Become a Great Leader
“A great leader never sets himself above his followers except in carrying responsibilities.”
~Jules Ormont
Become a Great Leader
Jack Zenger is an expert in leadership development who has authored several books on the topic. From his writings, here are his top 10 rules for becoming a great leader:
- Ask instead of answer. Don’t immediately give people the answer when they come to you with a question. Instead, ask them what they think. It’s the leader’s job to develop people. To just give them the answer is to have missed a real opportunity to show that you respect them and their ideas.
- Give positive feedback. It’s important to have positive interactions between you and your employees. If you don’t agree with an idea, ask the idea generator to think about it and talk about how it would play out. This will force your team to think through their suggestions and see where their failings are. Remember, as a leader, you may not always be right.
- Engage. When you come into your office in the morning, don’t turn on your computer until you have walked around and connected with people first. Leadership is all about motivating people, and motivating people is all about having a connection with them.
- Put employees first. In every organization, there are four different constituencies: shareholders, senior managers, customers and employees. There are examples of organizations who have consciously put employees first, customers second, shareholders third and managers last. If you treat the employee with great dignity and respect, they in turn will treat customers the same way.
- Seek feedback. Periodically, a manager should wander around and meet with employees and ask, “Tell me something you think I don’t want to know and don’t want to hear.” It may take people a while to figure out that you are serious, but then, they will tell you. One thing managers and leaders have in short supply is truth. Things get filtered as they go up in the organization. You have to work to get accurate data. People will tell you if you ask.
- Be an example. As a leader you are the role model and people are watching you 24/7; you are never off-stage. If you want the organization to be responsive to customers, you have to be responsive to customers. If you want your people to maintain good working hours, you need to maintain good working hours.
- Practice self-development. If you want your organization to perform at a high level and improve over time, you have to improve over time. You need to have a personal plan of development for yourself. Doing this will provide a great example to everyone in the organization and says no matter who you are, we all can get better.
- Delegate with purpose. Make sure your people know that you are not only concerned about them getting their work done, but you are also concerned about them as a human being — about them growing in their career. One way to do that is to delegate an assignment and tell them the reason you’ve asked them to do the task is because it will help them and their professional development.
- Set stretch goals. Nothing unites a group more than pursuing a lofty target. Try setting a stretch goal for your team, but make sure it’s reasonable. If the goal is unreasonable, it can be de-motivating.
- Listen. The ability to listen well is at the heart of being a good leader. Try removing distractions when you are speaking with someone, start making notes when they talk and pay attention to body language to get a real sense of their feelings. Try not to just listen to the words said, but really think about the message someone is trying to convey.
Resource Development Company, Inc. (RDC) is a human resources management consulting firm specializing in retained search, pre-employment screening, and career assistance services. For information on how RDC can help you achieve your goals, please visit our website at www.rdcinc.com, email rdc@rdcinc.com, or call Christopher Bilotta, President, toll free at 888-628-2293.
Coaching Call To Action
Many of my clients are going through performance reviews at this time of year. Which of these rules will you incorporate into your performance reviews this week to be a great leader?
I read your great newsletter and take the time to reflect on it. This week, I reflected about items 3 and 5. My agenda is full and I usually don’t have any time to engage people until some time during the day, and sometimes not at all. I can see the value of the engaging, but it is very hard to do because of the time (and my personality as well). Do others have the same issue?
As far as 5, I think we have to be careful who do we ask in the team, because we don’t want to add negative ideas or accumulate requests that are not feasible. Any additional ideas on that?
Engaging with your people – I wonder what gets in the way of your engaging on the way to your desk in the AM? What if you took 5 minutes? What could you accomplish? And what if when you took bio breaks during the day, you added 5 minutes to engage? Or what could you do to engage on a regular basis? As a leader, you don’t want to become isolaged from your people.
The idea with feedback is twofold – 1) to open the door for communication and 2) to hear what is happening in parts of the organization that you don’t hear from directly. What’s really happening at that level? How will you know unless you ask?