1. Inspire the ordinary to become extraordinary.
Very few of us have so-called “dream jobs,” like being a rock star or a professional athlete. Most jobs are pretty ordinary. So, how do you maximize the contributions of each employee—especially if they’re feeling apathetic, burned out, or unimportant?
Traditional leadership styles are centered around control. Managers set expectations and then check to see if they’re met. However, that kind of top-down leadership ultimately isn’t effective. In today’s successful corporations, more decisions are made from the bottom up, with accountability at lower levels.
2. Set massive goals.
Effective leaders inspire others with their vision and consistently help their team focus on the most impactful tasks while removing the noise around everything else.
Set huge goals that inspire and motivate your team, then create a plan to achieve those goals together. Great people are excited by great challenges. It’s easier to convince them to join your quest when you’re setting out to accomplish something monumental.
3. Encourage feedback without judgment.
The astronomer Carl Sagan once said, “There is no such thing as a dumb question.” While this is a common phrase, most people have difficulty believing it—and if your people are afraid to ask questions, they’ll probably be even more hesitant to make suggestions.
All businesses need helpful suggestions to grow. From entry-level employees to managers, those on the front lines of your business often have the best ideas. On the flip side, CEOs can be limited by their broad scope.
4. Hire people who align with your culture.
When hiring, it’s always important to look for qualities that match your company culture. At both ClickMeeting and GetResponse, we share the same goal: to provide the best solutions for our customers and have fun doing it. We’re a team and you can tell!
5. Put the right person in the right role.
Defining someone’s role goes beyond a mere job description; it should intersect their strengths with what they truly love doing. Aligning responsibilities with strengths means they’ll produce great work, feel fulfilled, and reach their fullest potential. This applies to leadership, too. Delegate anything that doesn’t fall within your “zone of genius” or that you don’t love doing.
6. Get to know your team.
To be a great leader, you have to spend time with your team. Your employees should know that you care about them and are committed to helping them. Celebrate their triumphs and help them achieve new ones. Discover what motivates them. Ask your team about their family, passions, hopes, and dreams. With this knowledge, you can better empower them to set higher goals and continuously improve their performance.
7. Empower employees to unlock their ‘zone of genius.’
Focus is more important than intelligence in today’s world. When a high-achiever focuses and works in their “zone of genius,” they deliver game-changing results. How can you get high-achievers to focus on their individual area of genius?
The answer is simple: Align their capabilities with their capacity. We all have numerous capabilities such as sales, problem-solving, or engineering. However, we have limited time—and thus, limited capacity. As leaders, our core job is to ensure that our teams are spending most of their time (capacity) working within their zone of genius (capability).
8. Remember that leading is an inside job.
To be an exceptional leader you have to work on yourself, build your emotional and intuitive intelligence, and take risks fiercely. It’s an inside job.
When I consult with corporations, I encounter a few common C-level mistakes. One occurs when leaders are held back by ego, fear, resistance to change, or an unwillingness to take risks; another is when they don’t empower their team members.
Emotional intelligence is a cultivated skill that harnesses emotional awareness, mindfulness and kindness. By regulating your emotions and reading others’ emotions, proficient out-of-the-box thinking occurs, resulting in expedited and elite problem-solving. Intuitive Intelligence is an exceedingly precise evolutionary human intelligence that yields mastery in instantly understanding something, without having all of the information or the need for conscious analytical reasoning.
Build your emotional and intuitive savvy for extraordinary thinking that offers you sustained off the charts business performance while improving your financial bottom line.