Category: Values & Motivators

Common Weaknesses in Leadership And How to Fix Them

We’ve all been around leaders that weren’t so great. In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, I’m sure we can see the areas in our own leadership style that is lacking. These are some of the most common weaknesses in leaders today and how you can fix them.

1. Micromanaging Employees

Micromanaging your employees is one of the worst things you can do as a leader. While some of those tendencies may be rooted in your own perfectionist nature, it more often has to do with a lack of trust for those around you.

In order for your employees to really rise to your standards and invest in the company, they must feel trusted. If they feel unappreciated for the job, their performance will go down. To make a win/win situation for both of you, ask them for checkups every month.

2. Becoming Stuck in Your Ways

One of the biggest weaknesses that leaders face is that they can get stuck in a certain way of doing things. If you have done something a certain way and it’s worked, it is really easy to think that is the best way of doing it. But, when you trust your employees’ feedback, invest in your own development, and stay flexible, you will be able to lead well.

3. Wanting to Be Popular

Unfortunately, you are not always going to be popular with your employees. As a leader, you can get accustomed to the attention and desire to please everyone. No one wants to be perceived as “the bad guy”.

As a strong leader, you have to be willing to make the tough decisions, even if it doesn’t make you popular with your team. Also, find ways to communicate with your employees, that while you heard them, you are making the choice that is best for the greater good.

4. Do What I Say and Not What I Do

You must lead by example. It’s really easy to tell your employees you have one set of expectations out of them, but then do the exact opposite yourself. When you say one thing and do another, it will cause your team to feel resentment towards you.

5. Not Being Clear With Your Expectations

In order to lead your team well, you must provide them clear expectations. Give them a goal and set up checkpoints along the way. Tell them the timeline you expect from them and at what points of the process you need them to check in. When they know what you need from them every step of the way, they’ll be able to meet those expectations.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.

Creating Agile Teams is More Than Just a Fad

Upper management is progressively recognizing that agility is eating the world, so to speak. In recent surveys, over 90% of upper management would like to be agile, and a staggering less than 10% already see their company as highly agile. Large companies and organizations, both private and public, are planning agile transformations.

Agile is Used For Cost Reduction

Let’s go over a global bank that implemented agile. The idea was to accelerate innovation so there would be an improvement of quality services and products and in turn would increase customer satisfaction. Agile implementation began to suffer and eventually failed because, in order to improve profits, staff had to downsize along with other cost-cutting decisions.

It’s A Scientific Management System

Certain companies have ceased using the term “agile” and deploy a less direct slogan to win over the support of late-adopters and avoid the burden of being attached to that specific term. Shifting to different terminology can actually run the risk of resorting back to the cost reduction we talked about earlier.

Agile Needs To Be More Than Just A Patch

In a separate case, a global company was careful in its deployment of the agile process. They tried to incorporate repetition, daily standups, dealing with past events, and small groups. Unfortunately, agile was just a minor patch and their work eventually continued as it did before.

It’s Used As A Scaling Framework

Some cases of scaling framework have been implemented across organizations. Then they go about without seeing any significant change in their work practices. Once again, no benefits have been proven where the work is carried out.

When Agile Is Not Implemented Properly

Let’s look at another case where a firm was moving forward, profiting, and making excellent progress in the agile execution. During this time an official order came down the pipeline where the company needed to implement significant cost-cutting measures. While management tried doing their best to keep the gains they already had and minimize casualties, in the end, trust was lost.

The employees eventually saw that management talked about the value of staff and customers being a primary concern. But ultimately they learned that the real concern was the value and concerns of shareholders. This ended up being another failed attempt at agile implementation.

Key Takeaway About Creating Agile Teams

In the end, it needs to be clear to your team and company that agile is more than a fad. It’s something that needs to be trained and consistently checked on within your organization. It will work as long as you are making sure to avoid these costly mistakes.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.

Your Customers Know What They Want and You Need to Give it to Them

55% of companies out there don’t truly understand what their customers need. In fact, most people go to great lengths to avoid a company’s pushy messages. So, how do you excite your customers and provide what they need? These are some important truths if you want a successful company.

