Need productive teams? Stop being a boss…

The key to any successful business endeavor is the ability to lead and to inspire. Sadly, far too many people in a position to lead fall far short of being able to do just that. This is especially true when a company begins to grow and the owner finds the need to develop teams and people to manage those teams. The tragedy lies with the challenge to develop people who can actually manage, people who can actually lead. Not everyone can do it but it is essential to having happy employees and productive work teams. It is essential to the future of your business.

  • Terrible managers tend to micromanage everyone like they were children and they are the stern parent. This is someone who is a boss not a manager and certainly not a leader. Putting such people in charge of your teams will spell disaster. Productivity will drop, morale will plummet and you will find that employee turnover will be high. One of the things a great leader and manager needs to be is knowledgeable about the entire process and every person’s role in it. He or she must know how everything affects everything else.

  • They also must be upbeat and inspirational. They also must understand how to relieve the collective stress and not add to it. They must know everyone’s strengths and play to those and try and integrate all of the individual strengths into one collective team strength. Too many who are merely bosses only focus on the negative. Too much focus on the negative only creates a toxic environment from which few companies can ever pull themselves out of. Balance is everything.
  • Great leaders and managers actually love what they do and are able to inspire others to understand their importance to the team effort and to the success of the company overall. If people see that they are valued and that their efforts make an actual difference, they will love coming to work and will go far beyond any perceived expectations.
  • Great managers and leaders inspire people to produce quality efforts and a dedication to being better than they were the day before. They don’t focus on mistakes except as lessons to be learned from. Success is recognized and shared. You need leaders that don’t want problems from their teams, they want solutions. Being focused on solutions and how to coordinate everyone’s strengths toward that end will guarantee the success and growth of any business regardless of size.

-Written by Kevin Sawyer