How Effective Are You As A Leader?

How well do you think you are doing as a leader? How do you know how well you are doing and what you need to be doing more or less of. The best feedback you can get is from the people you lead, but how many of us ever think to ask them?

These questions provide a great tool for leaders to "check into" the true experience of their employees. If you are honest with yourself, you’ll recognize areas that you can improve on.

1. I understand the mission/vision of my organization. Yes or No

Please explain answer. ___________________________________

2. I know what I am accountable for. Yes or No

Please explain answer. ___________________________________

3. I know how to measure my progress. Yes or No

Please explain answer. ___________________________________

4. I have the tools, knowledge and support I need to do my job well.
Yes or No

Please explain answer. ___________________________________

5. At work I have the opportunity to succeed daily. Yes or No

Please explain answer. ___________________________________

6. I receive regular constructive communication from my supervisor. Yes or No
Please explain answer. ___________________________________

7. I feel my supervisor cares about me as a person, not just as an employee.
Yes or No

Please explain answer. ___________________________________

8. I am encouraged to continually develop my skills. Yes or No

Please explain answer. ___________________________________

9. My opinions are valued by my supervisor. Yes or No

Please explain answer. ___________________________________

10. I would encourage anyone who is qualified to work for my organization
and for my supervisor. Yes or No


Yvonne Bleakley is the manager's mentor, director of http://www.coachuk.ltd.uk and creator of The Silent Motivator System, the proven step-by-step programme to maximise staff and gain true respect and commitment.

Download your free e-book "How to Maximise your Staff and Gain Respect" at http://www.silentmotivator.com

Multiply your article submission power with Jetspinner

Do modern day problems impact on your team’s performance?

These days we all have so much to live up to. We try to be perfect parents, perfect partners, have the perfect social life! Something has got to give or stress starts to creep in.

Do you take the time to listen to your staff member’s problems or issues? Do you show them that you understand, show you care? You may think that it is not your place to care, that they should leave personal issues at home and not let it affect their work. However, it is not always that easy for people to compartmentalise their lives in this way and personal problems often interfere with work performance. Their negative behaviour and moods can impact on the rest of the team. They either bring everyone else down with them creating an awful atmosphere, or they alienate themselves, making them feel even more depressed. As a manager, you have a duty to yourself, your boss and your team to deal with these issues in a compassionate manner.

Take the time to help your employee with their personal problems. Coach them to look for solutions and they will feel closer to you. In turn, they will perform better because you showed them you care. People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care. This is an important employee retention and employee motivation discipline.

Continually offer them positive feedback whenever possible. From this point on you will notice that employees will go out of their way to do a great job, because you took the time to include them, empower them, to thank them and to show them that you care.

Yvonne Bleakley is the manager's mentor, director of http://www.coachuk.ltd.uk and creator of The Silent Motivator System, the proven step-by-step programme to maximise staff and gain true respect and commitment.

Download your free e-book "How to Maximise your Staff and Gain Respect" at http://www.silentmotivator.com










Multiply your article submission power with Jetspinner

I am so exited, Alex is on his way!

I just had to share this with everybody! We are all celebrating today in the Bleakley household. Alex, my eldest son, has been counting down the days, hours and minutes to get his results. We were up at midnight to find out his results online for his STEP exams (these are extra exams he needed to get his place at Queens college, Cambridge). Phew, he passed. Then we were up at 6.30 this morning to log onto the university site to confirm he has his place! He has just been into school to find his A Level result – 5 A’s and 1 B!

WOW, I am so proud, I keep crying.

Yvonne Bleakley is the manager's mentor, director of http://www.coachuk.ltd.uk and creator of The Silent Motivator System, the proven step-by-step programme to maximise staff and gain true respect and commitment.

