Business Leadership | Thierry Dentice Leadership

Category: Business Leadership (page 2 of 6)

March 12, 2020

How to Build a Successful Team

Being put into a leadership role comes with a lot of responsibility, especially if you do not even have a team first. When building a team as a leader, it’s up to you to find the most qualified individuals to be successful. Even though there is a lot of pressure and the task may seem daunting, there are a few tips you can follow to help build your team:

Letting Others Lead

This may sound counterproductive but, this is a great way to build a strong and successful team. If you already have one or more members on your team, let employees make their own decisions and take the lead on projects. By doing this, you are encouraging them to become more self-sufficient and productive. Giving them the independence to develop their own problem-solving and analytical skills helps you as a leader take on the bigger tasks and trust them to carry out their work.

Determine The Leader in You

Think about what type of leader you are while developing your team. Try to really look into yourself to determine whether you are empathetic, kind, strict, laid back, or anything else that affects the way you lead. Once you know the type of leader you are, you will have a better chance of understanding the type of team members that will thrive under your leadership.

Establish Team Values

When building a team, it’s important to remember what your core values and goals are. Think about the purpose of why you are building this team and what you want to accomplish. Hire members that share the same values and who will work hard to see the team’s goals fulfilled. As your team builds, make sure they are staying true to these values and how they’re job performance effects this.

Focus on Communication

Once you have your team assembled, it’s important to do all you can to keep it functioning like a well-oiled machine. The best way of doing this is through effective communication. Make sure there questions, comments, and concerns are always heard, welcomed, and honored. When a team feels that they are heard, they work much better, On your end, don’t be afraid to voice what needs improvement or to give credit where credit is due. Effective communication can make or break a team’s strength.

February 14, 2020

Master Your EQ to Enhance Your Leadership Capabilities

EQ, or emotional intelligence, has become a popular topic among leaders and managers in recent years for good reason. While this skill was largely overlooked throughout the past several decades, it’s getting a much-needed resurgence while propelling effective leaders to new heights and creating unstoppable teams.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage yourself and your relationships effectively and is closely linked with performance and success. Use the following tips to enhance your skills to more effectively lead your team to success.

Be Self-Aware

Self-awareness is a crucial skill to have as a leader. You must be aware of your actions, how you come across to your team, and how you express yourself in certain situations. In addition to knowing how you will react to situations, you must be aware of what triggers your emotional responses. These aspects together can give you a clear picture of how to best control these actions to lead your team towards a healthier future instead of regressing. Be open to criticisms and use them as a basis to improve and develop your skills.

Be Socially Aware

Social awareness involves a sensitivity to another person’s feelings and emotions as well as your own willingness to be respectful. With more knowledge about how other people may react, you can compose a professional response without batting an eye. If your company implements a new policy that may trigger a negative reaction within your team, you can prepare them in a way that is respectful, ensures their concerns are heard, and you can make the proper adjustments to maintain efficiency.

Facilitate Collaboration

With a higher emotional intelligence, it’s possible to improve day-to-day interactions amongst those on your team. A higher EQ means you can manage larger teams more effectively by helping others work together and to motivate them to work harder in a way that inspires instead of threatens. The happier your team is the more it will show in their work. Once you prove the worth of your EQ to the team as a whole you can teach others to do the same to create a positive and productive workforce that truly values its employees.

January 17, 2020

Leadership Strategies to Grow a Small Business

A leader’s work is never done, especially in a small. There are always new and undiscovered ways to improve your team and your business. As a leader, it’s important to always be open to new strategies that can boost productivity. If you stick to the same ways and routine, it can quickly lead to unengaged and unmotivated. Here are the greatest leadership strategies to grow a small business:

Honest Vision and Communications

Honesty is always the best policy, especially when it comes to improving the performance of your team. When you start a business or are helping to lead one, there is always a vision in mind. To be a great leader, you have to express that vision every day through your work and how you communicate with your team. This means always staying on message and communicating with your how their work is a crucial part of this vision. Be honest when they have questions about their work and always stay on message.

Always Be Realistic

Some leaders will make the detrimental mistake of setting very unrealistic goals for their team. They think shooting for such high standards will motivate them to try harder. It can actually have the opposite effect and lead to employee burnout which can have a negative impact on performance and productivity. Instead, keep the goals achievable, but also a bit challenging. When your team knows the goal will take hard work but isn’t impossible to achieve, they will work harder and improve their performance to help grow your small business.

