched in 2008, Glassdoor has a current valuation of $1 billion.  It’s used by 34% of Fortune 500 companies, and has 30 million members from 190 countries who’ve contributed company reviews, salary reports, and photos for some 500,000 companies.

Why should I care?   

In today’s market, your job prospects are making decisions about whether to work for your organization based on information provided by others.  This year’s Edelman Trust Barometer shows that people are far more likely to trust anonymous reviewers than company CEOs.  It’s part of what Bob Corlett of HR Examiner calls the Amazonification of recruiting.

What can I do about it? 

First, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Transparency is here to stay.  The best employers use Glassdoor as an opportunity to gain competitive advantage in the market for top talent.

Second, breathe easy.  The average company rating on Glassdoor is 3.3 out of 5, and 66% are positive.  Glassdoor requires reviewers to provide both pros and cons, and enforces protocols like no foul language and NO REVIEWS IN ALL CAPS.

Third, you can follow these tips to reinforce your reputation:

1. Spring for an enhanced profile. With it, you can add customized content like photos, videos, and job postings. It allows you to put your best foot forward in a way that displays your company’s culture and personality.

2. Encourage reviews. It’s better to be proactive than reactive. Ask job candidates to post a review of the interview experience. Encourage employees to write reviews when celebrating milestone anniversaries with your organization.

3. Comment. Employee and candidate reviews are considered opinion, so take them as such, and respond in a kind and genuine way. Here are some best of examples for inspiration.

4. Reflect. If you get a negative review, take some time for the sting to pass, then reflect.  As leadership guru, Ken Blanchard says, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”  If there is a kernel of truth in the negative comments, use this opportunity to reflect and address the underlying issue.
Finally, provide outlets for employees to vent.  If they can speak up at a town hall or on a discussion board, they’ll be less likely to take out their frustrations in public.

It takes years to build a reputation. Give employees a culture they can be proud of, and the tools to help them share it with the world.

Question:  What does the concept of transparency mean to you and your organization? Is it feared or embraced?