How to keep your team motivated

One of the questions I often get asked, is about motivating the team. Leaders need to be sure they keep a keen eye on their team's motivation and take small and subtle steps to keep motivating members.
While some members are driven by cash it is surprising to find out that the majority of our team members actually prefer rewards other than cash to feel appreciated and rewarded for their efforts and so motivate them to do bigger and better things in the future. Try this experiment and see if it helps you maintaining  your team in a highly motivated state, it cost you very little and is more about behaviours rather than using a reward as a motivator.

Next time you see one of your team members doing something that is particularly good, casually stop and chat and praise them for what they were doing, be sure to mention exactly what you saw and why it was good for them and how it makes a positive impact on the team. Observe their reaction and make a note later on how they received this positive feedback.  You may be surprised how many people in your team really appreciate your action and respond in a positive manner. Try over the next three to four weeks to do this for all members and to be consistent in the delivery.

Look ahead in your team schedule and find an afternoon toward the end of the quarter and plan some team activity, perhaps bowling, golf whatever. Take the team out and enjoy, sometime during the activity when everyone is together make a short speech thanking the team for their efforts over the period.  This is a team activity and a team reward for delivery of the team goals to date.

Some members crave public attention and will respond best to an award in front of the rest of the company, while this can be a very powerful motivator for the individual it can also have negative effects on the rest of team. I would only suggest to do this if and when someone has gone well above the call of duty and everyone knows it.

Monetary awards as a means of motivation tend to have a very short impact, however they can be useful for team players who are very introverted (as these people rarely want to be put in the spot-light).

Keeping our team motivated is one of the critical tasks we can do as team leaders, it something we should experiment with to get the right balance and keep our team at its peak.

Team Maintenance by applying motivation

We often hear about people complaining about their job and the threat to quit and go somewhere else. While some people are just prone to complaining, a percentage of people will leave your team and go and try something else, and over time some of these members will come back. Often the complaint is about money, yet time and time again when employees are surveyed money rarely comes in the top ten things that keep people where they are. The challenge for us as leaders is to use this to our advantage and apply what we can to keep our team motivate and hence  maintain our team focus.

So if money is not the major satisfaction factor within our team what is? When we look, into this we find that most people want to be a valued member of their team. Possibly this answer is a little undefined for many where an x percentage pay increase is easy to quantify - though often hard to justify.

What should we look to put into place so that each of our team members feels like they are valued for their contribution. Most often this is through a combination of simple team maintenance activities.
Do you know everyone by name? Do you know what's important to them? Do you take time to talk to them in a one-on-one sense and as the collective?

Do you have a mechanism for celebrations? Are birthdays, company goals holidays all celebrated?
Set some budget aside for a family picnic, send flowers to homes when significant events occur. Consider setting up a social club and offer to subsidize events. Sponsor a sport team.  While these may seem a little intangible, if you can incorporate this into your team, many of your members will realise that they belong and their value is recognised.

If you can find a way to incorporate these simple things into your team schedule, you'll find the team will be more motivated and coherent, giving you the best possible environment to achieve success with your team.

Treat your team fairly or risk poor morale

Some disturbing news over the last few weeks, makes you think if the board of directors is very well advised when it comes to treating all your team members fairly.

Consider this three weeks ago the company broadcasts to its employees that there will be no annual pay rise this year. Most team members take this on the chin and accept times are tough and at least I still have a job to go to.

Imagine the hurt these team members fell when last week the company announces it has increased the CEO's salary by some 20%. Wow what a way to smash your companies morale.

While both announcements were in there usual sugar coated spin, the team members were not impressed and many were openly upset by the double standards applied.

I doubt many team members would disagree that some people get paid more than others as they have special skills to contribute. However when people are treated vastly different it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of those involved.

Next time you need to make big announcements, perhaps you should take a step back and take a reality look to see that everyone in your organisation is being treated in a fair manner.

By treating everyone in a fair and reasonable manner, you stand a great chance of maintaining your team's morale and building towards the future.

Celebrations with your team are so important

It's that time of year depending where you are in the world, Thanksgiving, Deepavali, Hari Raya just past and Christmas around the corner. Have you taken time out to celebrate with your team.

Celebrating with your team is an important activity, as it helps everyone feel connected and appreciated, sure we may come from different backgrounds and the like but we can all celebrate these occasions together. The reward for putting a celebration together will be well received and maintains the spirit of the team.

