motivation | Thierry Dentice Leadership

Tag: motivation (page 2 of 2)

August 1, 2016

8 Tips to Successfully Lead in Today’s Market

1. Two-way conversations
A great leader always communicates in a way where he/she allows for two way communication with other co-workers or employees. Conveying information in a concise but articulate manner is essential when it comes to highlighting success, receiving feedback, and making strides for improvement.

2. Attitude is everything
Maintaining a positive but realistic attitude both shapes your leadership in a conducive manner while also setting a great example for your team and your company. As you are a solid representation of the organization, making sure your attitude encourages others is essential.

3. Growing talent
Viewing your employees as valuable resources to be nourished and developed instead of business transactions will have two useful outcomes for the company. On one hand, these employees will be grateful that the company is expanding their skill set (webinars, seminars, workshops), and will directly become of more use to the company.

4. Motivate others
Providing a fair amount of emotional support for your team will incentivize performance in order for them to excel in every aspect of their day to day jobs. Some ways to motivate others include encouraging them to challenge their skillsets, acknowledging their successful efforts in a public space, and organizing events for team bonding.

5. Remain impartial
Try to your best to avoid engaging in any favoritism with any co-worker at the office. Remember to evaluate an individual based on his/her performance, how they challenge themselves, and the ways they want to improve the company’s mission. Showing impartial respect to others is the best form of effective leadership.

6. Set the standard
Establishing your legacy at the company is most effective when you lead with actions that support your strengths. Matching or exceeding the work ethic shown by your team members will also create an environment that promotes excellence and dedication to your craft.

7. Decisiveness
In addition to not allowing external factors to affect your decision making, be sure to take the time to support any decision you make with sound logic throughout the thought process. A successful leader can always support any decision with rationale.

8. Educate Yourself
A true leader never stops learning or challenging him/herself to understand the latest market trends or ways to improve the efficiency of a certain internal process. Whether it is reading the journal everyday or attending seminars on a monthly basis, leaders are always looking for ways to improve themselves.

With all this in mind, processing and implementing these tips will also allow you to become the type of leader that people not only admire, but would want to emulate in the future. Leadership is not only about making decisions for the team. It is strongly based on the notion to create an environment of mutual respect to produce a cohesive work environment for everyone.

July 1, 2016

Top 3 Skills of Exceptional Leaders

The book titled “Traction” by Gino Wickman focuses on how to grow your company or “scale up” when the opportunity to expand presents itself. While research has shown that companies struggling to grow or expand find it difficult to break into their growth phase, gathering information from other leaders or entrepreneurs is a key step in order to assess what the appropriate steps are moving forward.

In addition to the insight given by Ken Dunn, here are some tips that any aspiring leader or current manager should actively implement in their day to day tasks. With this in mind, the below are three essential skills that managers, leaders, and other upper management officials need to be aware of as business expansion ensues.

Keep it simple
The best managers and leaders should have the useful skill of framing a very complex issue in simple terms. Though a skill that often times take months or years to develop, the right environment can help any leader acquire this important quality.

As these leaders will be required to guide a team throughout this new process, conveying intricate processes and difficult situations in plain language will not only help everyone comprehend what is going on around them, but will also make the complicated seem easy to understand.

Work with your team
Creating a two way working relationship with each of your teammates allows for both an easy information flow while also funneling growth to empower development. As a manager or leader, it is your job to find strengths in your subordinates in order to decipher how to best expand this skillset to the next step.

Each employee on your team has a different set of strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement, and it is essentially the manager primary goal to improve the subordinate in every way he/she can. As this is a huge part of your role, providing constructive criticism and a strategic approach to rectify this You can learn from everyone you manage.

Structure
The next step from the previous tip, managers also need to set goals for career-related growth as to make sure all their skills are properly utilized. Improving skills are in the best interest of both the employee and the company, and effectively bridging the two is vital for overall growth.

June 1, 2016

5 Ways to Become a More Communicative Leader

More so than simply just speaking in an effective or polite manner, effective communication is based on qualities related to understanding the other party, active intelligence, and most importantly, emotional intelligence. Similar to what or how you say something can attribute or deter from one’s character, keeping in mind that leadership is indeed a privilege that will allow you to not only lead a team to its full potential, but is also a challenge or a goal that you should try to achieve everyday.

Be Mentally Present
As you go throughout the day from meeting to meeting, connecting with your team even for a few minutes a day can be a difficult task when leaders are emotionally drained. Regardless of how tired or completely worn out you may be, maintaining engagement in either work or personal conversations for a certain amount of time will create a more comfortable social environment for your team.

Questions
Fostering an open, comfortable atmosphere on the team produces efficient, intelligent communication throughout various members on the team. Building a great team with support, proper training, and open-mindedness is one of the fundamental qualities of a great leader, regardless of industry, field or department.

A useful way to guide a conversation centered around an exchange of ideas is to lead a conversation with a specific topic or goal in mind. This way, you can better decipher the strengths and areas of improvement moving forward.

