To Be A Leader

We have all worked for people who when you need them seemed never to be available. If you want to be a leader, you need to be available to the people you lead whenever they need you. You can’t come to work when you feel like it. You can’t take long lunch breaks at anytime you wish. You can’t ignore their phone calls or email requests for decisions. You can’t shut your office door or hide in a coffee shop to do your own work while the people who depend on you starve for direction, decisions, and issue resolution.

Why is this so important? In the past, what have you done when you can’t get your questions answered? You either don’t do anything or you work on a lower priority. How can you accomplish what you want to accomplish if your workforce is working on lower priority work? Being available to your workforce is critical to your success.

You must realize even though you are the “boss” you are a servant to the people who report to you. If THEY are not successful YOU will not be successful and you have no one to blame, but yourself.

Tips for successful leadership:

1. Be at work when you are supposed to be at work. If your hours are 8-12 and 1-5 then be there. If your lunch break is 12-1 then make sure you stay within that time. If something delays your 12 o’clock lunch start time you take a short lunch that day. You must be available at 1 o’clock.

2. Answer your phone. You don’t like interruptions? Too bad. You want to be a leader then be a leader.

3. Answer your emails, every bloody one of them. I looked over the shoulder of a guy who was a supervisor just before they fired him and he had over a thousand unopened emails. Not every email is important, but they need to be looked at and a decision made on every one of them.

4. If you don’t like making decisions you are not a leader. Leaders want to hear suggestions using the collective intellect of their team, make a decision, and move on. If you like to make decisions without input from others I’m sorry, but you are too stupid to be a leader.

5. Your job as a leader is to make sure that everyone on your team has what they need to do a good job for you.

6. If you don’t like to work through problems, you are definitely not leadership material.

7. Make sure you have a leadership personality. Not everyone can or should be a leader.

8. Leadership is hard work. If you think it will be easier “at the top” do not apply. You will fail.

9. Be an adult. Drama is for children who want candy. Anger is of no use in leadership.

10. Appoint and train a second-in-command. Your team needs to be successful when you are not there. You will need time off and a vacation now and then. Yes, you are training your replacement and if that bothers you see item 7 above. When you return do not chastise your second-in-command for the decisions they made in your absence. Live with his/her decisions and make the most of it.

11. Never chastise people for making mistakes. We all make them. Pull the team together and work out a solution to overcome any difficulties the error has created. Your people must not be afraid to admit they have made a mistake.