Source: Entrepreneur.com

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” But, becoming a great leader isn’t easy. Successfully maneuvering a team through the ups and downs of starting a new business can be one of the greatest challenges a small-business owner faces.

Leadership is one of the areas that many entrepreneurs tend to overlook, according leadership coach John C. Maxwell, whose books include The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership (Thomas Nelson, 1998) and Developing the Leader Within You (Thomas Nelson, 1993).

“You work hard to develop your product or service. You fight to solve your financial issues. You go out and promote your business and sell your product. But you don’t think enough about leading your own people and finding the best staff,” Maxwell says.

It turns out, the skills and talents necessary to guide your team in the right direction can be simple, and anyone with the determination can develop them. Here’s a list of 10 tips drawn from the secrets of successful leaders.

1. Assemble a dedicated team.

Your team needs to be committed to you and the business. Successful entrepreneurs have not only social and selling smarts, but also the know-how to hire effectively, says leadership trainer Harvey Mackay, who wrote Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive (Ivy Books, 1995). “A colossal business idea simply isn’t enough. You have to be able to identify, attract and retain talent who can turn your concept into a register-ringing success,” he says.

When putting your team together, look for people whose values are aligned with the purpose and mission of your company. Suzanne Bates, a Wellesley, Mass.-based leadership consultant and author of Speak Like a CEO (McGraw Hill, 2005), says her team members rallied around each other during the worst part of the recession because they all believed in what they were doing. “Having people on your team who have tenacity and a candid spirit is really important,” she says.

2. Overcommunicate.

This one’s a biggie. Even with a staff of only five or 10, it can be tough to know what’s going on with everyone. In an effort to overcommunicate, Bates compiles a weekly news update she calls a Friday Forecast, and emails it to her staff. “My team is always surprised at all the good news I send out each week,” Bates says. “It makes everyone feel like you really have a lot of momentum, even in difficult times.”

3. Don’t assume.

When you run a small business, you might assume your team understands your goals and mission — and they may. But, everybody needs to be reminded of where the company’s going and what things will look like when you get there. Your employees may ask, “What’s in it for me?” It’s important to paint that picture for your team. Take the time to really understand the people who are helping you build your business.

“Entrepreneurs have the vision, the energy, and they’re out there trying to make it happen. But, so often with their staff, they are assuming too much,” says Beverly Flaxington, founder of The Collaborative, a business-advising company in Medfield, Mass. “It’s almost like they think their enthusiasm by extension will be infectious — but it’s not. You have to bring people into your world and communicate really proactively.”

4. Be authentic.

Good leaders instill their personality and beliefs into the fabric of their organization, Flaxington says. If you be yourself, and not try to act like someone else, and surround yourself with people who are aligned with your values, your business is more likely to succeed, she says.

“Every business is different and every entrepreneur has her own personality,” Flaxington says. “If you’re authentic, you attract the right people to your organization — employees and customers.”

5. Know your obstacles.

Most entrepreneurs are optimistic and certain that they’re driving toward their goals. But, Flaxington says, it’s a short-sighted leader who doesn’t take the time to understand his obstacles.

“You need to know what you’re up against and be able to plan around those things,” she says. “It’s folly to think that just because you’ve got this energy and enthusiasm that you’re going to be able to conquer all. It’s much smarter to take a step back and figure out what your obstacles are, so the plan that you’re putting into place takes that into account.”

6. Create a ‘team charter.’

Too many new teams race down the road before they even figure out who they are, where they’re going, and what will guide their journey, says Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One-Minute Manager (William Morrow & Co., 1982) and founder of The Ken Blanchard Cos., a workplace- and leadership-training firm. Just calling together a team and giving them a clear charge does not mean the team will succeed.

“It’s important to create a set of agreements that clearly states what the team is to accomplish, why it is important and how the team will work together to achieve the desired results,” says Blanchard, who is based in Escondido, Calif. “The charter provides a record of common agreements and can be modified as the business grows and the team’s needs change.”

7. Believe in your people.

Entrepreneurial leaders must help their people develop confidence, especially during tough times. As Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Leaders are dealers in hope.” That confidence comes in part from believing in your team, says Maxwell, who is based in West Palm Beach, Fla. “I think of my people as 10s, I treat them like 10s, and as a result, they try to perform like 10s,” he says. “But believing in people alone isn’t enough. You have to help them win.”

8. Dole out credit.

Mackay says a good salesperson knows what the sweetest sound in the world is: The sound of their name on someone else’s lips. But too many entrepreneurs think it’s either the crinkle of freshly minted currency, or the dull thud of a competitor’s body hitting the pavement.

“Many entrepreneurs are too in love with their own ideas and don’t know how to distribute credit,” Mackay says. “A good quarterback always gives props to his offensive line.”