Give Them Space

The last thing your team needs is a micromanager. Instead of delegating every detail down to the very last memo, give them the chance to prove their work on their own. Your team is not incompetent and they know how to do their work. By giving them space to perform their job, you are empowering them to be great. Of course, always be there for help, questions, comments, and concerns, but at a safe distance to help them flourish on their own. In the end, it can lead to better workflow and a stronger business.

January 10, 2020

Time Management Tips for Leaders

As a leader, one of the greatest tools you can have for better performance and productivity is time. Time can make or break the success of your team. The more responsibility you take on as a leader can easily lead to the loss of time management skills. Going through daily tasks and some things taking more precedence than others, it’s easy to fall behind and get caught up. These are some easy ways to improve time management as a leader:

Set Your Goals First

The first and most important step to managing your time better as a leader is setting your goals first. Think about how you want to improve your team and what tasks need to be done first. Choose the goals that are top priority and stick to those. Not only will this help put a lot into perspective, but it will also help you keep track of your progress and track what needs to happen next.

Create a System

With goals in mind, it’s time to think of a proper system. A good system for time management is the quadrant time-management system. This system divides your tasks into four quadrants based on urgency and importance. Things that are not urgent or important must take the back seat, while other tasks that need your attention first. By creating a system for managing your time, you will have a greater chance of succeeding.

Plan for Interruptions

When planning out your next weeks, days, or months, be sure to set aside time for speed bumps and interruptions. One big mistake many leaders tend to make is not preparing for setbacks, especially when it comes to managing their time. It’s important to not jampack your schedule and leave room for any mishaps along the way. If there happen to be no setbacks of interruptions, then you’re ahead of schedule.

Delegate Your Attention

As a leader, there are many people and tasks that require your attention. When getting back on track and making an effort to manage your time better, delegate your attention. It’s important to get a sense of things that need your immediate attention and what can wait. If your team in bombarding you with questions and interruptions, make it clear that some of the questions will have to wait until you and the rest of the team are back on track. Know what needs your immediate attention first and what can wait. This will make you a master of time management.

October 9, 2019

How Leaders Make the Best Out of Mondays

For the longest time, Mondays have gotten a bad rep. They have often been seen as the mark the end of the weekend and the dreaded start of the workweek. However, Mondays can actually be the best day of the week. When it comes to being a successful leader, they make the best out of Mondays and use it as their most productive day.

Hyping Up the Team

Without a doubt, energies are very low on Mondays. Instead of letting your team sulk and dread the beginning of the week, make it a day they look forward to. A good leader will use Mondays to start the week off right and get their team members pumped. A fun and easy way to do this is to start the day off with a meeting that has complimentary donuts or simply grabbing everyone’s coffee orders. This way, your team members are happy and more likely to have a productive day.

Tackle Challenging Tasks First

It’s easy to let Mondays slip out of the way when you’re looking to just get it over with. Instead of waiting for it to just be over and waiting to be more productive on Tuesday, use Monday to get all of your toughest tasks over with. This way, by using the beginning of the week to handle your biggest challenges, the rest of the week is a breeze. You are able to put more focus on your team and their challenges. This will help your week go by much more efficiently.

Revisit Overall Vision and Purpose

Mondays are the perfect day to revisit your overall goals, vision, and purpose. Instead of just going through the motions and losing sight of the bigger picture, think about your overall objection. It only takes a few minutes to go over strategic planning and goals that align with your vision or purpose. It’s even better to go over with your team of why you all are doing what you do and what the team is working towards. This will not only motivate and inspire your team, but it will also keep the right on track and become much more efficient.

Look at Mondays as your most efficient day and the best opportunity to make your week as productive and efficient as possible.

September 17, 2019

Ways to Foster Belonging at Work

The human sense of connection is incredibly important: it impacts our health and productivity. While it may seem that belonging only matters in our personal lives, research conducted by the leadership development startup BetterUp indicates that workplace belonging is key to employee well-being and organizational functioning. Exclusion can beget both pain and psychological ailments.

