Leadership Qualities

How Can Leaders Change Daily?

By Brandon W. Jones on February 26, 2013 2

What Does it Mean To Change Daily?

Is it even possible for leaders to change daily? In leadership, business, politics, and many other aspects of life, people talk about making change happen very quickly. They talk about change in terms of something that needs to happen all at once. In reality, effective change causes people and processes to change daily and incrementally.

Change has become the buzz word people use to say they are making a difference. With the word change comes a wide range of feelings. For most people, hearing the word change either excites them or makes them cringe. Change has become a very polarizing word.

How Do Leaders Motivate Employees?

By Brandon W. Jones on February 24, 2013 24

Why Can’t You Motivate Employees?

One of the biggest leadership challenges is learning how to motivate employees. Motivated employees generally work harder with greater resolve to do a good job. Some employees always seem to be motivated while always lack motivation. They lack desire to do anything more than the bare minimum for one reason or another. All their reasons, however, are just excuses because they lack motivation.

In the leadership world, there are many theories about motivation. There is also constant discussion about what it takes to motivate employees and why you can or can’t motivate employees.

So what exactly is motivation?

Motivation is the process of arousing and sustaining goal-directed behavior.

As a leader, it is sometimes possible to motivate employees through creating incentives for good work because some people are motivated by outside sources. There are, however, others that are motivated from within. [Read more…] about How Do Leaders Motivate Employees?

Are You Out Of Balance?

By Brandon W. Jones on February 20, 2013 0

As a leader, you are constantly being pushed and pulled in different directions. You probably have many responsibilities and everyone wants to give you more because you are dependable. That falls in line with the age old saying, “If you really want to get something done, you will give it to someone that is really busy.” With all the responsibilities and/or requests, it can be very easy to become so busy that you get out of balance as a leader.

The Challenge of Maintaining Balance

Several years ago, I was studying to earn my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. I was very focused on two things at the time. I wanted to earn my engineering degree and I wanted to get as close to straight A’s as possible. I knew that this would take a lot of dedication to accomplish because it is not an easy task.

With those two goals in mind, I went from semester to semester through the program. Each semester got progressively harder and the classes became more and more time consuming outside of class. I was very dedicated to the point that I didn’t go out with friends on the weekends on many occasions.

I spent long weeks (70-80 hours) doing nothing but completing assignments, studying for my exams, and doing lab-work. In the process I neglected many of my friends and colleagues that would’ve helped me through the program. I got to the point that my life was out of balance. [Read more…] about Are You Out Of Balance?

How Are You Transparent In Your Leadership?

By Brandon W. Jones on February 12, 2013 0

Is it possible to be transparent as a leader?

Recently, I had an experience where I worked with another leader to make a change. The change would affect all the people we lead, so it was important that we be transparent. We informed everyone that the change would happen and tried to fill them in on all the details.

We also explained that the change needed to happen for the progress of the organization and for the desired outcome. From there, we asked for everyone’s input and feedback prior to making the change. We continued to make this request over and over again for many months prior to making the change.

We made this request for several months and everyone told us they trusted us and the direction we were going. They gave us their vote of confidence numerous times and said they were okay with any changes that would come on the fly because they felt we had been transparent. This gave us confidence to move forward with our plan.

The Five B’s Of Leadership Organization

By Brandon W. Jones on February 7, 2013 4

In order to be a good leader it is very important to be organized. As a leader, this can also be quite a challenge because in most cases leaders have many responsibilities that they must constantly balance to be effective in what they do. It can be very easy to become very organized in your approach to one responsibility, while letting others gradually get less organized.

The Five B’s of Leadership Organization

The five B’s of organization will help you as a leader to focus your energy so that you can stay organized and maintain balance in your life.

1. Be organized In your communication.

As a leader, you must communicate with others regularly. That communication is done in many forms, e.g. public speaking, email, letters, meetings, etc. To be organized in your communication means that you have a consistent message that goes out to everyone. To be organized, you are also direct in the message that you convey.

Have you ever worked for someone that would tell you one thing in front of your coworkers and then something different in front of your boss or other departments? Isn’t that frustrating? A leader that is organized in their communication, maintains their integrity by keeping the same message on all fronts. When you, as a leader, are organized in your communication, you gain the trust and respect of those you lead and they are more willing to follow you. [Read more…] about The Five B’s Of Leadership Organization

10 Steps To Make Effective Change

By Brandon W. Jones on January 22, 2013 5

What Does It Take To Make Effective Change?

As a leader, effective change is probably a very common part of your vocabulary. “Improve this process to make work go more smoothly.” “Implement this new procedure to comply with the new regulation.” “Let’s adjust our focus to improve the profit margin.” “Improve the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the organization.” The topic of creating effective change comes up on a regular basis and is disguised by many different words.

As a leader, it is very common to want to make sweeping changes and make them happen NOW, but it is not always possible. There tends to be resistance to change because it causes people to go out of their comfort zone. Effective change requires that people do something new that is unfamiliar or unknown. People many times are afraid that when the changes occur they won’t be able to perform as well as they do in their current position and it will put their jobs in jeopardy. They can also be afraid that change will eliminate the need for their position. These fears are very valid in many cases and cause a tremendous amount of anxiety when people hear the word change.

So what does it take to implement an effective change? Is it even possible? Yes it is possible to implement effective change! The steps below explain how it can be done.

1. Identify the problem or reason for change.

Before you can make any effective change, you must have a full understanding of what is currently happening. Why were the current practices chosen in the past and how were they effective? Also, why are they needing to be changed and how will the proposed change be an improvement?

You should know both the good and the bad of what is currently happening. Once you identify both, you should identify specifically what needs to be improved and why. The worst thing you can do is change something just for the sake of changing it.

If you don’t have a full understanding of the current process, you will probably have a very hard time betting the buy-in of others. On the other hand, when you have a full understanding of the existing process you will be able to explain very specifically why the existing process doesn’t work and why your changes will fix or improve it. [Read more…] about 10 Steps To Make Effective Change