The Customer Is Never Wrong

The first thing you should realize is that your customer is never wrong. They aren’t always right but they’re never wrong. It’s important to realize this so that you can cater to the needs of your customers.

Too many corporations stopped listening to the needs of their customers and what happened to them? They are now obsolete, a name of the past. If you don’t want to go the way of those other companies, you’ll never stop listening to your customers. There are a few ways you can ensure you’re listening to your customers.

1. Don’t Assume You Know What Your Customer Wants

Too many companies assume they know what their customer needs. The problem is that customers often don’t know what they need until you show them the final product. It’s your job to stay one step ahead of them so that you can present them with the product they never knew they had to have.

2. People are No Longer Brand Loyal

The new generations are no longer loyal to any one specific brand. It’s all about which companies currently are providing their expectations. If you stop providing for their expectations and stop keeping them intrigued, then they’ll simply move onto the next company who’ll provide that for them.

Don’t get too comfortable in your brand because building a reputable brand is no longer enough. You need to keep their interest by continuing to provide products and solutions to fit their needs.

3. Know Your Customer

Getting feedback from the customer is vital to your success. This is how you’ll truly listen to your customers. You can gain this feedback in several ways:

• Base your decisions about your customer on facts
• Research the trends and marketplace for your customer by

○ Listening to what they say on social media

○ Build their trust in your brand by producing high quality, educational content

○ Give them something for free, such as a free trial

○ Track your customers’ behavior

• Keep an eye on your competition to see what is successful and not so successful for them
• Put yourself in your customer’s environment
• Surround yourself with people who’ll have insights on your customers

In Summary

Customers can tell you what they want but it’s your job to figure out what they need. If you do this, then you can stay one step ahead of them and provide their needs. This is how you’ll delight your customer and keep them interested.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.

How to Change Your Company Culture Even When You’re Not The CEO

Do you feel like your place of work is in need of a culture change? If you’re not in a leadership role, it may feel as though you don’t feel like you have the voice to make a change. However, there are a few things you can do to try and shift the culture at your place of work.

Remain Patient and Persistent

When you’re trying to change the culture in your workplace it’s important to remain patient. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a night. Once you realize there’s a cultural problem, the first course of action is to diagnose the problem.

Finding the root of the problem will allow you to take steps to make improvements. Since leaders in the workplace may be too busy to notice small everyday issues, you can help point them towards those problems.

You may have to get creative to show there’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

Let Your Voice Be Heard 

Use the tools at your disposal to make it clear there’s a culture problem. The best way to showcase a problem is to prove that business is being negatively affected by culture. Use reports and statistics available to you to prove that the business is suffering because of the negative culture.

You could also use statistics to prove a positive change in culture can increase employee productivity. Most leaders are too busy to prioritize implementing a positive culture. However, you can help make them realize just how important it is.

Communication is Key

As with almost everything else in the workplace, communication is key. Be informative, helpful and solution-oriented every step of the way. You will get more followers and believers by being communitive and goal driven.

It’s important to have a plan when implementing trying to have a culture change. The best way to implement this plan is with proper communication thru and thru. Even though it may seem like you don’t have a voice, with proper communication, everyone has a voice.

You Can Make A Difference

You don’t have to be a boss to make a difference in your workplace. With proper communication, you can help implement a culture change.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.

Great Mentors Do More Than Giving Advice- They Ask These Questions

Being a good mentor is very important, but the question of how you become a good mentor is always up for debate. It’s about being so much more than just someone that tells you how they achieved success. One of the most common and important characteristics of all good mentors seems to be their ability to ask insightful and meaningful questions.

Asking questions to your protege’ will allow you to be more insightful and offer better solutions tailored to their specific situation. You will begin to build a genuine relationship with this person where trust can be established and a mutual partnership will grow. Here are some of the questions all the good mentors ask.

1. What Are You Reading?

Finding out about your mentee’s reading habits, interests, hobbies, and other personal questions will help you build a lasting relationship. This will also give you insight into their lives and the way they respond to situations. When your protege knows you are someone they can trust, they will open up to you more allowing you to help them in the best way possible.

2. What Obstacles Are You Facing?

Mentors can provide valuable insight to overcoming obstacles when they understand just want their understudy is going through. Sometimes, the person may not have even thought about their obstacles and need to be prompted to dig deep. This will also give you an opportunity to find their strengths and weaknesses.

