Everyone has had the experience of working for a not-so-great boss. While it’s common for people to be promoted into management when they excel in non-leadership positions, the truth is that a lot of the people who get those promotions don’t have the skills they need to effectively manage their team.
In other words, they lack the must-have leadership skills that all great bosses have in common.
These critical steps include: communication, adaptability, strategic thinking, team building and delegation and we’ll look at the first three in this article.
Are you ready to learn what it takes to become an effective leader and put these leadership strategies into practice? Let’s get started!
Without proper, clear and concise communication, you can’t hope to become an effective leader.
Communication is your best tool for explaining your ideas, setting expectations, and building your team. In this chapter, we’ll talk about why strong communication skills are essential for leaders and share some tips about how to communicate effectively both in writing and in person.
The Importance of Interpersonal Communication
Interpersonal communication is what builds relationships. If you listen to employees complain about their bosses and employers, one of the top issues they’re dealing with is usually lack of a direct and clear channel of communication.
Effective communication:
Any time you touch base with your team or with a client, you’re using communication skills. That means every phone call, every meeting, every chat, and every email reflects your ability to communicate and keep a pulse on how projects are going.
Tips for Effective Communication in Writing and Off the Cuff
What makes for effective communication? The hallmarks of a good communication are clarity, detail, and honesty.
Clarity means that you must be able to articulate what you want in a way that the person you’re talking to can understand. You’re not communicating effectively if the listener or reader can’t understand what you need or expect from them.
Honesty means that you must be truthful when communicating with your team. That doesn’t mean you need to tell them everything you’re thinking all the time, but it does mean that you cannot mislead them or deliberately omit information that might help them achieve the goals you’ve laid out for the team.
Here are a few tips for communicating effectively:
These tips will help you be an effective communicator and enhance your ability to lead.
Coming up next, we’ll talk about why you must be adaptable if you want to become a great leader.
You’ve heard about survival of the fittest. It’s the principle that tells us that only those who can handle change and cope with adversity survive. In other words, adaptability is necessary – and it can mean the difference between success and failure in your business.
In this section, we’ll talk about why great leaders must be adaptable, and provide some tips about how you can increase your adaptability and learn to go with the flow.
How Adaptability Can Help You Succeed
In our professional lives, things seldom go the way we want them to. There are too many variables for that to always be the case and often, the things that derail our career or our personal lives feels as though it’s out of our control.
The bottom line is that what you do in the face of adversity is what’ll determine whether you’re able to quickly recover, reset and get back on the path to success.
If you have a setback, do you get up and keep going – or do you give up and move onto something else?
Great leaders learn to go with the flow. They understand that success doesn’t happen overnight. Their adaptability helps them get through failure and come out the other side a winner.
Tips for Increasing Adaptability and Going with the Flow
Some people have a high level of adaptability naturally. If that’s you, then you’re probably in good shape.
But what if it’s not? What if you’re easily discouraged or daunted by setbacks? Is there anything you can do to increase your adaptability?
Yes!
Here are some tips to help you increase your adaptability and go with the flow.
Coming up next, we’ll talk about how to build a team – something that’s very important for every leader. Keep reading to learn more!
Strategy thinking is an essential element of leadership. In this chapter, I’ll explain why and give you some tips for improving your strategic thinking and planning skills.
The Role of Strategy in Success
Strategy is simply long-term planning with a fancy name. You have a goal in mind and then you map out a step-by-step plan to achieve it. If you want it to work, your strategy must be logical and practical. Each step you take should build to the next step.
The thing about strategy is that it’s not just for you. Having a strategy in place can help you get investors to fund your company, and it can also help you inspire your team.
Tips for Improving Your Strategic Thinking and Planning Ahead
Some people have a natural gift for strategic thinking. They’re the people who are great chess players and who naturally seem to see everything 10 steps ahead.
If you’re not one of them, don’t worry. Here are some tips to help you improve your strategic thinking.
The more you practice strategic thinking, the easier it will be.
Whatever you want in life will require discipline to achieve and becoming a successful leader is a small part of this. And if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self-discipline, then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂
Think back to the last time you had a surge of motivation. Try to remember how it made you feel. What was going through your mind then? If you can’t remember, that’s okay. Just be ready for it when it happens again. If you do remember or find it’s happening again, considering recording your thought processes in a journal.