Most people don't mind what the reason is behind the celebration, they really get a buzz from the group celebrating together. The benefits far outweigh an hour off work and the cost of a lunch or picnic. Most teams respond very positively to these events. it gives everyone a chance to meet as equals in a different environment, the bond can be quite incredible.

Maybe your team just completed a big project, if so take the opportunity to celebrate, you will be soon notice the team morale lift, this will keep the team going as you settle back into the normal run-rate.

As leaders it is important for us to take these annual opportunities and create a celebration for our teams.

Moving forward with your Strategic Leadership

Strategic leadership is often described as a leader who always communicates their vision and the path forward. This leader is focused and uncomplicated, they gain their reputation for big picture clarity.

So what are the attributes you need to keep in mind to improve your ability to develop this strategic leadership.

Step one is to develop your own short and crystal clear vision of what your team is all about. You need to practice this so that you can articulate the vision - you may have heard of this as developing your elevator speech.

Step two, take your vision and apply it to the most common issues you know that effect your team. This should lead you to developing a number of scenarios of why and how your vision fits to each of these situations.

Step three, when the opportunity exists fit your scenario to the situation just experienced to show how you vision supports this situation. This will prepare you for being prepared to demonstrate and articulate how your strategic vision applies to your team.

The ability to be a strategic Leader is important in that we need to be able to convey our vision, its times like this when we need to be able to be adopt the strategic leadership to keep our team focused on the big picture and continue to work towards the common goal.

The leader's Passion

Are you passionate about what your team does? With lots of doom and gloom in the press, it's important that we as leaders stand up and demonstrate our passion for our team, our job and especially our people.

The more you demonstrate your passion for the team's efforts the more this will rub off onto your team members and help them maintain their passion. It's too easy for everyone in the team to pickup the negative vibes and start believing they apply to them. This will have a serious impact, as once the passion is gone, then the desire to work hard and push through any challenges is also eroded away.

Take some time to assess your product, your output levels, the quality of your products and services. Be sure to rekindle your passion for all the aspects in your workplace and then most importantly share that passion among your team. Remember to be genuine in how you demonstrate your passion and don't give the impression of just blowing smoke or you risk some damage as you may be seen as being less than honest.

As leaders we need to be passionate about our team's jobs and we need to show this passion to inspire the team to greater results.

How to improve your Decision Making

One of the major attributes of a good leader is our decision making skills. Good decisions are based upon a mixture of data, analysis, intuition, wisdom, experience, and judgment. Making good decisions involves collecting the available information, being able to ask for other people's opinions and thoughts and then making the decision. No one is ever right all the time; it's the percent of good decisions over time that matters.

What can we do to improve our decision making skills?

Do you hesitant to make a decision. Play out the consequences in your head to see how the decision would play in real life. Test out a number of scenarios to support your decision. You may be hesitating because your little voice in your head is telling you something isn't right. Good decisions are usually somewhere between the second and third decision you come to, as you explore the options.

Are you biased. Do you play favorites, deciding quickly in one area, but holding off in another? Do you drag out your favorite solutions to often? Be clear and honest with yourself about your attitudes, beliefs, biases, opinions and prejudices and your favorite solutions. We all have them. The key is not to let them affect your objective and cold decision making. Before making any sizable decision, ask yourself, are any of my biases affecting this decision?

Common mistakes in thinking: ? If sales are down, and we increase advertising and sales go up, this doesn't prove causality. They are simply related. Say we know that the relationship between sales/advertising is about the same as sales/number of employees. Do you state as facts things that are really opinions or assumptions? Are you sure these assertions are facts? State opinions and assumptions as that and don't present them as facts. Do you attribute cause and effect to relationships when you don't know if one causes the other. Do you generalize from a single example without knowing if that single example does generalize?

Analyze the situation? Thoroughly define the problem. Think out loud with others; see how they view the problem. Figure out what causes it. Keep asking why. See how many causes you can come up with and how many organizing buckets you can put them in. This increases the chance of a better solution because you can see more connections. Look for patterns in data, don't just collect information. Put it in categories that make sense to you. Then when a good alternative appears you're likely to recognize it immediately.

Learn from your history. Take an objective look at your past decisions, and what the percentage were good choices. Break the decisions into topics or areas of your life. For most of us, we make better decisions in some areas than others. Maybe your decision-making skills need help in one or two limited areas, like decisions about people, decisions about your career, political decisions, technical, etc.

