Small Team Leader Survival Guide! (For New Managers)

Being a new leader can feel intimidating, especially when part of a small team or startup with little room for error. As a new leader, you’ll need to be on top of things and get to grips with your duties as soon as possible, lest you struggle and convince team members of your capabilities. So how do new leaders survive?

A new leader should get to know their team and develop a clear strategy that everyone understands. It would be best if you were honest and transparent to gain the trust of all team members. Pay attention to what all team members have to say, and take your time to adapt to your new position.

In this article, I will explore the main challenges new leaders face and share tips on how to overcome them. I will also discuss how to build the right strategy and win the trust and respect of employees to get you started on the right foot.

How Do New Leaders Gain Trust?

Managing a team successfully is only possible with mutual trust between you and your colleagues. As a new leader, you should prioritize building trust and focus on your relationships with employees.

New leaders gain trust by practicing honesty and openness. You can also gain your team members’ trust by avoiding controlling behavior, recognizing small wins, and standing up for your team.

However, this process can be challenging, even more so if you are new in this position. Let’s take a closer look at how you can gain your team members’ trust and create a positive work culture.

New leaders gain trust by practicing honesty and openness.

1. Be Honest and Open

Honesty is the basis of trust; one is impossible without the other. If you lie to your employees or don’t keep your word, they won’t feel psychologically safe around you and won’t take what you say seriously.

This will significantly damage your relationship and negatively impact the team’s productivity. When employees don’t trust their leader, their involvement decreases, performance suffers, and they become less confident in their job and those who work alongside them.

Similar outcomes are to be expected if you conceal information from your employees, refuse to provide reasoning for your decisions, or share details beyond the bare scope of each team member’s work.

On the other hand, when your colleagues see that you respect them enough, to tell the truth, they’ll trust you more. Transparency in your decisions, actions, and plans will increase your team members’ confidence in your leadership, and they’ll be more willing to follow and rely on you.

Transparency in your decisions, actions, and plans will increase your team members’ confidence in your leadership, and they’ll be more willing to follow and rely on you.

2. Avoid Controlling Behavior

Another fundamental step to building trust is showing your employees your confidence in them. This is impossible if you micromanage extensively and aim to control every single working process.

Managing the team as a new leader takes some time to get used to, and you need full transparency and accountability to see the picture clearly. However, such behavior signals to your workers that you don’t trust them enough to do their job right.

When they don’t feel trusted, they are also not likely to trust you. On the other hand, a decent amount of freedom for the team shows your confidence in their abilities and competence, improving your relationship significantly.

Even if you don’t know the team well or are unsure if everyone is in the right position yet, giving the employees some space and a chance to prove themselves is essential. Be clear about your goals and expectations, and let your team members do their job.

3. Stand Up for Your Team

Finally, show your employees they can rely on you. Create a sense of unity and support the team spirit by being clear that you are a part of this team as much as everyone else.

Help your workers when they reach out to you and encourage them to do it. Accept and understand their mistakes and stand up for them when you have to. Show them you’re on their side, and you’ll quickly gain their trust.

It’s also important to provide positive feedback when your employees show outstanding performance and work hard. Show your appreciation for their efforts and let them know you notice and value their input.

Appreciating small wins will improve your team member’s sense of belonging, as they’ll feel like they’re contributing to a greater cause. This improves trust in the workplace and your employees’ job satisfaction.

Appreciating small wins will improve your team member’s sense of belonging, as they’ll feel like they’re contributing to a greater cause.

How New Leaders Gain Trust — How new leaders gain trust

What Do New Leaders Struggle With the Most?

Gaining employee trust is not the only challenge new leaders face. Let’s discuss the most common struggles when managing a team and learning how to deal with them efficiently.

Adapting To Authority and Responsibility

Whether it’s your first time accepting a leading role or meeting a completely new team you’ve never worked with, the new job responsibilities and the power you get to take some time to get used to.

If you used to be part of the team, you might struggle to accept the authority you now have and exercise it. Communication with colleagues will be key to finding the balance in this situation. Be an inspiring and trusted leader to earn the respect of your peers and stay in touch with them.