Sometimes, when you can jar your memory on how you got motivated or stayed motivated, you can reproduce that again. If you record your feelings and actions in a journal, you can simply refer to the journal anytime you need to get that back.
Consider using an actual paper journal rather than recording online. Documents tend to get lost online, and people often forget. With a physical journal in front of you, it will show itself at every moment.
This way when you need that push, you can simply open up the journal and start reading. However, if you feel that you can make it work with an online journal, go for it.
You can also record motivational tips from others into your journal that you find. This gives you more to draw from when you have a need to motivate. Sometimes, these tips can happen in the strangest places, so make sure you have a way of capturing if you don’t have your journal with you for some reason.
Another benefit to keeping a journal about your motivations is you could eventually turn it into a book and sell it. Self-help and motivation is a huge topic for both eBooks and courses.
Also, the fact that you are drawing from true situations that you experience will go a long way when producing your book. People love true stories about motivation.
Don’t worry about what you write in your journal. The key is to keep consistent with it. If you write something that doesn’t make sense or is silly, either disregard it or remove it from your journal.
When you find a job, you try to do your best work for your employer. Assuming you work for a decent company, they will recognize you for performing well. If you’re lucky, you may even get a raise and a promotion. If you are good at your job, why don’t you start working for yourself and reap the rewards?
People who start their own business often find they are less motivated when the rubber meets the road. In theory, it sounds great to be your own boss. But, the reality sets in, and you now have to handle every aspect of your business. This is something you didn’t have to do when working for someone else.
It’s much easier to do what others say than it is to motivate yourself to run your business. First, we are not born with business acumen. We need to learn how to run a business, and we need to find people willing to pay us for our products and services. Even when we do learn these crucial concepts, there’s no guarantee that we’ll succeed with them.
The manager or boss took responsibility to know what needs to get done and hands out assignments accordingly. The manager is also taking on problems that you may run into and deals with other outside entities, so you don’t have to.
When you run things for yourself, you have none of those working for you. It’s all incumbent upon you to take care of everything. Even if you hire others, you are now the boss. There is no longer any buffer. You are it.
Hiring people can still be a great way to take some of the responsibilities off of your plate. For instance, if you don’t have time to bring in new business, hire a good salesperson or team. Pay them well and let them take on this task.
If you can’t deal with billing, hire someone for this task as well. There are third-party services that you can use, so you don’t have to increase your staff count.
This is not meant to discourage you from branching out on your own. You just have to be aware that it’s a whole different arrangement than when you worked for someone else.
The news is always harping on about tax breaks or other incentives given to businesses to attract or keep them in a town, state or country.
These stories often present the dark side of incentives. It shows the evil giant corporation taking advantage of the state incentives. There is some truth to this, but without those incentives, those businesses will look elsewhere.
These businesses often get criticized for not being good corporate citizens in the areas where they get the incentives. They use up the resources of the community while giving little or nothing back.
The idea behind incentives is certainly a good one. Encourage businesses to build or update the business in exchange for tax breaks, tax credits, or some other benefit. This does motivate businesses to come or stay in that area. But, it is often a one-sided deal with the business driving the process. When this happens, the business gets to dictate the terms. This is why hiring tends to be less than they promised and community development from the business falls by the wayside.
Governments also like to save corporations when they get into trouble. Essentially, they throw money at the company in the hope that it will somehow magically start being profitable again. Money doesn’t help bad companies. It only prolongs the inevitable.
Some may argue that even if companies don’t hire the number of people they promised, at least they are hiring. There is some truth to this, but it’s at a cost to the taxpayer. Are the fewer number of employees going to generate enough economic benefit to make the incentives worthwhile?
It’s clear that businesses will be motivated to find the best incentives to set up shop. On the surface, it seems like it makes sense. However, what typically transpires is that it never works as well for the community as it was supposed to.
In the 1980’s, several Japanese companies set up business in the United States. Many of them refused to take the tax incentives at the time. They felt that the community needed the money and that the company is a member of the community.
As you can appreciate, changing the way you think can have a huge impact on your life, and if you want to know more about developing an inspirational mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
You know that if you want to increase your sales and expand your outreach, you need to position yourself as an authority in your market.
