One of the great traits of a leader is the ability to keep their team focused on the mission, while still allowing everyone to excel and have fun at the same time. The ability to ask for innovation along the way without anyone getting side tracked in coming up with new ideas that they deviate from doing anything else that they become disruptive or counter-productive to the task is one of the most important leadership skills you can have.

It’s very easy to find your team in a diffused state of affairs. And it’s equally as easy to make the mistake of not giving them the proper guidance that causes team member to invent the wrong way to do something, creating inefficiencies and slowing down the project or the production rate. Good leadership skills make use of diplomacy in building the team’s strength – diplomacy being the art of letting others get your way.

When it comes to working with teams, a leader needs to realize that there is only one leader but that a confidence must be instilled in the rest of the team so that they feel comfortable in making decisions, and making the right decision for the right reasons. The idea is always to find ways on how to be more efficient and while continuous guidance is a plus in getting things done the way you want them to, it can be time consuming. Building your team’s confidence will save you time, and while they may occasionally make mistakes, they will also learn from those mistakes.

If your middle managers and employees are afraid to make a mistake because of the fear that they will end up losing their job or credibility with you, then they will stop making decisions and that will put the burden back on you and make it impossible to delegate properly. This in turn would cause you to lose focus on your own tasks, and the whole team could quickly fall into chaos.

So in managing a team and needing to keep them focused on the task at hand to ensure optimum efficiency, never forget to rely on some of the most basic of your leadership skills – offer guidance, be clear in communicating what you need to be done in the job and build their confidence as individuals and as a team.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

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Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

It’s that age old question of who’s better – men or women? Regardless of gender, each person has a different set of beliefs, principles and skills that determine what kind of leader they would be. Several Fortune 500 companies now boast of female CEOs, women run and get elected into office, but they haven’t managed to crack the glass ceiling.

Nell Merlino, president of Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, a nonprofit group that supports the growth of female-owned businesses, believes that a reason why females stumble is because others think they are too maternal and essentially not one of the leadership skills people value or like. Merlino said “Men and women manage very differently. Women want to get it right. It’s not that men are out there to get it wrong, but you can bet that when Bill Gates makes a decision, he isn’t fretting about what people will think of that decision.”

A womans’s desire in the office is to be liked on top of being respected, adding another roadblock to success in the C-Suite. A vast majority of highly qualified females don’t have political allies to propel, inspire and protect them through the perils of dealing with upper management. Most females believe that hard work alone will help them succeed in turning heads, with 77% insisting that putting in long hours, not connections, account for their advancement.

Many executives would say that one of the most important leadership skills that a lot of working females lack is not thinking big enough from the beginning. They fail to think on a global scale from the start and narrow themselves to local opportunities. By having a limited vision of themselves and their companies, females tend to shortchange themselves and don’t pursue opportunities overseas.

It’s not saying that women lack the leadership skills necessary to become successful in the C-Suite, it’s all about learning how to cope with what disadvantages they face. In fact, Merlino says “Women make for natural mentors, but they need to be better at also asking themselves how they can key into a company’s problem and what they can bring to the table. If the economy has taught us anything, it’s that it no longer is just ‘business as usual’. If it’s not going to be us women in the C-suite, then who else is going to stimulate this economy? I believe that it’s high time we develop a level of confidence, stop looking over our shoulders for approval and just go for it.”

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

If leadership to you is about having a combination of skills, behaviors and traits that would allow individuals to have an influence over others, then the answer to whether or not there’s a way to train new leaders is likely “no.” But if you see it as the combination of tangible knowledge and real-life approaches, then the answer is “yes”.

In leadership training and development programs, the standard definition tends to be the first one, with very few giving any bit of importance to the element in the second definition. Year after year, programs have focused on coaching and mentoring, leading teams, managing conflict and collaboration, creating engagement and commitment, awareness of your own behavior and style, and dealing with power and politics.

Although those areas are useful in training leaders, it’s a very narrow part of leadership. This flies in the face of what CEOs argue constitutes a good leader – someone who can gather the firm’s resources successfully, repeatedly and in different ways that can enable the organization to make money in a constantly changing industry. Successful leadership depends on the manager’s ability to create and capture value and profits, showing the ultimate measures of a leader’s success.

If you’re a senior manager looking for a leadership training program to help mold new leaders, you should consider whether “soft leadership skills” and the like should be more than a quarter of the content. The rest should focus more on concrete themes that will help managers gain a better understanding of how to create and capture value. As a senior manager looking to train leaders, you must insist that the following be in the content of the program:

1.     Managing Resources

Successful leaders understand a firm’s resource strengths and weaknesses, taking into consideration how people, systems and structures need to be in sync for the firm to be able to effectively compete in the industry.