BetterUp found, among other statistics, that employees see a 56% increase in job performance when they feel like they belong. Furthermore, belonging benefits workers’ careers, since those who felt highly connected received twice as many raises and were 18 times more likely to be promoted in a six month period. Cofounder and CEO of BetterUp Alexi Robichaux states that the most important assets to your company are your people. “Belonging should be at the heart of every human capital strategy.”

If you’re not sure how to do that, here are some strategies that came out of their research.

Create Allies at Work

A powerful solution to prevent feelings of exclusion is to add an ally to the team. Having an ally can counteract the 25% productivity loss seen in those who didn’t have one. This can be as simple as having someone who acknowledges and includes you. Peers make for very effective allies, and fortunately, there is no hierarchy to allyship: anyone can be an ally.

Encourage Healthy Interactions

Psychologists Jane Dutton and Emily Heaphy coined the term high-quality connections (HQCs) to describe interactions that have a positive impact on our lives and work. In a high-quality connection, each person reciprocates positive regard and care, and as a result, both feel valued. HQCs play an important role in close relationships but also have the power to unlock meaning in less intimate interactions. These interactions can be brief and emotionally neutral, but the key is that they happen regularly and are not negative.

July 30, 2019

Tips on Recovering from Failure

When we think of leaders and successful people, we usually just picture them in their successes. Seldom do we think of their failures. Failure can cause emotional pain and embarrass us, but the silver lining of failure is that it is an opportunity to grow and enrich our lives both personally and professionally.

The first gift of failure is humility. Acknowledging a mistake and/or failure takes us to a place of vulnerability. Admitting to it is powerful and helps us to affirm that we want to do the correct thing, in the case of wrongdoing, or to do better if we fell short. Humility is also a reminder that as humans, we are social and need to rely on one another.

Another gift of failure is compassion. Admitting to mistakes can be unbearably embarrassing, painful, even, but that embarrassment can increase our compassion for others. Research has shown that we tend to focus more on ourselves when we are successful and have achieved a higher status. The vulnerability of failure opens us up to connecting with others. Sally Blount, a contributor to Forbes, puts it best: “It turns out that engaging in the small joys and comaraderies of everyday life is one of the best ways to soothe a chastened ego.”

One of the best ways to recover from failure is to keep an openness to learning. Many people find they learn best through experience, and that includes experiencing failure. Of course, this isn’t easy, as we tend towards safety and comfort. The combination of humility and compassion helps us learn and better connects us with others. While success may increase confidence, it is failure that builds wisdom.

July 10, 2019

Five Things Sucessful Leaders Do Every Day

To be a leader successfully there are a number of qualities one must possess. It can be a balance that once attained is the key to a business running smoothly and prospering. For example, leaders need to be able to make critical decisions that not everyone agrees with while still empowering their employees and making them feel confident in their own positions. While maintaining this balance there are five habits that become natural to leaders in any industry.

Making Big Decisions (Quickly)

Leaders are counted on to make things happen. This means that most decisions fall to them, or at the very least they are always informed of the why’s and how’s someone else reached a critical decision. Often times there are choices to be made quickly and it’s a leaders job to keep the momentum going and make the big decision confidently. This comes with experience and skills acquired over time because while some would struggle to weigh all options, leaders are thinking a few steps ahead and able to produce an answer or solution quickly.

Challenging People

To get the best work leaders know how to challenge people while instilling confidence in them. This means knowing the capabilities of the employees and putting their minds to the task at hand. It’s important that everyone is always learning and by continually delegating and keeping people thinking, leaders allow the work environment to stay positive and fresh.

Providing Feedback

Everyone wants to feel appreciated. A successful leader is going to let their employees know that they are paying attention. By providing feedback, the relationship between the two naturally gains more trust and the chance for miscommunication narrows.

Allude Positive Attitude

Successful leaders are very aware of the benefits of a positive work space and they seek ways to improve morale. When people see their leader alluding a positive attitude it causes stability and inspiration. Everyone should feel like they contribute to the goals of the company, and leaders make sure to keep the energy motivating.

Keep Learning

Finally, to stay successful one must always be evolving. To stop learning is to stop growing and that’s the last thing a successful leader will let happen. While inspiring and teaching others, leaders must continue to educate themselves. By staying knowledgeable about trends, news, and any other statistics that can affect business the leader can be sure to also continue being a teacher to others that look to them for help and support.