In a previous post on Authority Marketing, we talked about the importance of knowing your audience through market research so that you can position yourself in a way that people relate to, resonate with and believe in. And we also covered being where your audience is here.
One of the easiest ways to position yourself as an expert in your niche so you can maximize your outreach and income is to create share-worthy content.
What does this mean?
This is also called pillar content because it’s the strongest, most engaging material found on your website, blog or within your marketing campaigns and funnels.
Ideally, your content should always focus on 3 main things:
Connecting with your readers. Your content needs to resonate with your audience, so they begin to see you as an authority or expert on the topic. This means that your content needs to be well-researched, actionable and comprehensive.
Persuading your readers. Your writing needs to motivate them into taking action, even if that simply involves returning to your website again, subscribing to your newsletter or sharing your content with others.
In order to persuade readers, you need to earn their trust and convince them, through your content, that you are an expert on the topic and that they can learn something useful from you.
Exciting your readers. Your content should invoke excitement and convince people that you have something valuable to offer that will improve their lives in some way.
So, begin by thinking about what your primary objective is.
Identifying your content’s objective before you start writing it is extremely important and will ensure that your material is direct, informative and hits the target.
Once you know what your objective is, concentrate on conveying your message in a concise, direct manner.
Create exceptional, highly-targeted content that people will want to share because it speaks to them directly, communicates a positive message that supports your brand and demonstrates your knowledge on the topic.
And above all else, it explains to your audience what’s in it for them.
You want to gain the respect of your market so you can build an authority website that people turn to again and again, and you’ll do that by producing top-notch content that helps your audience in one specific way.
And if you are suffering from writer’s block and have no idea how to create shareworthy content, go to the source!
Take down notes! Write down anything that comes to mind whether it’s an idea for a killer blog topic, or ideas regarding content structure, format and style. It’ll all come in handy later.
One great tool that makes it exceptionally easy to research your competition so you can find the top content in your niche, collaborate with influencers and gain access to content insights that will help you generate fresh ideas is by using BuzzSumo.
They offer a free version so check it out: http://www.BuzzSumo.com
Now let’s look at some platforms that can help you out…
These two platforms connect journalists with experts. HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out. These “matchmaking sites” hook journalists up with experts who can answer their questions and help them with their research.
ProfNet is designed for public relations experts who want to pitch their organizations to journalists. You set up your profile on the site and set preferences for which types of queries you’re interested in.
HARO will deliver an email three times daily (5:45am; 12:45pm: 5:00pm EST) to sources, listing dozens of queries from reporters looking for experts.
They’ll describe the type of story they’re working on and list what expertise they’re looking for. You can reply to the queries and give your qualifications.
Let them know why you’re the perfect person for that story. In addition, HARO is free but offers a paid selection with more filtering options.
There are a couple of other similar service as well. SourceBottle includes a searchable database of active queries so you can hook up with the right journalist. PitchRate is mainly for bloggers and website owners, but it’s the same sort of game: they’re looking for experts to comment or post articles on their sites.
Here’s some advice from a HARO writer (Ritka Puri):
Focus on the story instead of your bio. “I care about what the interviewee has to say and am less concerned with how many patents the person holds.”
Make and keep journalist relationships. When pitching, mention whether you’ve worked with a journalist before.
Answer the question in a direct way. Don’t just ask if they’d like to interview you. Give them a direct reply to their question so they can decide for themselves.
Be personable and helpful. Your contact should contain a friendly introduction, a fun fact, keywords or bullet points that describe your story, and humility!
Press releases are still incredibly viable marketing tools, so be sure to check them out. They’ll help you get attention, generate buzz and create brand awareness.
Here are a couple resources to look into:
And here are a couple of articles to help you create the most effective press release for your business:
https://neilpatel.com/blog/ironclad-rules-for-press
https://www.shopify.ca/blog/how-to-write-a-press-release
If you want to know more about leveraging the power of authority marketing, then check out the featured resource below for a free report that expands on this post; download, read and take action 🙂
So, you’re anxious to reach those goals you’ve set for yourself and your online business, but you quickly realize that there’s only so much time in the day. No matter how hard you try, you feel as though you’re always one step behind.
