Business Mastery

You’ll find the key for establishing leadership skills in your self within this article. Enjoy the material. We have found that most people equate managing and leading. They often interchange the terms managing and leading. Of course, in order to be an effective manager you have to be a leader. However, the opposite is not a case. One of the essential skills of management is leading, but leading and managing are not the same.

Think being a leader and being a manager are exactly the same?

Interesting question, but it’s not asked very often because people believe they already know managing and leading are the same concept. “They are the same thing,” most people believe. Particularly in a business environment, people think of their managers as the leaders. If you happen to be a member of an accounting department, for example, your manager is also your leader. And, it’s true. Leaders are often the ones promoted into managers. Also true that high-performing individuals are the ones getting promotions into management jobs. Great performing workers are not always your best management candidate, but that’s another story.

Is it crucial you have leadership skills to be a manager?

It’s certainly true if the manager happens to be a poor leader it’s a quick path to failure. You can’t be an effective manager if you don’t have great leadership skills. Imagine a situation where there is some sort of problem or crises on the job. The normal reaction during a problem is to look towards the boss. It’s expected she will provide leadership in that situation. If the manager has poorly developed leading skills, you’ll find the probability of success of solving a problem go way down. In most cases the workers want to focus on their job and leave problem-solving to their managers. They want and expect their manager to be leaders in those situations.

In general, people gravitate towards leaders. The majority of people like the security and the knowledge of knowing that someone else is in charge. They like knowing that they have a leader that is looking after them. As a result, they will always look to authority.

Is it possible that you could be a leader and not be a manager?

Of all the questions we’ve asked in this article, this is perhaps the best one of the bunch. In a word, yes. Your goal should be to have more people willing and able to lead than just your managers. Whenever a manager falls short one of the other leaders can pick up the ball. If in above example, one of the other people on the team, provided they possessed the ability to lead, could have easily picked up the ball and solve the issue.

Certainly the leading skill is a vital component of management. We have learned that leading and management are different. You must have excellent leading capabilities in order to be a highly successful manager. You want to have as many leaders as you can even if they’re not your managers.

Generally, you always want to have a majority of your employees able to step up as leaders from time to time. As it turns out good leaders know when it’s the right time to step up.

We have developed a great new set of tools to help. Take a look at our subsidiary company.

One of my prospective clients had scheduled a brand-new restaurant opening day last week. But, it did not happen.

All the employees had been hired and trained and showed up for their first day to serve customers.

Hordes of anxious new patrons were lined up outside the front doors.

The local press had sent a camera crew and reporter planning to publish the success of the opening day.

But, also present was an official of the state’s health department. She had a notice in her hand requiring the restaurant to remain closed until a required document was filed properly.

The owner told me that he was very surprised because one of his senior management had the responsibility to complete the required documentation. In addition, that manager was his son-in-law and one of the restaurants owners.

When and if the outcome will be successful remains unclear.

Sadly, this incident reminded me of how many people believe that responsibility for something means that it will be done.

Actually, there’s very little connection between having the responsibility for something and things actually getting done as expected or hoped for.

Most of the time and individual’s areas of responsibility are delineated in their position descriptions or job descriptions.

Simply because someone has the responsibility, as outlined in their position description, doesn’t mean they’ll actually perform the job as you would have anticipated.

The best way to think about this is to envision a group of people with the same responsibilities.

That group could be your salesforce,  your file clerks or your warehouse personnel. People in those kinds of jobs, like schoolteachers, all have similar responsibilities. You know however, their actual job performance varies widely. Individually they will range from in competent to magnificent.

What the restaurant owner required and what you must always insist on is accountability.

In simple terms accountability means a culture of people giving their word and actually keeping it. Everyone else’s role is to insist people finish what they have agreed to do.

Several of my clients have asked me recently, “why do so many businesses fail?”

I’m certain you know at least 80% of new businesses fail within the first five years. My own observations are the percentage is likely to be optomistic.

I certainly know that the number of people who have tried and failed at starting a new online business is dramatically worse than those numbers.

The simple answer is running a business is a very complicated affair. It’s much more difficult to run a business then say, being a finish carpenter. I make that remark with the greatest of respect for carpenters and other trade people.

The point is, the success rate for people in trades is very high. Tradespeople, whether they be carpenters, project managers, doctors, accountants or anything similar are programmed to be successful. All of these professionals received significant training in school and on the job which assures most of them success.

The are very few places where anyone can go to learn the art and science of business ownership. Certainly you won’t learn how to run a successful business by giving a MBA from a prestigious business school. Those degrees will position you well to be a highly paid employee, but what you’ve learned in school doesn’t transfer to real life, bottom line business success.

There is one group of business people that do enjoy a higher than normal success ratio. Those are franchisees. Their success is assured by the system’s processes and procedures developed by the franchisor.

I have found, that like the franchise system, there are three critical elements of business success.

These three vital components are;

1. A management system
2. Managers skilled in business essential skills
3. A winning state of mind

It’s these three components that I’ve built my entire business at Leriot around.

With an old friend and partner of mine used to comment that trust was like oxygen. The meaning is when either one leaves the room, people suffocate.

Trust is becoming more and more important in business today. It is generally connected with the ease of information gathering.

Over the last several years the Internet has become a more reliable source for information than the traditional news media. This means individuals can get high quality information from the Internet easier and more reliably than they can from television, radio or printed publications.

When asked “where do you go for news about a company” almost half responded they use online search engines or online news sources. Newspapers, magazines and TV were distant alternative choices.

Bottom line is that no company can rely on controlling information, protecting their brand, keeping a low profile nad focusing on profits.

Regardless of their desire to hide from view the Internet makes this impossible.

Now companies need to maintain a high level of transparency, focus on an engagement with their environment, and have a clear purpose behind their profit-making.

Maintaining a high level of trust with everyone is essential. Recent statistics show while it may take 5 to 7 messages to get a prospect to believe and take action, it will only take one or two pieces of negative information for a customer to cease doing business with a distrusted enterprise.

One of the primary responsibilities of any team leader is the establishment of the team’s culture.

Think of culture as being the rules of behavior.

The easiest way to think of this concept is to draw a horizontal line on a piece of paper. Put  “Jail” at one end of the line and “Country Club” at the other end.

If you have a jail kind of rule set, everything is spelled out in advance and everything is “by the book”. On the other hand if you’re running a country club, you have a laissez-faire type of atmosphere where anything goes.

Next, think about the behavior of your team. In this context the team can be the entire company, a department within the company, a separate project or a short-term initiative.

If you’re the leader of any of these teams, then you have the primary responsibility for establishing told “rules of the road”.

So think about the culture that you have established for your team and put a mark or an area somewhere along the line. You may have put it way over next to the word jail or next to the word country club.

Wherever you have placed your mark is the indication of how you would like the entire team to behave. And, wherever it is that’s fine as long as that’s what you want. Point being, you’ll attract employees that like that environment and you will repel those who dislike it.

Neither of these extremes works very well for a high performing and well oiled team atmosphere.

It’s much better to have a situational rules set in place.

With this senario you need to have a clearly defined rulebook that states how various situations will be acted upon.

As an illustration, you may decide to have safety adherence very strict and over near the word jail. On the other hand, when you have a company party going on, that may call for behavior closer to the country club spectrum.

In summary, think about the messaging you’re giving to your team. Your own personal behavior on a situational basis will dictate where the teams behavior will fall.