May 16, 2019

What You Can Learn from Great Leaders

The old paradigm of leadership that prizes title, office size and formal authority is quickly fading away. The major shift is taking place on the mental plane – that is to say – leadership is increasingly becoming more of a mindset and less about package of over bloated prerequisites commonplace among some circles of senior executives.

This model seeks to incorporate a balance of strategic and emotional intelligence. As of late, active influencers in all industries across social media platforms are preaching the gospel of what really helps individuals and brands succeed through progressive forms of impact. These leaders express sincere devotion to simple principals like empathy, integrity, trust, compassion, service, and an urge to see others succeed.

Leaders Bring Out The Leader In Others

Titles of nobility are less important than franchising a leadership model based on mentorship at work, with family, and in the respective community. The best leaders on the planet practice growing other leaders at a much quicker pace than the competition. Doing more to create and innovate optimizes every facet of the balance between the professional and the personal. This might look like extending credit to winning team members they excel. Seeking opportunities to collaborate encourages an atmosphere of trust – the building block for growth.

Great Leaders Are Inspired And Instill Inspiration

A glance at the profiles of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Nelson Mandela, Rembrandt, and Picasso illustrates the value of truly being inspired by a passionate pursuit of higher ideals. As a result, they became incredibly inspiring to those around them. Former employees at Apple attest the fact that Steve Jobs wasn’t exactly a “nice” person. However, many will agree that his dedication to innovation with Apple’s products and services created die-hard reverence for the company’s internal culture, prompting many to seek employment at the corporate giant. The position of CIO should be reworked to mean Chief Inspirational Officer. Leaders teach us to be inspirational in all undertakings.

Making study of the characteristics common to great leaders can reveal a wealth of practical insights useful across a vast array of talents, skill sets, and professional endeavors. Leadership is about recognizing that crisis is the norm and not exception. They teach us to address problems from a position of fearless strength.

April 18, 2019

What Successful Leaders do Differently

In today’s business world, becoming an effective and successful leader requires skill building in areas such as integrity, empathy, and the setting of healthy personal boundaries. Fortunately, learning to strengthen skills in these areas is something that anyone can do with enough effort; it may require time and hard work to master leadership skills, it is true, but the results can be truly life-changing. Here are just a few of the qualities that set successful leaders apart from the pack, and why they matter more than ever.

Great leaders admit when they’re wrong

Anyone who has had a manager who refuses to own up to their mistakes knows that an irresponsible leader quickly sinks company morale. Being an effective leader doesn’t just mean keeping one’s word when times are tough, and deadlines are looming, it also means admitting when one has chosen the wrong course of action. Without taking personal responsibility for mistakes, there is little guarantee that the same problems will not arise again and again in the future, and that is an outcome that can spell disaster for a business. Indeed, to be a truly successful leader in the long term, a sense of personal responsibility is a must-have skill.

Great leaders don’t confuse being nice with being a pushover

Unable to cope with the idea of being disliked, some leaders want to accommodate the demands of everyone they meet, despite the fact that their need to please others may be undermining their ability to lead effectively. Focused on being the office “nice guy,” these leaders too often burn themselves out by taking personal responsibility for making everyone around them happy. While kindness is an essential quality of effective leadership, it’s important to recognize the difference between caring about others and becoming their personal doormat.

Great leaders empathize with employees

As anyone who has seen the negative effect of a high employee turnover rate on a company’s reputation, employee satisfaction isn’t just about making a good salary or negotiating a competitive benefits package. Without empathetic leaders, simply put, a workplace becomes a toxic place for everyone involved. Just as being a pushover is a detrimental quality in a leader, a manager who does not empathize with their employees will often push talented workers towards better opportunities at other companies. For these reasons, knowing the difference between setting healthy boundaries and setting impossibly rigid boundaries is an essential skill for a truly successful leader.

While it can feel intimidating to begin the path towards mastery of interpersonal and leadership skills, the truth is that top-notch communication abilities in business can be developed with time and dedication. Becoming a great leader doesn’t happen overnight, but fortunately, the personal rewards of a journey towards becoming a great leader are more than worth the effort. For those willing to take the high road towards business success, that is life at its best!

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