2.     Creating and Sustaining Competitive Advantage

They understand how customers define value and are able to shape the firm’s value proposition to take advantage of this understanding.

3.     Strategic Thinking

They are able to identify problems and issues in their own functional areas and understand the cross-enterprise implications of what solutions they can think of. The reality is that there is no management decision that doesn’t touch the issue of finances or vice versa.

4.     Financial Management

Successful leaders think of both the qualitative and quantitative implications of their decisions. They know that every decision, big or small, could have important financial implications, and understand them well enough to make value-creating decisions.

Leadership training programs shouldn’t just be about giving potential leaders methods on how to improve their leadership skills. In order to yield successful new leaders, programs need to take a balanced approach to what it means to lead.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

Here are 7 of the most common money mistakes entrepreneurs make when it comes to spending:

 1.     Overhead investments

A lot of entrepreneurs invest in things like office space and equipment, some sooner than they actually need to. These are actually quite expensive areas, especially for upstarts, and can wreak havoc on your business. Soon you’ll be finding that you’re moving towards a monetary goal, not to see profit, but to cover expenses.

Unless you absolutely need to, don’t invest in items before you can afford it on a long-term basis.

2.     Underestimating miscellaneous expenses

Every business has miscellaneous expenses, aka the expenses that never made it into your business plans and hadn’t even really crossed your mind. However, they will come up. To prevent any money scramble, always assume your miscellaneous expenses to be a lot bigger than you originally thought.

3.     Not testing before investing

Eager entrepreneurs tend to invest a lot of money to perfect their product. More often than not, they do this before the product is even tested out to see if there’s an actual market for it.

So before you spend a lot of money making that perfect product, do a test run on prototypes and get some feedback. This way, you’ll be able to see if it’s worth investing in further or if you need to focus on a new idea.

4.     Extravagance

Spending money on things that you don’t really need is a big waste of money. I’m not saying that you can’t have a comfortable office setup for you and your employees.  All I’m saying is that you should wait on buying expensive office furniture or upgrading to the top gadgets until your business can afford it.

5.     Avoiding an accountant

Entrepreneurs are often not fond of speaking with an accountant, but it’s a necessary thing as it will save you money in the long run. Accountants will help with everything from avoiding tax penalties to setting up the right salary to making sure you’re on track with tax payments.

6.     Spending on DIY projects

As an entrepreneur, you want to be able to hire people and outsource work. But ask yourself first if you’re already in a position to do so. If the task is simple enough to do on your own, there’s no reason to shell out money for someone else to do it.

7.     Hiring before it can be afforded

Entrepreneurs all aim for the day when they can hire their first employee. It’s the first marker that the business is becoming real rather than just an idea. While it may be a great feeling, avoid it until you really need to hire someone or you might face a big expense with little return.

Money mistakes are what makes or breaks an entrepreneur, so take every opportunity to be smart when it comes to expenses.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage not just your own emotions but also those of the people around you. People with a high degree of emotional intelligence know exactly what they’re feeling, what it means and how it can affect other people.

For leaders, having emotional intelligence is the gateway to success. A leader who can stay in control during high pressure situations is more likely to succeed over someone who shouts at his team.

According to American psychologist Daniel Goleman, there are five elements of emotional intelligence:

1.     Self-Awareness

Being self-aware means knowing how you feel, and knowing how your emotions and your actions can affect the people around you is a good trait for a leader to have. Being a self-aware leader means having a clear idea of your strengths and weakness. You can take all the information and figure out a way to make the most of your strengths and have a team that can make up for your weaknesses.

2.     Self-Regulation

Self-regulation is all about staying in control. Leaders who regulate themselves would rarely launch into verbal attacks against their team, make rushed or emotional decisions, create friction between team members or compromise their values.

This element of emotional intelligence covers a leader’s flexibility and commitment to personal accountability. Leaders should avoid pointing fingers and blaming others, and at the same time, not let mistakes get in the way of improvement.

3.     Motivation

Leaders who are motivated consistently work towards their goals and have extremely high standards for the quality of their work. It’s important for leaders to not just be motivated but also project this characteristic onto team members.

4.     Empathy

Having empathy is critical for a leader to be able to manage a successful team. Leaders who can empathize have the ability to put themselves in someone else’s situation. This in turn helps the development of their team, challenge others who act unfairly, give constructive feedback, listen and give advice to those who need it.

5.     Social Skills

People with high emotional intelligence tend to have great communication skills. They’re just as open to hearing bad news as good news. As a leader, someone with the social skills element of emotional intelligence has the ability to get their team’s support and join in on the excitement of a new task or a completed project.