Learning To Delegate

Switching to your new responsibilities and making them your main focus is both your goal and possible struggle. If you’re used to working as a part of a team, you may find it hard to concentrate on managing teamwork instead of actually doing it.

However, your job as the leader is to organize and lead the working process. You need to trust the employees to perform their duties and focus on making them a better team. This requires a high level of trust, open communication, and setting clear expectations.

Building Relationships

Finally, new leaders have to gain the loyalty of employees, earn their respect, and prove themselves credible enough to be followed by others. It can be hard to balance authority and personal relationships; however, finding this balance is crucial for your success.

What Should a New Leader Do for the Team?

Tips for a New Leader	Explanation
Set Clear Goals and Expectations	Clearly communicate team goals and company objectives to team members, connecting them to their duties and responsibilities. Ensure everyone understands their job and what is expected of them.
Ensure a Safe Working Environment	Manage the working environment to create a psychologically safe space for the team. Foster an atmosphere where workers feel valued, respected, and safe to ask questions, express opinions, and debate.
Communicate	Establish healthy communication with the team by talking to colleagues, providing honest and constructive feedback, and encouraging fruitful discussions.
Be an Example	Set an example for the team by implementing your approach to work and inspiring others to follow your lead. Treat your workers with respect, show the qualities and dedication you expect of them, and communicate your values and vision for future teamwork.

Tips for New Leaders

Set Clear Goals and Expectations

One of your responsibilities when managing a team is to make sure all members understand company goals and their roles in achieving them. So, when you come as a new leader, make sure to have this conversation early on.

Your task is to clearly communicate your team goals and the company’s objectives, connecting them to the duties at hand and the responsibilities of the workers. You must also express your vision of the team and how you plan to organize the working process.

Ensure that everyone understands their part of the job and what you expect of them. Clear expectations are crucial for healthy professional communication and efficient teamwork.

Clear expectations are crucial for healthy professional communication and efficient teamwork.

Ensure a Safe Working Environment

As a leader, you are also in charge of managing the working environment. Your organizational skills, transparency, and relationship with workers will determine how psychologically safe that environment will be; here’s an article on how to asses psychological safety in your team.

Management changes bring uncertainty and can be stressful for the team. When leading them, make sure to be attentive to the state of team morale and the degree of emotional safety of your employees.

A healthy and safe working atmosphere will open the way for new initiatives, better communication, and higher productivity. The workers should feel safe asking questions, expressing opinions, debating, and disagreeing. They should know they are valued within the team and treated with respect.

Communicate

Communication is vital, especially when you start leading your new team. It is essential for many aspects of your success, from efficient management to keeping the team morale high.

Talk to your colleagues, provide honest and constructive feedback, and encourage fruitful discussions. During meetings, show appreciation for questions, ask for opinions, and be open to conversations.

Healthy communication will help you avoid potentially disruptive issues along the road. When expectations are clear, and boundaries are defined, it’s easier for team members to do their job as expected. When mistakes and problems are discussed constructively and without judgment, the team grows, and performance improves.

Be an Example

One of the most helpful things you can do for the team is to set an example. It’s best to implement your approach to the team’s work and inspire others to follow your lead.

When you talk about your values and explain your vision for future teamwork to the employees, ensure you are an excellent example of the attitudes and behaviors you expect. Treat your workers the way you want them to treat you and each other, and show the qualities and dedication you expect of them.

Treat your workers the way you want them to treat you and each other, and show the qualities and dedication you expect of them.

What New Team Leaders Should Do First

So, how do you start leading your team to success? What should be your first priorities? Let’s go over the essential first steps that will help you become the leader your team deserves.

1. Get To Know Your Team

Start by meeting your team members and getting to know them better. The key to managing a team successfully is understanding each employee’s motivations, strengths, and weaknesses.

You have better chances of succeeding if you implement an individual approach and acknowledge the uniqueness of each worker.

Take the time to explore your employees’ unique skills, find out what they’re best at, and discover their weak points or things they need to improve on. You’ll find that leading a team is much more efficient when you have a clear picture of your colleagues’ capabilities and potential.