Slow down. Life is a balance between waiting and doing. Life affords us neither the data nor the time. You may need to try to discipline yourself to wait just a little longer than you usually do for more, but not all, the data to come in. Push yourself to always get one more piece of data than you did before until your correct decision percent becomes more acceptable. Instead of just doing it, ask what questions would need to be answered before we'd know which way to go

Sleep on it. The brain works on things even when you are not thinking about them. Take some time, do something completely different, and get back to the decision later. Let a good night's sleep go by and re-assess the problem in the morning.

Use your network. You’ve taken time to create your network of colleagues, experts and task force, present the problem and all you know about it, and let the group help decide. Delegate the decision. Sometime others above, aside, or below you may be in a better position to make the decision.

Study great decision makers. Which great decision makers do you admire? Steve Jobs? Winston Churchill? Read the biographies and autobiographies of a few people you respect, and pay attention to how they made decisions in their life and careers. Take some notes on ideas they used that you could apply.

With some effort on our behalf we can improve the way we make our decisions to help us better develop as leaders in our environment.

Is your leadership talk supported by your actions?

Had lunch with my friend Wilson this week and he recounted what was happening at his workplace that could happen to us and the terrible side effects.
The workplace was doing their annual list of compulsory courses, such as equality, harassment and such. Wilson and his friends sat through the same class as last year and completed the same assessment as last year and were dutifully sent on their way.

The following week coincided with annual salary reviews. The company has been struggling of late and cash-flow was somewhat of a problem. It was no surprise when most employees received a very modest salary increment. I guess we have all been in this situation and are prepared to take it on the chin.

So this week Wilson and his friends were subjected to the final course in their yearly compulsory quota, Ethics - again they went through the usual course and usual assessment and off they went.
Much of this sounds pretty typical and most people went on their way. What the leadership hadn't counted on was the mood of the workplace. Pretty soon the conversation within the workplace got to talking about the leadership's action versus their talk. Soon the questions and statements were flying back and forth, typical of these were:
Why did we put our prices up in line with inflation, yet our salary didn't go up in the same ratio.
Why have we moved so many staff to contract positions but the staff don't have a written contract.
Why do I get asked to constantly do more yet I get no more reward.
Why do we talk about ethics but don't seem to act ethically with our own people.

While many of these questions were a little selfish and short-sighted, the mood of many of the workers was drifting away from the leadership. Funny the leadership team were patting themselves on the back for having completed the new price book and completing the workplace regulatory training.

So my question to you - do you follow your words with supporting actions? Does your team know that you do what you said you would do? Sometimes we need to ask an observer for the feedback to be sure we get the real answer and not the one we want to hear.

Leadership and your self awareness

One of the aspects we need to address every so often is ourselves and what leadership skills we have at this stage of our leadership journey. This is quite confronting for many of us, however the better we do this the better we can understand ourselves and make good decisions based on this awareness.

Often in business we talk about conducting a SWOT, Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is essentially the same for us when we look at our leadership skills. We need to stop and assess where we stand and how well we are doing in each of the areas of leading our team.

So how should we do this? Not easily, take a list of the main areas we have been concentrating on in the improvement of our leadership. Then we need to work through each skill area on our list..... and the hard part, take a good honest look and evaluate our standing. Let's take a sample.

Engaging: How well are we engaging with our bosses, our critical stakeholders. How well are we engaging with our team? Do we know their strengths and weaknesses, have we worked with them on how to improve one of their areas of opportunity? How do we score our efforts here, should this be considered one of your Strengths, or a Weakness? Are there some opportunities for us to improve in this area? Are we very poor in this area so much so that there is a threat to our leadership position.

Our Leadership is dependent on us doing this every year or so, helping us to focus on what we're doing well and what needs to be better. Sure this will take some time just consider this another step in your leadership journey.

Leadership and the art of Engagement

We have spent time before about talking with your team. Know your team, their strengths and weaknesses and you can help everyone in the team to meld and become the energised team, ready to work towards the team goals. Our leadership success will depend on it.

So as the leader one of the arts we need to master is the how to engage with the various members of the team. Take the time to ask to initial question and follow it up some small idea of your own then build more questions to probe further. But engaging is more than just asking questions, at times we need to be the counsellor demonstrating apathy and understanding towards our teammates and at other times we need to also show our team members a part of ourselves.

While I've said we need to show part of ourselves when engaging with our team we also still need to maintain a certain distance, this is a very tough line to balance. The main game here is to establish boundaries and not be flexible about crossing these lines. I'm sure you know someone who is a bit too familiar with their boss and all of a sudden its difficult to see who is the leader and who is being manipulated. Leadership requires us to set this line and be firm if people are in danger of crossing the line.