Leaders with good social skills are also good at managing and resolving conflicts in a diplomatic matter, whether between team members or with clients and vendors.

So if you’re wondering if emotional intelligence is telling of a great leader, I say yes. The better a leader relates to and works with others, the more successful he can be.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

Fear is a paralyzing feeling.  It makes you think of, and concentrate on only the negative aspects of life. It makes you concentrate more on what’s wrong and what can go wrong instead of moving forward and seeing the positive possibilities.

In other words, instead of helping at building up your strengths, it only helps you focus on your weaknesses. All that time spent on unproductive worry can produce more productive results if you focus on the positive and moving forward.

Fear is only a waste of time

Time is precious, and if it’s wasted in unnecessary worry, it will not take a leader anywhere. Leaders who learn to overcome their fear find they have more time to concentrate on more constructive things, and bring out the best in their team.

So simply said, learning to get past fear is very important to a leader. A leader is in charge of a team, and if the leader himself is afraid of something, they will not be able to guide their team.  A leader could be afraid of accepting a new challenge, a new project, changes in the organization or a myriad of other possibilities.

Leaders who don’t learn to overcome their fear only end up standing on the side while other leaders, move forward. To become a leader and overcome competition from rivals and competitors, leaders have to first learn to get past being afraid.

Face fear in the face

The best way to overcome it is to find out what exactly you are afraid of. Once you identify this, you find that looking it in the face makes it less threatening to you. So if you are afraid of failure of a task, you have to learn that failure is a relative term is not something to worry about.

In fact, to succeed in life, you need to go through some failures before you actually succeed in life. So instead of developing a fear for failure, you have to understand that failure is a stepping stone to success. If you fail at something, don’t give up. Just work harder and you will overcome both your failure and fear of life.

Use fear to bring out the best in you

This fear of failure is practically interrelated in everything a leader has to do like organizing and leading a team, facing a new challenge and taking responsibility for a team and decisions. However these are all risks, and part of leadership which a leader has to face.

Leaders should realize that it is through these mistakes that they learn, and pick themselves up to move on forward in life. In fact, indirectly, it is fear that leads to these initial mistakes that eventually bring out the best in leaders.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

How Do You Use Leadership Skills To Build A Great Company Culture?

In Japan, a good leader is expected to know not only each one of his employee by first name, but also the name of their spouses and children and the major domestic problems each family has. He feels that to have his people motivated enough to work well, he needs to help them overcome their (individual) problems so their minds would be focused most on work. This is a great example of how leadership helps build the culture.

It takes an enormous effort and involvement to do this, but it pays rich dividends. People very rarely leave a company where the boss takes the trouble to know them and their challenges. You may not think that going to such lengths would be required or possible. However, it is true that unless you make the effort to build a rapport with your staff, you can never be an effective leader.  Without solid leadership skills you do not have the greatest chance of tapping into the best talent available.

Along with knowing your people better, as a good leader you need to also find whether they give enough time for their families. Companies that demand long hours of work and do not respect the need of family time, will never be able to retain have the best talent. In fact, good leadership skills mean you teach and support your employees to work smarter and better within the time of work.

Monetary compensation is very important. The best hands may navigate towards your company because they liked he job, or the challenge, but they will not stay with you unless you pay them what they are worth. Do not cut corners with the salary to deserving people. Good leadership skills would have that you realize each person’s worth and ensure you pay them what they are worth.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

If you’ve got your eye on an executive role, don’t be afraid to go for it. Here are some tips on how to get into the C-Suite.

• Find a mentor: To become a great leader, you have to learn from the successes and failures of others. It will be helpful for a woman looking to get into the C-Suite to have a mentor or a sponsor even. These people will help you get into the right roles and responsibilities. It’s also quite important to have a support system to help get you where you want to be.

It’s also important to talk to people that you respect who may be in the type of position you seek. Listen to how they got to where they are and learn about what makes them great leaders.

• Forget about gender: It’s tough to look at any working environment as gender neutral, especially when most top executives are men. It’ll be hard when you reach roadblocks and you can’t just yell like you might with your significant other but try to look at each situation and think about how you can be better at demonstrating your capabilities and credentials for each opportunity.

Let’s face it, there’s still a lot of discrimination out there but the easiest way to break through prejudice is to maintain focus and excel.

• Stop people pleasing: Women are often thought of as people pleasers, which can be hard in a workplace environment when decisions need to be made that won’t make everyone happy. In order to reach the executive level, you have to learn to stand your ground.

Don’t apologize when you did nothing wrong. Stand behind each and every decision you make. Understand that not everyone is going to be your fan. This way, you’ll be less likely to want to please everyone and more likely to fight for what you want.

