Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Being the leader

When you are the leader you are in it 24-7. Somebody is always watching. It's not just when you are in front of people giving a presentation it's body language, tonality, expressions of all kinds every minute of every day. If I am walking around moping about something unrelated people are going to assume the business is causing the problems. If I answer the phone not so energetic they are going to think that sales are down.

Many times we don't communicate properly with our team. We don't form that vital bond of trust. If we don't form it with them we must realize that they will look elsewhere to get it. They may look to their opinionated spouse or friend who is negative to give them support where you are not. Good leaders will build this bond of trust. The way to do that is through honesty, integrity, spreading the vision, listening, giving feedback.

We need to have emotional intelligence which is interpreted as the ability to communicate empathy and compassion, treat people well, and relate to them on a human level. We do this through clarity, knowledge of our company, managerial skills, follow-through (doing what we say we will do when we say we'll do it), and humility.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this Leadership lesson. Have the energy on the phone. Understanding they are looking to us for the lighthouse effect. So we can guide them to results. Thank you again. Mark

mezziG said...

yes a leader is always on show. So many people say, "I don't want to be a role model". Truth is, if someone is looking at us, we ARE a role model.

I love the emphasis on the needs of others and honesty that keeps coming through.

mezz