Be sure to maintain the dialogue, set challenges, probe for better solutions and be sure to praise all positive work and actions.

Be firm and fair then you'll hear people comment to the affect you know where you stand . Most people prefer this position with their leader. Can you get yourself into this position?

Leadership requires Authority

Leaders need authority, When you look internally at your team or externally from a customers perspective, everyone expects the leader to be the authority in their area.
Some people naturally have a great amount of self-confidence and can pull off the act of being the authority figure. The rest of us have to do it the old-fashioned way.

Most of us have to build our authority and our self-confidence through knowledge and skill. Take the time to find out everything about your products, processes and the people who take part in each step. Be sure to ask questions and explore every angle. Put yourself into each persons shoes, from the customer through to the workplace cleaner. Next take some time to understand every cost incurred along the away to production. How much do the raw materials cost, what is the cost of shipping to you and also the shipping to the customer. What the duties and taxes that get added along the way.

Now you know everything about the product and all the influencing factors you need to review these factors so you can recall everything off the top of your head.

The next step in this process is for you to prepare and practice the delivery of short descriptors of the top ten aspects related to your business. Just think about the last time you saw someone who stammered or couldn't answer the seemingly obvious question - I bet you didn't consider them an authority in their area.

Your ability to be, and act as the authority on your subject is a must-have skill to define your leadership.

Leaders questioning the status quo

We talked before about people in leadership roles and fact that they need to be innovative and pushing new ideas to keep in front of the pack.

How do you approach this task? Have you stopped to consider it as one of your jobs. Now that it's out in the open you need to set aside some time to think through when and how you should approach this important task.

For most people the important thing is to ask many questions, what the process is, how was it set up , what do each of the people think, what could be done to improve the process and so on. As leaders it is up to us to consider do we have enough information to make a valid change, or do we need more information or more time to consider the best course of action to start that innovation. Often we'll stop, look, consider and come to the conclusion there is no obvious way forward.

Time to reconsider how the investigation should move. Remember it is our role as leaders to take the responsibility to keep looking and investigating to find the innovation to drive our business. If not, perhaps leadership is not for us. Because then we will fall to the same lows as so many out there we see, those who run through the process but can't move their team forward.

Leaders know their team

Good leaders know their team members, they spend time to understand their strengths and weakness, their fears and ambitions. Our leadership success is dependent upon it.

When was the last time you stopped and had a coffee with each of your team members? Sat down and shared your thoughts and asked them about what they think. Seems like the obvious thing to - but how often do you do it? You know you will stop for a break so why not make it more productive? Productive you may ask, the better you know your team, the more they relate to you the more they want to work. Part of your leadership style is how you relate with your team.

A comment often heard when you mention this, is I don't have time. This is an interesting comment is it so tough to allocate a couple of lunch or tea breaks to spend with your team - after all they are YOUR team. The other comment is there are too many people to get around them all. This is an interesting comment as many theorists would tell us that most people can only cope with about ten direct reports, so if your team is bigger than this you should consider is your team a manageable size.

We discussed before that one of the major differences between a management style and Leadership style revolves around the not just the processes of the business but the human or personal factor.

Consider this week, the time to start a new habit. Choose the member of your team you know the least about and make it your goal to find out some positive things about them through casual contact. In time this will strengthen your leadership and ultimately aide you and your team.

Leadership Focusing on Outcomes

We discussed a few weeks ago about defining outcomes and empowering your team members to get on with the work to get the job done. Last week I had a brush with a team whose manager/leader was very dedicated to achieving his outcomes and those he had set for his team. While working with the team it became apparent that most of the team were less than satisfied with their leader and his way.

We had spent a few days working through some rather complicated scenarios with a group of eight members from the team. Like many teams the members were quite diverse in their skills and attitudes to their work. While I was leading the workshop I was observing each member and their characteristics and as usual there was the guy who asks lots of questions, the guy who looks bored, the guy who always asks why etc. From this point of view this group was pretty typical.

The leader of the team came in to observe his team and two minutes later had singled out two members and sent them packing. Well!! that was a little interesting. Now the team were down two people and the whole team would have to now do extra to achieve their task.

Later I questioned the leader on why he had eject the two members, his response surprised me, these guys weren't paying attention and doing it the way I expected. To this I replied perhaps we could have waited and appraised how these members applied their new skills within the team and did they assist the team reaching the goal.