Their personality traits and working habits also influence overall productivity. As a leader, you will benefit from knowing how they prefer to work, what makes them comfortable or uncomfortable, and what motivates them to go forward.

Some employees may be more productive in the morning, while others will perform better in the evening. Certain team members will be more comfortable working independently, while others are great collaborators. When managing your team, consider such nuances to ensure everyone performs best.

2. Let the Team Get To Know You

Introducing yourself to the team properly is no less important. As a new leader, you need to clearly communicate to your colleagues who you are, what you stand for, how you’ll be managing the working process, and give answers to other important questions.

Include these answers in your introductory speech, and go beyond reciting your resume’s points. Be more personal and tell your career story in an engaging way that will let employees know you are a reliable leading figure. I suggest you learn why public speaking is so important in leadership.

Explain what kind of leader you’ll be and what they can expect while working with you. Set clear expectations and discuss your policies. Your goal is to show that employees can trust you and count on your help and that there are clear rules and boundaries that will navigate the working process.

Communication is key, so it’s in your best interest to be open to it, especially as you get started. Some personal time with each team member is also necessary. Let the employees ask questions, discuss the points that concern them, and get to know you better.

3. Develop Your Strategy

To manage the team successfully, you need a defined working strategy. It should be defined by your values, goals, and overall vision of the team’s growth. Decide what kind of leader you want to be and develop your personal leading style.

Look around to evaluate the team’s current state and highlight what needs improvement. Listen to what the employees have to say as you build strategies that will lead the team to success.

Make sure to communicate your strategy to colleagues in detail. Be clear and transparent about how you want the working process to be organized, how responsibilities will be shared, and what will not be tolerated.

4. Take Your Time To Learn and Listen

Most importantly, don’t rush into things. As a new leader, you’ll need time to understand your current working environment, adapt to your new role, meet your employees, discover their professional and personal preferences, and much more.

Listening to your employees and other leaders as you navigate your new position is crucial. Be open to conversations, ask questions, allow your colleagues to raise concerns, welcome their initiatives, and be attentive to their needs. Always look for ways to improve your own performance and perfect your leadership skills.

Below is a quick video of Simon Sinek during an interview talking about the importance of building trust through committed leadership.

Building Trust Through Committed Leadership

Conclusion

New leaders should prioritize building healthy relationships with employees, earning their trust, and creating a safe environment. Be open and communicative, especially at first, and give everyone a chance to know you better and understand what working with you will be like.

Your first steps should be defining your vision for the team and developing a strategy for leading them. Communicate your expectations and goals to everyone and define the roles and responsibilities of the employees. Most importantly, take your time to get to know the people you’re working with and their working process.

What Is the Importance of Self-Management Skills?

The true sign of an effective team is that it can reach synergies, or as Aristoteles told it, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” An individual unable to pull their weight slows down the group. Conversely, a self-managed team member, especially the leader, can motivate a team to outperform its sum potential.

Self-management skills are essential to increase productivity, reduce workplace conflict, and enhance communication between team members. Such skills improve problem-solving and employee adaptability and promote honesty and integrity. They also help workers establish a better work-life balance.

This post will show why, as a leader, you should prioritize the development of self-management skills.

How Self-Management Skills Benefit Employees and Employers

The leader is responsible for managing a team. Ultimately, people will celebrate or criticize the leader depending on the success or failure of a group. However, a leader can only do so much.

Micromanagement is generally frowned upon and is usually more harmful than beneficial, so the employees must be their own bosses while working towards the team’s goals.

Micromanagement is generally frowned upon and is usually more harmful than beneficial, so the employees must be their own bosses while working towards the team’s goals.

Increased Productivity

After strategizing as a group and assigning tasks, employees step into their workspaces to execute their assignments. The manager expects the employee to work with minimal supervision within the time frame provided. When left unsupervised, an individual’s success depends on their self-management skills.

A crucial self-management skill is time management. Employees should evaluate their workload appropriately, divide it into sections, and assign enough time to every task.

A pro tip is to start with plotting the deadline on the calendar, then add some spare time in case something goes wrong, and from there, schedule tasks moving back in time.

