7 Simple Tips That Will Turn You Into a Powerful Leader

You don't have to be in a position of authority to be a leader. Conversely, just because you have authority doesn't mean that people will follow you. You must be a leader to get others to follow you.

There are many books on leadership. They can have lots of great examples and in-depth explanations, but sometimes you just need something simple to help you focus on the essentials. This article intends to do just that. These are the habits that will help you and your team achieve great things if you focus on them.

1. Goals
   Make it simple and easy for your team to understand the mission and to understand their part in achieving it.
   
   • Concise Goals. Keep them simple and easy to understand.
     
   • Focus your team on as few goals as possible.
   • Communicate the team's goals often and through various means (team meetings, individual meetings, emails, posters, slogans). And then do it some more.
     
   • Track progress on goals.
   • Involve team players in tracking the goals so that they own the results.
     
   
   
2. Motivating People
   What you reward gets done. It's that simple.
   
   • Incent team players to do the tasks that are most critical for reaching the team's goals. Make sure the rewards are meaningful to people. Understand each player and what they want from their job and in life. That's how you'll know how to reward them.
   • Praise, Thank, and Recognize big and small contributions by individuals. Do this often and then do it some more.
   • Set High Expectations. People will live UP to or DOWN to the expectations you set. Set them high and you're saying, "I believe in your ability to do great things!"
   • Empower people by delegating responsibility.
     
   • Celebrate team accomplishments often.
   • Encourage Fun. Make the work place a fun place to be. Yes, work needs to get done but short fun breaks can make all the difference in the culture of your team.
   • Pride. Foster a sense of pride in your team. As a team you could establish a mascot, create a team chant, and have a meeting that is focused solely on each individual's strengths and the team's overall strengths.
     
3. Walk Your Talk
   You need to practice what you preach. This is how you establish trust and credibility.
   
   • Model the Way by participating in the team's tasks as much as your position allows.
   • Be Honest. Deliver on your promises. Actions speak louder than words.
     
   • Challenge Yourself. Do your best (and then some) just like you ask your team to do their best.
   • Speak Up. Just like your team members sometimes need to let you know what they've done in order for you to be able to recognize and praise them. They, in turn, need to know what you've been working on and what you've accomplished. So find ways to communicate this, modeling this key behavior.
     
   • Stay Sharp. You need to be competent for others to follow you. If you're not improving, you're falling behind. Always be learning and keep on top of the latest skills, technology, and knowledge in your field.
     
4. Inspire through a combination of
   
   • Unwavering Positive Future Vision
     
   • Commitment to Improve things along the way that will make that positive vision a reality.
   • Ability to Bootstrap as necessary when resources are tight.
     
5. Process Power
   Good process is like having a high performance machine. Sloppy process makes things fall apart. So be sure to establish these key habits with your team.
   
   • Establish Routines. Do this for the team and also work with each individual to come up with their own high productivity routines. These are routines that dictate what work is done when.
     
   • Establish Processes for all the tasks that are done repeatedly. It takes time to set up at first, but after that it will pay off in saved time and less errors. Processes describe how work is done and might involve systems for doing the work.
     
   • Task Assignment. As much as possible, assign tasks according to the strengths of each teammate.
     
6. Change
   Embrace change by seeking it out. This will tread a path for your teammates to follow.
   
   • Change Routines Quarterly. Look for better ways to achieve the team's goals.
   • Take Risks. Don't be afraid of failure. No one ever reaches great heights without a few failures.
   • Learn. Learn as a team from failures. "How can we improve it the next time?"
     
   • Encourage team members to take smart risks too by making it safe to fail. Focus on learning from past experiences and building upon them to find better solutions.
     
7. Advocacy
   Support your team and they'll support you.
   
   • Promote your team members. Make sure others outside your team know about the individual team members' successes. You want your team members to excel and even graduate away from your team possibly. Don't worry. If your team is great there will be plenty of others who will want to join! This natural turnover of team members is like the renewal of cells in your body. It is necessary and healthy.
     