Does it particularly matter which way a job is done if the team can deliver the outcome. If there are critical issues that must be addressed or a certain way some points must be done, then it is up to us as leaders to explain this when we deliver our vision.

Next time you want to step in and make a move with your team members stop and consider is the outcome in danger, if not allow the team to do things their way, they'll appreciate it!

Good Leadership by Defining Outcomes

We discussed before that all great leaders share their vision with the team. Why, so everyone knows where we are going and what we are striving for. So what's the intermediate step? Like all good projects the vision needs to be broken down into manageable parcels of work.

Now that we have spent some quality time and research understanding the various tasks the time has come for us to set our team onto achieving the vision - how? by completing the tasks aiding to the long-term completion of the project and attainment of the vision.

Consider the people in your team and decide who should take which portion of work, some members will be very obvious because the task matches their skill-set while other jobs may fall to several members of the team. Take care to ensure the load is balanced and look to see opportunities for people to extend their skills.

Now it comes to the people management portion of this task, don't take this lightly as much of the success in this will depend on how well you work with the people to talk them through the challenge and set their goals by defining the outcome you need. Many of us have seen the acronym SMART it's well known, it works and don't be afraid to use it.

Leadership is about talking to the people and explaining again your vision and piece in how this series of tasks will aid towards the fulfillment of the vision, then carefully work through defining the job and the outcomes, remembering:

• Specific - give all the details, ideas hurdles etc about the task,
• Measurable - what you expect to be the outcome, how it would look for a successful outcome and how that would differ from a poor outcome,
• Attainable - agree between you that the person has the appropriate skills and support and the timeline is reasonable,
• Realistic - be fair in your appraisal and agree on how realistic it is to achieve this task and present a great outcome, and
• Time-bound - when is this task to be completed, when should we have reviews and what they should consist of.

If you are open, fair and honest with this process, your team members will come away with a sense of urgency, excitement and motivation to make it all happen.

Be warned if you fail to take these steps carefully your team's outcome will not conform to your ideas and may well not aid you in achieving your vision.

If these ideas are new try it out with a small project to get the feel of it and see how your team responds, look carefully for feedback to see how your team accepts challenges when presented this way, then you can adjust your thinking and delivery to strive for bigger results from your leadership.

Leaders - Agents of Change

Are you an agent of change? We discussed some time back that one of the strengths of good leaders is to be innovative and look for ways to improve the processes and people in our team to achieve better results.

Many people are very resistant to change as they have developed a comfort factor with the status quo. As leaders we need to identify and empathise with these team members. Once we can understand why this resistance is present we can take some time to develop the vision. With a good clear vision our task of helping these guys change will become a lot easier.

With this in mind we need to develop our vision to include several messages to address these areas of change and especially point out the following:

• Why the change will benefit the work team,
• How the change will improve the team's performance,
• What's in it for each of the people within the group,
• How the change will be implemented, and
• When the change will take affect.

When the vision is clear we need to spend some quality time with each factional leader explaining the vision, answering the questions and gaining buy-in from each of these leaders.

Gaining influence with each of these sub-groups will ensure your change is implemented, should you fail to gain this influence you will struggle to gain momentum and you changes may well flounder.

So next time a change comes to your attention consider the change and be mindful to consider how your planning, vision, influencing all need to be part of the plan. Be sure each one of these areas have been well considered, and be ready to talk about the details and possible objections, the sooner these are addressed and presented to the team the sooner you can get on and see your changes implemented.

Leadership and the Art of Anticipation

Over lunch last week a good friend was discussing his new boss of some twelve months, he commented he rarely heard much input from his boss until things were going bad and then there would be a flurry of information and directions.

As the story went on it became a story I've heard in quite a few workplaces, the boss was trying to work across so many areas he inevitably ignored some aspects of the business until things were about to explode, then he would come in swinging left and right barking commands at anyone within earshot. At this all the workers would spring off in another direction and busily work towards this new direction. I asked my friend if this had a positive result and the customers were happy with the renewed effort and activity. His reply didn't surprise me when he said the customers ended up confused. Why had there been an effort for the past so many weeks in this direction and now it was focused in another direction.

It was with interest he went on to say that the workers in his section were happy the boss had set some clear direction, although they were not happy about the timing. "We knew this was about to happen" was the cry. We are forced to treat everyone the same and not examine their particular needs and then when a customer clearly states these needs, they feel they have been ignored and things get ugly.

So it seems although there were clear indicators of what the request was, there was a lack of anticipation of when to rally the team and modify the directions to make our customer truly happy and satisfied.