By doing so, the employees make optimum use of every minute and reduce the likelihood of multitasking. Multitasking is an enemy of quality and productivity because switching between tasks takes energy from the brain.

Multitasking is an enemy of quality and productivity because switching between tasks takes energy from the brain.

Through time management, employees increase the likeliness of meeting deadlines, enabling the group’s progression. The team can’t move forward on sequentially set-up projects if completing a task lags.

Tasks can be seen like cogs in a machine; if one cog fails or falls out of alignment, the machine malfunctions.

Tasks can be seen like cogs in a machine, and if one cog fails or falls out of alignment, the machine malfunctions.

If every employee manages their time as expected, productivity increases. Through self-management, employees adhere to timelines set by the team, ensuring that the group meets its goals within the specified time frames.

Another pro tip; in the military, timing is often vital (literally) and sometimes even more vital than task performance.

One thing I have learned as a leader is to clearly communicate what aspect of the task is the most important. Is it completing the task to a high standard or to a lower standard but on time?

Leading employees with self-management skills are easy as you are confident everyone will perform as expected.

Reduced Workplace Conflict

Workplace conflicts are inevitable and vital for a team’s success. No matter how cohesive the team is, the members are bound to and should have differences of opinion. The individuals’ ability to control their emotions determines if the conflict will be constructive or destructive to the team’s overall development.

Emotional control is an important factor of self-management. A condescending reply to a work email or in a Slack channel can raise tensions between employees.

Trivial quarrels at work are sometimes escalated into huge issues by employees who can’t control their emotions. The tension created negatively affects productivity and erodes trust and teamwork.

Self-management involves guiding your physical and mental being toward a valuable and positive path. Emotions from home shouldn’t (but most likely will, since we are humans) overly disturb the workplace or affect a team member’s output.

Self-management involves guiding your physical and mental being toward a valuable and positive path.

Leaders can help their employees improve emotional control by introducing stress education. It helps improve employees’ mental health and their ability to control emotions.

Enhanced Communication Between Team Members

Self-management improves teamwork as team members know when to consult each other.

Self-management encourages individuals to identify their strengths and weaknesses. When they understand that their shortcomings will interfere with the execution of a particular task, the employee is self-aware enough to inform the team and seek help.

Through clear intra-employee communication, leading also becomes easier since issues tend to get solved at the lowest possible level.

Improved Problem-Solving Skills

Daily, employees face unexpected challenges requiring them to make decisions without seeking help. Some of these choices can profoundly impact the group.

Self-management empowers an employee to determine when to solve problems individually and when to ask for help from the leader or other team members. It guarantees effectiveness within the team.

The reality of great teamwork is that sometimes, you have to trust your team members to solve individual problems. You can only preside over some of your team’s decisions, even in a small group of two to ten members.

It Guarantees Honesty and Integrity

Trust is a crucial group dynamic. It’s easier to trust employees who are honest and demonstrate integrity.

Employees shoulder various responsibilities within the group. For the group to succeed, the employee must honestly report their performance. Furthermore, they must perform their tasks with integrity and harmonize the group’s interests with their self-interests.

Honesty and integrity stem from self-management. Through self-management, the employees learn to put the team first, leading to greater productivity.

Honesty and integrity stem from self-management. Through self-management, the employees learn to put the team first, leading to greater productivity.

In my experience, employees with stellar self-management skills will likely refrain from stealing from the company or cutting corners to complete tasks faster. They demonstrate commitment to ethics and the company’s goals.

Improved Adaptability

The ability to adapt to change is vital to the success of a group. For example, the businesses that modified their workplaces faster following the 2020 pandemic were less affected by the anomaly.

Many businesses require their employees to work remotely. Due to adaptability, employees and supervisors with self-management skills switched to the new work mode faster.

Change in the workplace is inevitable. Therefore, for an employee to survive, they need to adapt to evolving work conditions. As an employer, you want workers who can adapt to changes quickly.

Improved Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is a much-discussed topic as employers explore ways to improve the overall lives of their employees.

Before measures like the 4-day workweek (a fascinating book) gain widespread adoption, employees can improve their work-life balance through self-management skills. Separating work and life is easy for someone who understands time management. By managing your workload and meeting deadlines, you can free up time for yourself, your family, and your friends.