One thing becomes very clear: You need a plan.
Without a system designed to place a value on each hour you spend working on your business, you’ll find yourself frantically scrambling to meet deadlines, follow through on launches and prioritize what is most important to your business.
This article has been written to help you get more done in less time by levelling up your productivity score quickly and easily.
The strategies contained in this article are designed to help you learn to value your time, make informed decisions about the kind of work you’re focused on and ultimately, beat the clock.
Let’s begin. There’s no time to waste. 😊
One of the reasons so many people seem to struggle to gain traction in their business is entirely due to the way they manage their daily activities.
This typically points to one major problem: People are stuck in an employee mindset!
They’re so used to that 9-5 grind that they aren’t equipped to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset, which will help them make the transition so they can train themselves to focus on the most important tasks: prioritizing their time and assigning value to the time they spend building their business.
As an entrepreneur, you’re solely responsible for your business, so your ability to value your time and make every minute count will have a major impact on how successful you’ll be.
Fail to make this important shift in the way you spend your time, and you’ll always struggle to get to where you want to be.
Thankfully, it’s not all that difficult to break that cycle and transition your way of thinking from that of an employee to a boss. It starts with preparing yourself for the realities of being an entrepreneur.
This means you need to:
Set Realistic Goals. You must be honest about what you’re capable of getting done on any given day. Then you need to determine how many hours you’re willing to invest in your business and then assign those hours to specific projects.
Break tasks down into smaller, focused projects. Tim Ferris, author of “The 4-Hour Work Week”, refers to this as “chunking”. We’ll talk more about the importance of this in a bit because it’s a great way to boost your productivity and get more done in less time.
Cut out Distractions. Your work environment will change drastically from what you may be used to as an employee, and you need to optimize your workspace so that it’s supporting a focused, productive workflow.
Identify the Truth Behind Procrastination. This is one of the hardest things to acknowledge at times, especially if you’ve gotten into the habit of procrastinating for reasons you aren’t aware of.
We’ll talk more about this in an upcoming chapter because it deserves a section of its own. It’s that important.
Be Ruthless in Prioritizing. Does your email really need to stay open while you work so that all those notifications cause you to continuously check your inbox?
Now let’s take a closer look at how you can learn the chunking technique, which will immediately boost your daily output and keep you focused on meeting your goals.
For years, I would fire up the laptop and start my day doing several different things at once. I’d check email, then maybe do some writing, then head over to social media, and then back to email yet again.
Chunking is where you decide to focus on just one major task at a time (or even per day). Depending on the type of business you’re involved in, this might include one day exclusively focused on graphic design, then one day dedicated to marketing.
Consider creating a detailed task list of all the important aspects of your business; the things that keep it all afloat and absolutely require your time.
This can be tricky because we tend to things all things are important, but the reality is, they’re not.
When it comes to any business, there are a handful of critical tasks that need to be taken care of daily, and the rest just adds a little more gas to the tank. They can be done later once the main tasks are out of the way.
You need to learn to place a value on every ounce of “fuel” you have left. That’s where chunking comes into play.
Don’t be tempted to multi-task because this is a productivity killer! So many people make a big deal of being able to multi-task, but all you end up with are a number of tasks that are partly done and an increasing amount of frustration because you never seem to be able to clear things off your to-do-list; sticking to one task at a time is much more productive, believe me!
And remember, one way to stay productive is to be focused and many people struggle with this. If you want to learn more about staying focused, check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊
There is more to hosting a webinar than simply having one. You need to ensure that it’s fun, informative and useful too. When people go to a webinar, they know that they’ll get a sales pitch eventually. But what makes them come back is the actual content outside of the sales pitch.
Plus, if they choose to purchase due to your sales pitch, the product must be fabulous. If you offer your audience amazing promises, you need to live up to them.
There are many types of webinar software that you can choose for your webinar marketing, and the one you choose will depend on personal preference mainly.
Once you have your ideal platform, you need to focus on the content so let’s look at some ways to make your webinars shine and make people want to sign up for your products or services.
* Make It Educational – Every webinar should offer a message that educates the audience on something they need to know and can put into action right away. If the message is informative and gives them something they can do without even buying your offer, they’ll want to see more from you and may eventually buy your products or use your services.