• Commit to working hard: It’s an ambitious goal to want to be part of the C-Suite, male or female, so it’s pretty much a given that you have to be willing to work hard to get there and continue working hard once you get there.

• Don’t forget about the rest of your life: All work and no play makes Jack, or even Jill, a dull person. Working hard doesn’t mean that your personal life has to sacrifice or completely be forgotten. As a woman, you’re more apt to make life outside of work a priority and that’s ok. A rich personal life can actually make you into a better leader. The key is finding balance between work and personal matters.

• Use your natural advantages: There are certain leadership qualities that are natural to women, so as female CEOs, play those up. Women’s nurturing and ability to multitask and problem solve – all qualities needed by a good leader.

Whether you’re a man or woman, it’ll be a tough journey getting into the C-Suite, but it’s that very same journey that will shape you into a great leader.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

You’ll find that one of the most frustrating things you can experience during this whole process is to keep trying to achieve great teamwork.  You’ll experience several difficulties in human relationships that prevent your team from working efficiently. Human relationships are everything in a team, that’s what teams are founded upon after all.

For teams to work together successfully, they need to overcome a number of barriers. A successful team is able to take advantage of the unique expertise and perspectives of each member. However, it’s overcoming the differences that matter.

Here are some of the biggest barriers that a team may encounter, preventing great teamwork:

• Poor communication:  Poor communication is a barrier to developing a productive working environment. Team members who do not communicate or aren’t aware of the proper communication channels to use can inhibit development. As a leader/manager, you need to be aware of the double-edged sword that is team communication, and know how to identify when poor communication is hindering great teamwork.

• Unclear goals: A team is assembled so it could achieve certain goals. Those said goals can be for a specific project or perhaps ongoing goals that define a department’s responsibilities. If those goals are not presented clearly by management, then a team can’t work effectively. If members don’t quite understand what it is they are doing and what they are supposed to accomplish, the idea of working together gets lost in the shuffle.

• Poor leadership: Managers create teams in order to complete certain tasks or projects. But if the manager can’t find the time to be involved in the team’s execution of its duties, the atmosphere of effective teamwork may be threatened. Every team needs a leader and if the leader isn’t present to delegate responsibility, act as a resource and supervise the team, the team will not be able to properly develop.

• Ego: A team is basically a group of people striving for a common goal. If a team contains a member who is not working for the general benefit of the whole, the group will have a difficult time working as a unit. Yes, individuals are assigned specific roles within a team, but if the individual feels like they can take on other duties and step on the toes of his teammates, then the group dynamic is threatened. Team members need to keep their egos in check and just work on being efficient with their delegated tasks in order to have great teamwork.

As a leader, you must be able to identify which members of the team are likely to act on ego and know how to manage them.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

Here are six ways in which executives and managers can support, encourage and tap into employee creativity:

1. Create an environment conducive to new thinking.

People are scared of taking risks, specifically when those risks have the possibility of failure. This is why a lot of employees are afraid to come forward with new ideas, because they are afraid of rejection. As a leader, you must be able to show an openness to these suggestions, no matter how crazy they may be, as well as know how to let an employee down without killing their desire to pitch a new idea.

You may also want to consider having a creative-thinking space filled with items that aren’t work-related that can stimulate employees to generate some more thoughts.

1.Employ a process of development for new ideas.

So what happens after an idea is pitched and you actually want to develop it? Employee creativity will be more common with the thought that their idea will come to life. Instill a process by which you can take these ideas and develop them while re-working any areas that require change to actually make it feasible.

2.Encourage communication.

Generating ideas work best when you have different people with different perspectives, knowledge and background sharing their opinion. A team of experts and even novice idea-contributors is ideal as not only do you have the practical thinkers but also those who can see the problem in a different light, hence giving new perspective.

3. Have a neutral facilitator.

When it comes to groups, there are a lot of ways for one person to put down another’s ideas. Whenever you decide to have a group of people engage in creative thinking, always have a neutral facilitator present who won’t outright reject an idea or roll their eyes at each new idea thrown on the table.

4. Support employee engagement.

Recognizing the efforts of employees that have contributed to the generation and development of ideas is an important thing, regardless if no feasible concept or solution is reached. If encouraged properly, these employees are more likely to help with the creative process again.

5. Follow-through must be assured.

I’m not saying that every idea suggested and developed must be implemented. I’m saying that whatever steps are needed to take it to the next level must be stated along with assignments and timetables. Other than rejection, nothing is more discouraging than having your idea just left in the air.

Start taking these recommendations and putting them in place and you will be able to experience the power of employee creativity and perhaps have the next biggest innovation that will take over the market.

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.