Employees and employers who can balance work and personal lives are happier and more productive.

Here is Doug Kirkpatrick, author of Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization, giving a TED talk on how to empower organizations through self-management.

Empowering organizations through self-management

Benefit	Description
Increased productivity	Employees manage their time effectively and focus on their work, reducing the likelihood of multitasking and missed deadlines.
Reduced workplace conflict	Self-management skills help employees control their emotions, reducing the likelihood of conflicts that affect productivity.
Enhanced communication	Self-management improves teamwork and communication between team members, making leading easier.
Improved problem-solving skills	Employees learn to solve problems independently or with the help of team members, leading to a more effective team.
Honesty and integrity	Self-management encourages employees to put the team first, leading to greater productivity and commitment to ethics.
Improved adaptability	Self-management skills make employees more adaptable to changes in the workplace, leading to a more resilient team.
Improved work-life balance	Employees manage their workload effectively, reducing stress and improving their work-life balance.

A summary of the benefits of self-management skills for employees and employers

Conclusion

Self-management skills are vital to the success of any business. They motivate employees and employers to perform their best, work together more effectively, and avoid conflict.

Self-management comes naturally to some employees, but others have to learn. One way to teach employees self-management is by leading by example. If you are punctual, honest, an efficient time manager, and emotionally mature, these self-management skills will rub off on your employees.

Extreme Ownership: 13 Lessons For Leaders and Managers!

Leaders who take responsibility for every success and failure they encounter in their mission are more likely to succeed than those who give excuses and blame others. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s Extreme Ownership leadership style best summarizes this statement. So what are the most important lessons to learn from extreme ownership?

One important lesson from extreme ownership is that a leader’s mindset influences success. Although successful leaders delegate power, they are always accountable for everyone’s actions. They don’t look for excuses for bad performance but instead come up with solutions.

This article discusses all lessons you can steal from Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s Extreme Ownership book.

Extreme Ownership Summary

Why extreme ownership in a team matters!

Leading a business is like going into combat with a troop following your lead, except you don’t have to kill anyone (unless you are mafia, I guess). That’s what Jocko Willink and Leif Babin demonstrate in their book Extreme Ownership.

Both are retired Navy SEALs. They share the lessons they gained on the battlefield for over 30 years to empower organization leaders. Most importantly, they borrow extreme ownership principles from leading SEAL’s Task Unit Bruiser in the violent battles of Ramadi, Iraq.

Are you a manager? Here are signs to look for that you are not taking extreme ownership!

Although I wasn’t in Iraq during the same period as them, witnessing the aftermath of those battles makes me think everyone who survived must have plenty of important lessons to teach. So I am all ears (or eyes) when they talk.

Their ability to manage the team under pressure and to make decisions in split seconds helped them secure the city. Mark you, it does not mean there were no mistakes. In fact, in one instance, a soldier lost their life while engaging in combat with a friendly group (something we refer to as “blue on blue”).

Despite Jocko Willink making a grave mistake that cost another’s life and injuries to other soldiers, his seniors did not dismiss him or terminate his career. Instead, he continued to serve in his position.

Why? Because he took responsibility for the mistake as the unit commander without blaming others. Also, he reviewed the standard operating procedures to prevent the mistake from being repeated. By doing so, his superior believed he had what it takes to lead the team.

Overall, extreme ownership emphasizes that a leader should be accountable for the failure and success of the business. This sets the pace for the subordinates while creating efficiency in the team.

If you want to own a copy, you can check the book on Amazon: Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win.

Extreme Ownership | Jocko Willink

The 13 Principles of Extreme Ownership

Every leader wants to manage a winning team. And if you’re wondering how you can lead your team to success, there are several lessons you can borrow from extreme ownership.