   • Promote your team. It's your job to market the great accomplishments of your team in order to get the rewards, recognition, and resources that your team deserves.
   • Fight for the most important resources and changes that will benefit your team and the organization overall. Remember to pick your battles wisely.

What else do you think is essential for a good leader? Got a good story? Please share in the comments. We'd love to hear from you!

Written on 11/7/2007 by K. Stone, the author of of Life Learning Today, a blog about daily life improvements. Republished on 5/14/2011.

Photo Credit: The U.S. Army

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How to Turn Your Dream Into a Plan In Five Simple Steps

I’m sure you have plenty of dreams for your life. They might bubble away at the back of your mind. They might loom in your thoughts all day. They might even keep you awake at night.

Dreams can be powerful, encouraging and even a bit scary. A dream alone, though, isn’t going to get you far.

What you need is a plan.

And if that sounds too boring, think of it this way: if you want to actually have that dream, a plan is the map that gets you there.

Here are five steps for turning that vague dream into a concrete plan:

Step #1: Write Down Your Dream
How many of your dreams have you actually written down?

Perhaps the idea of committing your dreams to writing is a little frightening. Don’t resist doing it. The act of putting something into words on paper (or in a computer document) suggests that you’re committing to it – and this can be very powerful in helping you eventually achieve that dream.

Even better, when you write something down, you’re forced to think it through. That vague dream of “have lots of money” has to become something firmer – perhaps “make $100,000/year” or “have $200,000 in the bank”.

Step #2: Brainstorm Some Possibilities
Whatever your dream, there’s more than one way to reach it. For instance, if you want to make lots of money, you could:

• Change careers to something more lucrative
  
• Work harder in your current job to get a promotion
  
• Go back to college and study for a degree
  
• Start up your own business as an entrepreneur
  
• Save up money and put it into a high-interest account
  
• Marry someone rich
  
• Buy a winning lottery ticket
  

There are lots of possibilities (and I hope you can see that some of those ones are a bit more realistic than others!) When you’re brainstorming, include all the ideas that come to mind – even ones which seem silly or impractical. You might find that a “stupid” idea leads you on to a really good one.

Step #3: Pick One Clear Goal
Once you’ve figured out some possibilities, come up with one clear goal. You might decide, for instance, that your goal is to change to a particular career which will give you a $80,000/year paycheck.

Look for a goal which is perhaps challenging, but achievable. There’s no point in picking a goal which you’re convinced you can’t really manage – that’s just going to put you back in the world of dreams, where you constantly think about a better future without taking any action towards getting there.

Step #4: Give Yourself a Deadline
It’s much easier to hit your goals when you’re working towards a deadline.

Again, you want to be realistic here – but don’t be afraid to challenge yourself a little. If you’ve got a really big goal, you might want to look two – five years ahead. With smaller goals, you can probably achieve them within a year.

With the example of changing career, you might decide that three years is a realistic timeframe. It’s often helpful to tie your deadline to a particular event – perhaps your 40^th birthday or Christmas 2014.

Step #5: Write Down the Steps to Get You There
And now we’re onto the plan itself. This is where you really get into the nitty-gritty and start turning that dream into something real.

With big goals, it’s often helpful to work backwards. So:

• What are the job requirements of that new career?
  
• How can you achieve them (e.g. take night classes)?
  
• Are there any pre-requisites for that (e.g. you need some money to pay for the classes)?
  
• How can you do that?
  

You should be able to get to a clear step which lets you move forwards from where you are, such as “save $20/week for six months”.

If you have any steps which you don’t know how to complete, try breaking them down further. Figure out exactly what you need to do to achieve your dream – and you’ve got a plan which really can change your life.

So – what’s your dream? And what’s the first step on your plan? Let us know in the comments.

Written on 5/20/2011 by Ali Luke. Ali writes a blog, Aliventures, about leading a productive and purposeful life (get the RSS feed here). As well as blogging, she writes fiction, and is studying for an MA in Creative Writing.

Photo Credit: Drew Coffman

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