9. Keep your team engaged.

Great leaders give their teams challenges and get them excited about them, says leadership expert Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press, 1989). He pointed to the example of a small pizza shop in a moderate-sized town that was killing a big fast-food chain in sales. The big difference between the chain and the small pizza joint was the leader, he says.

Every week he gathered his teenage employees in a huddle and excitedly asked them: “What can we do this week that we’ve never done before?” The kids loved the challenge. They started texting all their friends whenever a pizza special was on. They took the credit-card machine to the curb so passing motorists could buy pizza right off the street. They loaded up a truck with hot pizzas and sold them at high-school games. The money poured in and the store owner never had problems with employee turnover, says Covey, who is based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

10. Stay calm.

An entrepreneur has to backstop the team from overreacting to short-term situations, says Mackay, who is based in Minneapolis. This is particularly important now, when news of the sour economic environment is everywhere.

“The media has been hanging black crepe paper since 2008,” he says. “But look at all the phenomenal companies and brands that were born in downturns, names like iPod, GE and Federal Express.”

by: Andria Corso
Source: CAREERREALISM


Although the job market is not as robust as it once was, companies still deal with issues retaining their top employees. In fact, because the job market is not like it used to be, leaders often struggle with why they are still losing employees.

Why do their employees want to leave their current, secure job and take a risk someplace new?

Research on why employees leave companies has been conducted for many years and the answers always come back the same – the number one reason employees leave a company is because of an issue with their direct manager (or overall lack of leadership in the company) and the next reason is because they do not feel they have room to grow and develop their careers within that organization.

If your employees are seeking opportunities elsewhere (and they are not the employees you want to leave), you might want to look into your career development programs. Do you have formal career development programs? If not, it’s probably time to get some in place. And if you do, you might want to think about making them more robust.

Career Development often gets mistaken for something that takes a lot of time and resources however, it can be as simple or as complex as you wish for it to be in your organization. And, it is often the more simple things that seem to create the biggest impact for the employee. Career Development can be as straightforward as a manager having a one-on-one conversation with an employee.

This conversation would be conducted to explore the employee’s career aspirations and discuss what they can realistically do to grow and advance inside that company to reach those aspirations. “Realistically” means what the employee can do to fulfill their aspirations within the constraints of what the specific organization needs and can provide.

Career Development is much more than spending money to send an employee to a training course and can be as simple as giving them exposure to new projects and tasks that align with their aspirations. It is also as simple as giving them exposure to mentors and other leaders and peers from whom they can learn.

The objective is to think broadly about what will actually develop that employee’s career within your company (in addition to and apart from a training course).

The objective is to spend time with the employee to understand what their career goals and objectives are and to explore options that can make reaching those goals possible.

It starts with the conversation between the employee and their manager. Doing this one or two times per year and being actively engaged in the employee’s career development within your company can make a huge difference in the employee’s level of satisfaction and can limit their desire to seek opportunities elsewhere. Your retention problem could very well be a career development problem and much more simple to amend than you realize.

Source: Philanthropy.com

The Giving Pledge, the effort by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett to increase giving by the nation’s wealthiest people, missed a key opportunity, fund raisers say. Instead of simply reaching out to billionaires, they should have promised to match donations of people with a lot less money.

That’s one suggestion offered in a new report by Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang, two scholars who study and teach fund raising at Indiana University.

The report is based on ideas to increase charitable giving that were offered by influential nonprofit leaders and other executives.

Besides suggesting that billionaires offer matching gifts, the report includes 31 other ideas for improving giving, which has been stuck at 2 percent of average household income after taxes for the past 40 years, according to “Giving USA.”

Other ideas from the report:

• Encourage charities to develop productive ways to handle complaints from donors, which would reduce negative word of mouth, build trust, and provide ideas to improve fund-raising operations. Charities could take a lesson from the business world, the authors write, where “complaining customers are the firm’s biggest asset.”
• Place more fund raisers on nonprofit boards so they can educate fellow trustees about the best ways to raise money.
• Persuade fund raisers to stop talking to donors about annual funds, capital campaigns, endowment drives, and other such insider approaches and instead urge them to focus on what their money will accomplish.

As an example, the reported noted that Harvesters, a Kansas City, Mo., food bank stopped asking its donors for annual gifts or capital donations. It now uses appeals that ask people to help it feed children, families, and the elderly and to promote healthy eating habits. “The new approach is immensely more powerful,” the authors write.

“No one supports a single nonprofit because they happen to have an annual fund or an endowment,” write Mr. Sargeant and Ms. Shang. “It is not the vehicle that matters to donors; it’s the difference they can make in society.”