Download your free e-book "How to Maximise your Staff and Gain Respect" at http://www.silentmotivator.com

Multiply your article submission power with Jetspinner

Discover How to Use Deadlines and Improve Your

The deadline is the most underappreciated part of delegation. Too many leaders give people tasks without asking what else they have on their “to do” list. This is a motivation killer. Not only is it disrespectful to the recipient, it is disrespectful to anyone who is depending on the person you just delegated to. Most people are trained to never say “no.” They have been wired to say “yes,” even when they know they already have too much on their plate. Often, the delegator already knows this, but chooses to take the position of “not my problem,” which in the long run destroys trust and respect for the delegator and decreases employee morale, organizational productivity, and profitability.

When you delegate a task, you must sit with the person you are delegating to and make sure that realistic deadlines are being created. It is your job as the delegator to help your people be successful and not set them up for failure. If you are delegating to someone who has a history of over-committing, it is important to help reconcile commitments to make sure that the most important things get done first.

Delegation Assignment

· Identify the key points of the project or dates when you want feedback about progress. This is the critical path that provides you with the feedback you need without causing you to micromanage your direct report or team. You need assurance that the delegated task or project is on track. You also need the opportunity to influence the project's direction and the team or individual's decisions.

· Identify the measurements or the outcome you will use to determine that the project was successfully completed. (This will make performance development planning more measurable and less subjective, too.)

· Explain how a task fits into the overall organizational picture, describe the measurable results you are looking for, and let them know how you will rate their performance. It is essential to let the person know how they are doing and whether they did a good job. In the end, as the leader, you should take the blame for failure and pass on the credit for success.

· Lastly, make sure that the team member knows that you want to know if any problems occur, and that you are available for any questions or guidance needed as the work progresses.

Multiply your article submission power with Jetspinner

How to Be a Motivational Leader

Management and leadership is all about motivation. There have been many books written about how good leaders are born and are down to personality traits. In my experience, once you learn the secret to motivating others, then it really doesn't matter what your personality type is. Yes, motivation can be learned.

So what is motivation? Motivation is certainly more than a motivational speaker who holds a seminar, hypes people up and then moves onto the next event while the delegates go back to their lives and roles in the work-place and quickly forget what it was that hyped them up. They are back to square one!

Without motivation, talent is nothing more than wasted potential. To be an effective motivator you need to offer on going support, follow up and accountability but you also need to be able to empower your team and raise their confidence within themselves. This is when you go from just being a mere manager to becoming an effective and inspirational leader.

So, how do we distinguish between a manager and a leader? Let's take a look:-

Managers

Provide clarity in short term objectives

Perpetuate historic control structures

Solve immediate problems personally

Maintain or improve the status quo

Plan, organise and control

Power comes from position

Authority comes from the organisation


Leaders


Establish the long-term vision

Create a climate of trust

Help their team to solve problems

Challenge and change the status quo

Coach and develop people

Power comes from influence

Authority comes from trust and respect

You cannot motivate another person to do anything. You can only provide the means and the atmosphere in which others motivate themselves. You are the leader and you must set the example by demonstrating appropriate behaviours. Take the time to define the appropriate behaviours you want to see in your employees, and then start demonstrating them. This is an important employee retention and employee motivation discipline.


Yvonne Bleakley is the manager's mentor, director of http://www.coachuk.ltd.uk and creator of The Silent Motivator System, the proven step-by-step programme to maximise staff and gain true respect and commitment.

Download your free e-book "How to Maximise your Staff and Gain Respect" at http://www.silentmotivator.com

Multiply your article submission power with Jetspinner

Manager or Coach?

The role we as managers adopt as coach can probably be best understood by the old adage "give someone a fish and feed them for a day, teach them to fish and feed them for a lifetime." In practice, coaching is about asking questions and never being the next person to speak! It is about helping individuals and teams to achieve their agreed objectives by maintaining or improving their own performance. As managers, this means creating the right conditions that will allow people to become self-motivated.

Being an effective coach at work could be compared to a sports coach. During any match there are three possible positions a coach can choose to position themselves, depending on their personal style of leadership and the situation. They can be on the pitch, in the stand or on the touch line.

In the first position, the coach is on the pitch and takes over from the players when they see things going wrong. Many new managers act like this shortly after promotion. They do this because they have not yet learned how to let people make acceptable mistakes and how to support them in understanding how to get it right the next time, without their direct intervention.