3. What Options Have You Come Up With?

Pointing out the exact solution to your protege’s problems isn’t always the best way to go about things. You should allow your mentee to come up with potential solutions to their obstacles. There will be a time when you need to fill in the gaps to trigger a solution, but doing all the work for them will not help them grow.

4. What Do You Want To Be Different In 3 to 5 Years?

This is a great question to help your understudy look forward to the future while determining what they can course correct now to get there. A 3 to a 5-year window is perfect since it’s not so far in the future that they get distracted by how much can change by then.

5. Tell Me More

While this technically isn’t a question, this bold statement will prompt your mentee to provide more information on their opinion or the conclusion they came up with. Biases or blind spots that they couldn’t see before will become more obvious. You as a mentor can help expand their mind around the situation and find new ways to help.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.

Tell Your Company’s Story To Recruit The Right Talent

It can be difficult for small business owners to sell potential employees on the company. While brands such as Google and Amazon have recruits lining up off of name-power alone, your small business will not have that luxury. Being able to sell your company and its culture will go a long way to attracting top recruits to your business.

Let Them In On Your Culture

One of the most important things to remember as a business owner or a leader is why. Why do you wake up every morning excited to provide whatever service it is you provide to your customers? You should be able to easily explain to potential recruits why you and your employees strive to give 100% every day.

While you should be selling the positive values of your workspace environment, there is no need to lie or exaggerate to make yourself look better. Find out what makes your business great and come up with a concise and informative pitch using that information. Lying and exaggerating is just going to hurt your reputation and cause newcomers to be unhappy when they discover all that glitters isn’t gold.

Sell Recruits On Your Employees

The best way to give potential recruits a peek into the culture of your workplace is by your employees. After all, no one knows better about how awesome it is to work for you than the people who do.

Create a recruiting campaign based around the positive culture at your business and use your employees to do so.

You can use quotes, photos, videos or testimonials to try and sell potential employees. Recruits are more likely to trust the people that work for you than you yourself. Showcase why people love working for your company by actually using the people who love working for your company.

Show Them the Benefits

Try not to be obtuse to the fact that while a positive work environment is great, it’s still a job at the end of the day. And what’s the reason most of us seek out jobs in the first place? We simply need a paycheck and the benefits that the job provides.

Don’t be afraid to showcase your benefits during a recruiting campaign. For many people looking for a job, it could be the deciding factor between choosing you and someone else. Let future employees in on what they could be gaining by working for you.

Sell New Recruits on You

More importantly, sell potential recruits on working for you. Make your workplace an inviting one, and people will come.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.

Strong Leaders Know How to Serve Their Team

Traditional leadership and servant leadership are different. A traditional leader exists to sit at the top of the pyramid and hand orders down the line. A servant leader flips the pyramid upside down by sharing their power with the team. They put the needs of the team above their own so that everyone on the team can advance.

Characteristics of a Bad Leader

You’ve no doubt had a bad leader. There are certain characteristics that these types of leaders exhibit. For example, a bad leader gives the answer, “I’m the boss, that’s why” as the only reason for making a change. A servant leader would never say that.

Other things that a bad leader tends to do is play favorites. They obviously give preference to certain people on the team. Also, they will tell you that their door is always open, but it never seems like they are available to you.

Characteristics of Servant Leaders

On the flip side, servant leaders are counter-cultural to the stereotypical boss type. These men and women spend their time finding ways to take care of the team through servanthood.

Some of the characteristics of a servant leader include:

• Readily listening to the ideas of others
• Be a team player
• Lead by example
• Follow through with the things they say

These leaders are inspirational to the team and have a greater ability to partner with them. More is accomplished when teams work together with a leader that comes alongside them and gets in the trenches.

Servant Leaders Make it a Priority to Have an Open Door Policy

Probably one of the things that is most important for servant leaders is to have a “door is always open” policy. So many people will say that this is the case, but the team can’t get face time with them. When a leader actually makes it a priority to talk to those under them, they will know how to serve them better.

If you are a leader, strive to be a servant to others. That is the best way to run a company and be successful.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.