Principles of Extreme Ownership	Description
A Leader’s Mindset Is Key to Success	A leader should have an extreme ownership mindset that requires them to take responsibility for their actions and those of their team.
Leading Requires Accountability	A leader must hold themselves and their team accountable for success and failure. They must ensure the team understands the mission and provide the necessary resources and support to achieve it.
Teams Are Always a Reflection of Their Leader	A leader’s actions directly influence employees’ morale, and they must lead by example to create a positive work environment.
You Can Only Lead From a Place of Clarity	A leader must have a clear understanding of the mission, the strategies required to achieve it, and why it matters to communicate it effectively to the team.
The Mission’s Success Should Override Personal Interests	A leader’s ego should not dominate their drive for success, as it can lead to dismissiveness, lack of accountability, and blaming others for failure.
Teamwork Requires Proper Coordination	Effective teamwork requires proper coordination and communication to avoid competition, blame games, and resentment.
Simplifying Orders and Plans Avoids Confusion	A leader must simplify orders and plans to ensure everyone understands them and has a clear picture of what’s expected of them.
Pressuring Situations Require a Leader To Set Priorities	During a crisis, a leader must prioritize avoiding the worst outcomes and make quick, informed decisions to restore order.
Sharing Power Propels Success	A leader should share power and responsibilities with their team to increase their chances of success and build a team of leaders beneath them.
Plan Before Implementing	Planning helps leaders prepare necessary resources, identify challenges, and chart organizational goals and activities to execute the plan effectively.
Discipline Brings Freedom and Flexibility	Leaders who cultivate discipline can stay focused on what matters and follow a routine or structure to be more efficient and flexible.
Leading Requires Prompt Decision Making	Leaders must be quick at making decisions with little information and no time and adjust them as necessary to serve the organization’s interests.
Anticipate Threats	Leaders must continuously train themselves and their teams to improve their skills and adapt to new challenges and environments.

The 13 Principles of Extreme Ownership

1. A Leader’s Mindset Is Key to Success

Leading a winning team starts from a leader’s mind. Leaders must cultivate beliefs and attitudes that govern how they conduct themselves and interact with others.

An extreme ownership mindset requires the leader to look from the inside out. The leader should know they are responsible for their actions and the actions of their juniors.

When disruptions occur in the business, as they inevitably do, a leader should always find ways of changing the course for better results—even if they are not directly responsible.

An extreme ownership mindset empowers the leader to act without excuses. Cultivating this attitude calls for a balance between humility and confidence.

An extreme ownership mindset empowers the leader to act without excuses. Cultivating this attitude calls for a balance between humility and confidence.

You should be willing to accept your shortcomings and appreciate everyone’s opinion irrespective of their position, yet lead with authority and firmness.

2. Leading Requires Accountability

Accountability is a muscle that every leader needs to develop over time. It’s easy to take the glory of a successful project, but admitting failure requires high accountability.

Since you are at the top of the ladder, your team is your responsibility. You should ensure your team members understand the mission and the strategies needed to achieve it. Then you must gather the resources needed, including training, to fully equip your team and provide support where needed.

When a leader is accountable for success and failure, even employees follow the example. This strengthens relationships within the team because everyone is doing their job without pointing fingers.

3. Teams Are Always a Reflection of Their Leader

Teams are a reflection of their leaders.

A leader’s actions directly influence employees’ morale. For instance, if the leader constantly attributes poor performance to the employees’ inefficiency, employees will also pick up the attitude. The result? Infighting, damaged attitude, and unwillingness to cooperate throughout the organization.

If you don’t have your desired team, look at yourself first. What can you do differently to improve how you lead your team? Once you identify your weaknesses, turn them into strengths, and slowly you’ll influence your team members.

Owning up to your shortcomings openly without using your juniors as scapegoats sets an excellent example for them to emulate.

4. You Can Only Lead From a Place of Clarity

Clarity eliminates confusion and deviation from the main objectives. Before owning a mission, a leader must clearly understand what the mission entails, what tactics and strategies will help achieve the goal, and why the mission matters.

With this in mind, it becomes easy to communicate the mission to the team. You can also answer questions from your team and clear any doubts before implementing the strategy.

When everybody in the team believes in the plan, you don’t have to explain each decision. Your actions and words impart confidence, which is crucial to success when working as a team.

As the team leader, you must risk being uncomfortable with your superiors and ask questions until the mission is crystal clear.