In the second position the coach retreats into the stand and adopts the role of the spectator watching the game from a distance. As a spectator the coach will get a good overview of the teams performance, but communication will be difficult and they will be seen as just another face in the crowd. When the game is over, spectators usually walk away, and some managers do this too, often misinterpreting for delegation what can be an abdication of their responsibility.

The third role is that of the coach who is determined to develop their teams performance. The coach stands at the touch line communicating with but not taking over from their players. In this position they share all the pleasure and the pain of their teams performance.

Most of the coaches work has of course been done long before the game began. During the individual and team coaching sessions, improvements to personal performance were planned and agreed, the tactics were clarified and positions people would play were notified.

Assignment

1. Think about how the example above relates to your role as a manager.
2. Which role are you playing?
3. Analyse the gap between who you are now and the manager you would like to be.
4. What new skills do you need to bridge this gap?
5. Compile an action plan and set some goals.

Yvonne Bleakley is the manager's mentor, director of http://www.coachuk.ltd.uk and creator of The Silent Motivator System, the proven step-by-step programme to maximise staff and gain true respect and commitment.

Download your free e-book "How to Maximise your Staff and Gain Respect” at http://www.silentmotivator.com

Multiply your article submission power with Jetspinner

How To Stop Constant Interuptions From Your Staff

Getting constant interruptions from their staff is one of the biggest complaints I get from my clients. You have just planned your day, written you tasks to be completed on your to-do-list and you are all set to tackle your list and have a productive day when one of your team members complains that they are not sure what to do with their task. Do you explain it all again to her for the fourth time or do you just take it off her? It would be quicker to do it yourself!

The number one reason that your staff say that they are not sure what to do is lack of confidence. They are looking for you approval. Your role as their manager is to build their confidence and aid their personal development. This will give you a strong team who are able to think for themselves and carry out their tasks with ease and confidence.

So, how can you help them do this? Answer: Ask Questions!

Asking quality questions and really listening to the answers are in my book two of the most important skills you need to master in order to motivate people into action.

When we ask the right questions, we encourage people to have their own insights, to have their own aha moments. If we want the other person to do all the thinking then asking questions is the only way to encourage this. By asking the right questions, you will get them thinking about the problem, whilst you just concentrate on getting them to do the thinking and come up with their own solutions. This will build their confidence in their ability as they realise that they do know the right answers and they are more than capable of carrying out their job.

How to ask the best questions

There are no right or wrong questions. However, the following will help you to ask useful questions:-

Staying in the present - don’t try to anticipate what their answer may be. Make sure that you are actively listening to them when they give you the answer.

Listen without judgment – the most important thing is that their answer is accepted by you as being true for them and that you move on. They may otherwise start to tell you what they think you want to hear and not what they are really thinking and feeling.
Don’t be attached to the outcome – like with staying in the present, you have to ensure that you don’t place getting the right answer to you, over the importance of hearing what the right answer is for them.

Staying focused on asking open questions – questions such as who, what, were and how are all open questions. These will give you more information in the answers that you receive than closed questions such as did, are, and can which are more likely to just produce a yes or no answer. A why question is sometimes useful to get them to see different motives of others or themselves in a situation but you need to be aware that it can also sometimes take them into their own fears and not expand their perception of what is really going on. Why questions can also lead to a blame or excuse culture so use them sparingly.

Stay curious – our natural state is to be curious. Remember when you were a child. Almost every other word was a question as we explored the world around us. We almost unlearn our natural state of asking questions. Stay away from the how to frame of mind when you tell them what they should be doing or try giving advice. Instead, stay curious with questions and get them to find solutions for themselves.

To receive a free subscription to the monthly Silent Motivator e-zine go to http://www.coachuk.ltd.uk You will receive regular tips on managing and motivating your team as well as access to a number of free resources and articles which can help you in team meetings to get the most out of your staff.

Multiply your article submission power with Jetspinner