* Keep the Message Clear – If your message isn’t crystal clear to your audience, they may leave your webinar confused. You don’t want that to happen. You want your audience to be able to digest the information in an understandable way.
* Be Entertaining – While you’re getting them the information, it’s important to also not make it boring. Be lively and entertaining. Share a story that they can relate to. Show your humanity to them and they’ll want to know more.
* Pick an Awesome Topic – This is really the most important part of the webinar. Your topic should be something that makes your audience excited to learn more. In order to choose the right topic, you need to match your expertise with what your audience needs.
* Give Attendees a Special Gift – Approximately 75 percent of the people who sign up for your webinar will not attend. But you can boost attendance if you give those who attend something no one else will get. Make it something people will talk about.
* Host It at the Right Day and Time – Knowing your audience will also help you know the perfect day and time to host your webinar. You may ultimately choose to host more than one in order to cover all the bases.
* Create an Awesome Information Page – This is not a sales page, but instead a page that lets those who have signed up for your event know what exactly will happen at the event. You can mention the freebies you’ll be giving away during the webinar and the information you’ll cover more in depth.
* Follow Up – When someone signs up for the webinar you should have an autoresponder set up to immediately thank them for signing up, sharing the information page and other information that will encourage them to attend the webinar live.
* Send Reminders – Sometimes people do not attend the webinar live simply due to forgetting. Some webinar systems have the ability to set up reminders, but even if it doesn’t you can set them up with the autoresponder system.
Of course, digital events aren’t the only way to reach your audience. You can also go in person to local events, and these can be used to network with potential business partners or to find new customers.
Here are a few pointers to keep in mind when attending a live event.
Building your business with networking is important, but you need to make sure you do it right.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but it gives you some idea of local event etiquette!
* Thoroughly practice your thirty-second elevator pitch. You need to get this down so you can get all of the points out that you need to express to people in just thirty seconds. It should be second nature, so when you meet people on the fly you can tell them what you’re all about.
* Social media is great, but so are face-to-face meetings. When your online contacts are in the area, plan time to meet face to face. Attend regular meetups in your area as well. Those face-to-face meetings are great for making connections.
* Have a good handshake. A handshake says a lot about a person. Make it a good, firm handshake.
* Always have your business cards at the ready. You really never know when you’re going to meet someone, so be sure you carry business cards with you at all times.
* If you make a promise, then be sure that you follow through on it. Follow up with the people that you meet. This is going to build those relationships you made nice and strong.
* Keep in touch. Have regular meetings with your network and be sure to offer them your assistance when asking for their help on something. If you’re having an event, then invite the people in your network too.
* Ask for help. If you’re looking to expand your business, then you need people to help you get the word out. Make sure you ask your network to help you out with spreading the word on whatever you’re working on or whatever you need help with.
* Set goals. Having measurable goals in your networking will help keep you on track and get your business where you want it to be on a specific timeline.
* Be grateful. Saying thank you to your contacts will go a long way in showing your appreciation for what they have done for you.
* Find ways to give back to your network. This is a great way to show appreciation, but it also builds those relationships even stronger when you can help out those who have helped you. No one wants to feel used, so that’s why it’s so important to give back.
* Hard sell. If it’s the first-time meeting someone, then you shouldn’t do a hard sell on your product. This should be a time of getting to know you and what you are all about, not about getting money out of someone for your product.
* Monopolize the time talking about yourself. You should be finding out about the person you’re meeting rather than telling them all about you. If you show interest in the other person, then they will be more interested in you as someone who listens.
* Drink too much. Give yourself a two-drink maximum when you’re networking. It will make sure that you are coherent when you talk, and that you don’t say anything you later wish you hadn’t.
What networking advice do you have for local events?
OK, there are some handy hints to maximise your efforts in both local in-person events and webinars and I hope they were useful to you.
Any type of webinar or sales presentation relies on good sales copy and there are many pitfalls and mistakes that inexperienced copywriters can make. If you want to know more about avoiding these and other copywriting mistakes, take a look at the featured resource below where you can download a copy of a free report, Copywriting Blunders, so you will be forewarned and can make your copy more effective. Download, read it and take action 😊