Let others speak
Actively listening complements asking the right questions to initiate a healthy, robust social environment geared towards an exchange of ideas, opinions and strategic approaches to a certain problem. During the conversation, make an effort to not think about what you’re going to say–instead, take the time to let others lead the conversation while you actively listen.

Emotional intelligence
Although this is often deemed as unnecessary or frivolous, learning how to utilize emotional intelligence in your day to day leadership tasks is imperative to long-term success on your team. Exhibiting qualities such as self-awareness, discipline and empathy all collectively shape a leader who is prepared for any positive or unexpected business situations.

Positivity
Remember, you are the face of the team. Even if you are very stressed about a business deal, meeting, or client, be sure to stay calm during anything that may come your way. Along with delivering said words with a relaxed tone, using appropriate language throughout this process will also ease the nerves of your team members.

February 10, 2016

Utilizing Open-mindedness in Leadership

Intelligence is without a doubt one of the most fundamental properties that help others strive to be better while simultaneously improving the company’s overall mission through knowledge. Unfortunately, it has been a common trend for highly intelligent CEO’s to make a set of mistakes that ultimately have led to the downfall of their companies. To illustrate this point, some of the most global, well known digital tech companies have declined in both popularity and their profit margins by simply neglecting to maintain a certain type of open-mindedness that is essential for business plans.

Based on a study by Professor Finkelstein at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, the below key points are some accurate ways to ensure that your business flourishes from an open-minded perspective that could allow for an overall clearer vision. The following points touch upon how to rectify any intentional or unintentional habits leaders in upper management may be acting on, which can be detrimental to your establishment.

Room for improvement

While taking pride in your work is salient in terms of progress, be mindful that this is one quality that has the potential of spiraling out of control fairly easily. Leaders that develop a strong obsession or become particularly entranced with specific concepts that they have created, statistically show a high level of contentment, therefore not allowing them to question their current state. With this in mind, leaders often firmly believed that the success created will never decline.

Dont dwell on the past

One common trend among company leaders is that when the financial or creative situation of their brand was not performing too well, it resulted in these CEO’s or other members of higher up management to recreate old plan of actions or strategies. Although many of these strategies were not necessarily pertinent or beneficial to the business endeavors at the time, leaders were convinced they would result in success simply because it was effective in the company’s recent history.

Company first

Sometimes if the founder of a company or a CEO becomes too attached to the establishment, this tends to be counterproductive, with these leaders tending to focus in on securing the brand’s image instead of emphasizing transparency. Thus, it is actually fairly common for upper management to get caught up in their work that they often forget to envision plans in accordance with the company’s goals or missions.

January 4, 2016

How To Effectively Motivate Employees

In spite of the fact that leaders maintain various practices to effectively demonstrate or inspire leadership in others, there are some basic rules as to how leaders can successfully cultivate and further increase productivity in their employees. While leaders come in all management styles and personalities, following these simple guidelines is key to sustaining workflow by focusing on the needs of the team or specific employee instead of letting bias or partiality interfere with what’s at hand.

Leave Your Emotions At The Door

Easily one of the most unprofessional tendencies of poor leaders is to act on impulse instead of actually understanding the goal or overall point of the task. Letting your emotions dictate the way you lead your team or conduct business in the workplace is not only unprofessional, but also is very counterproductive. As a leader, it is your responsibility to rectify whatever situation occurred and continue to implement best methods and practices to ensure fluid workflow among the team. By getting angry and yelling, it makes your employees feel uncomfortable and unapproachable which isn’t good for anyone.

Use Honey Instead of Vinegar

Kindness is a super important, useful tool that allows both the employer to reach to level of a well-functioning leader and the employee to feel appreciated in the work they are fulfilling. According to a U.K. study, companionship and recognition are more important than even high salaries in promoting employee loyalty, which in turn, can be seen in increased productivity across the board. Although expressions of anger may have a few benefits, holistically speaking, studies have found that negative emotions generally cause managers to be seen as less effective, while maintaining a level of unapproachability and emotional distress for their subordinates. Little things such as simply asking how someone is doing personally and attempting to listen to what the person is saying actually affects people a lot more than you would think.

Take Responsibility

This tool is a little difficult for many leaders or managers, as subordinate employees are easy to blame because of their lack of positional power. While this something that happens across companies around the world, it is important to note that as a team leader, whatever goes wrong is technically on your shoulders. Granted that when your team excels, you often receive the credit, there should be no question that the leader of the team assumes all responsibility for the work done well, poorly or not at all.

Perks

Asking what the perks are of a company can sometimes show how much they care or are willing to retain the talent that allows them to produce a great deal of revenue. According to Sabine Sonnentag from the University of Konstanz in Germany, exercise, yoga, breaks from work,and more strict boundaries between work and home can reduce job stress and increase employee well-being and engagement. By providing simple perks such as yoga in the office, discounted gym passes or fresh produce in the kitchen, it motivates employees’ physical/mental state, while highlighting the fact that the company cares about their health. Learn more on how to improve leadership from HBR and Forbes.

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