As we have discussed before good leaders need to present a clear vision to their team on what the outcome is and how the team will get there. The really good leaders anticipate any changes or modifications that need to be made along the way. Keep an eye on the situation, your team members and anticipate what would/could go right or wrong and what could be better.

Anticipation is like planning the more we force ourselves to do it the more we can take small steps to correct the work and get the best output.

Leadership - An opportunity knocks

Recently I visited with a team who were working a really tough schedule put in place by their boss. While all the members knew what the outcome was to be, no-one had allocated the tasks to get to the goal. Interestingly they were all eager to get to the job site and get stuck into getting the job done. Once there, they appraised the obvious tasks to be completed and then found in many cases they didn't have the necessary tools or access.

Each day the group came in and complained that no-one had organised this or that and hence why they were struggling to make their schedule.

What interesting group dynamics, the group could identify that they needed some leadership to direct and influence the team in the completion of this task yet no-one wanted to put their hand up and take a shot at it. I watched in disbelief wonder what in their workplace was making them hold back. As I spent some more time with the larger group it became clearer to me. What had happened at this workplace, happens in many and often leaves us unsure of when and how to act.

This workplace had recently gone through a big transformation with a new management structure put in place. Lots of the members of these teams were struggling to identify and cope with the new managers in place, would they be supported if they took on the leadership mantle? What would happen if they made a mistake? Why weren't these new managers organising things?

This left me thinking when will the management clear the air and empower these people to bring out their best.

And if we were the people in this group would we take the risk and assume the leadership role, what an opportunity to show your capability. If you find yourself in a situation like this take a look around and see if this is your chance to move into a leadership role.

Leadership Growth - Understand the four phases

Why is it that sometimes we're very comfortable leading a task and yet at other times we feel we are floundering along. The theorists will tell us there are four phases of Leadership growth and we must be able to recognise each and the steps we need to take to move to the next state.

These states are commonly known as:

1. I don't know What I don't know,
2. I know what I don't know,
3. I grow and know and it starts to show, and
4. I go because of what I know.

I don't know What I don't know.

This stage of leadership usually occurs when we take on a new series of tasks, the tasks are unfamiliar and we're not sure what is the right direction to move. When we're at this stage we feel uncomfortable and it is important we get busy to understand what the task is and how it gets done and then appraise the situation for the best effect.

I know what I don't know.

Having recognised the first stage and spent some time to learn the task and current process, now is the time to set up a path to learn all the missing information on product process and people. We need to leverage those in the current job to map a course to bridge this missing knowledge gap.

I Grow I know and it starts to show.

Now we have spent the time to fill our knowledge gap, now we can start to do an analysis to see what is the best way to move forward. As this analysis gains momentum we can start to make changes with the processes and people to lead the team in our way. Often at this stage the team start to feel that everything is coming together, people know what to do and the process is running smoothly with few problems.

I Go because I know.

Now I'm quite comfortable with the task and the people and processes I've adjusted along the way. I have a good understanding of all of the factors, so now when problems arise I can call on my knowledge and easily and quickly adjust the team to complete my tasks.

Understanding these four stages helps us to focus on the steps to move from the first stage through to the competent stage, the better we identify where we are placed tells us what is required to move forward so our leadership at its optimum.

Take the time to do an assessment, can you recognise where you are in this cycle. Once you have reached this understanding, now allocate the time to move to the next stage. If you do the time your leadership will improve.

Leaders drive momentum

One of the standout capabilities of a good leader is their ability to use the power of momentum to get things done and gather the followers in their path to sweep through to success.

However momentum just like learning leadership skills, usually starts with small steps, gaining a toe-hold and gradually building up. The toughest aspect is gaining the initial inertia to get moving forward at all and then to mould it into the action machine you need to achieve your goals.

Many organisations are currently adjusting to have a much flatter management tree, which means that it is difficult to recruit people to the team. In this situation you'll need to find a motivator to entice these guys to come join your team, so look for a number of win-win situations such that your team members can see some positive outcome for them. Then you need to get some action in place (some might say grab some low hanging fruit - get some wins in early) so you can capitalize on this momentum and recruit further and so build your momentum, actions and goals will follow. People are drawn to success, so be sure that the people around you can see these early successes and they'll follow wanting to share in the glory.

When you can maintain momentum within your team, you'll find you can accomplish so much more than without the team behind you. So next you get the chance, look for opportunities to try and gain some momentum and use this success to recruit more talent to your team.