As the team leader, you must risk being uncomfortable with your superiors and ask questions until the mission is crystal clear.

5. The Mission’s Success Should Override Personal Interests

Everyone wants to succeed and build a good reputation in leadership positions. However, when ego dominates this drive, a leader’s judgment becomes clouded as they seek recognition. In return, they become dismissive of the organization’s and team’s welfare.

The ego thinks highly of itself. It denies the leader a chance to receive constructive criticism and advice from lower positions. It also avoids accountability, causing the leader to shift the blame to others.

Instead, a leader should seek performance excellence where the organization’s mission and the team’s welfare come first. Pursuing this keeps everyone motivated while making them feel valued for their contribution.

My own experience tells me that many leaders struggle to balance the needs of the team, the mission, and the organization. If one fails, the other will soon follow. A great place to start is by improving your Self-awareness.

6. Teamwork Requires Proper Coordination

Teamwork allows sharing of responsibilities, making it possible to accomplish goals faster. It also brings interdependence, which pulls diverse experiences together. However, working with teams also has its risks.

If not properly coordinated, teams get carried away in their immediate tasks and forget to cooperate with other teams. In return, competition arises, which bleeds blame games and resentment.

As a leader, you are responsible for keeping your teams in perspective by reminding them you are all pursuing the same goal. Regular meetings with all team members to remind them of the main objectives can help you achieve this. When one team wins, the other one wins too.

7. Simplifying Orders and Plans Avoids Confusion

The way you perceive mission execution plans is different from how your subordinates do. Though some concepts may seem easy to you, they are challenging for some.

One issue I had as a team leader of an EOD (bomb disposal) team when trying to convey the plan to my guys was that I was presented with much more information than they had.

This meant that I sometimes lost my understanding of what they knew and what they didn’t. Those sometimes made me give too little information and, thus, did not provide a clear enough picture of the situation.

So, before passing orders and plans, it is good to test them to ensure even the employee at the lowest rank can understand them. Remove all unnecessary details and leave what’s critical to the mission.

When plans are simple and actionable, everyone knows what’s expected of them. This eliminates confusion and mistakes. It also brings flexibility when things fall out of plan.

8. Pressuring Situations Require a Leader To Set Priorities

Inevitably, all businesses suffer from unforeseen risks or crises occasionally. You have little or no control over how things will unfold as a leader, yet you must pivot quickly.

When this happens, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. You have to make decisions fast to restore order and to see things from an emotionless perspective.

In times of crisis, it’s more about avoiding the worst outcomes than finding the perfect solution.

In times of crisis, it’s more about avoiding the worst outcomes than finding the perfect solution.

Secondly, you have to set priorities. Issues that matter most to the well-being of the business should be on top of the list, while the least urgent ones should come after. However, your plan should be flexible to accommodate changes as the crisis unfolds.

You can use the Eisenhower matrix to understand what needs to be done now. Book a free call with me to learn more about the Eisenhower matrix here!

9. Sharing Power Propels Success

Leaders who hoard power limit their ability to succeed. Sometimes, the responsibilities may be overwhelming because they have no time to monitor everyone’s actions. This leaves room for mistakes that might not be traced early enough.

Conversely, leaders who share power increase their chances of succeeding in their missions. You gain real power by building a team of leaders beneath you and giving them the right to make decisions. You get a team willing to support you and make your plans succeed.

You gain real power by building a team of leaders beneath you and giving them the right to make decisions.

Empowering your team shows that you trust them, which gives them the confidence to make decisions that will propel them closer to the business goals.

10. Plan Before Implementing

Planning helps to chart organizational goals and the activities that must take place to realize them. It enables you to paint the picture of where the business has to go and why things must be done in a specific way.

Planning helps leaders prepare the necessary resources and identify challenges before they occur. This makes it easier for everyone to execute the plan.

Planning in the military is heavily emphasized; I don’t know how many hundreds of hours I have spent planning and practicing planning. It’s an arena in which most leaders seem to be underperforming.

The planning process must be structured to be effective; this allows others to critique the planning, not just the outcome. One very effective method of planning is the “forging plans framework” we use here at Sancus Leadership.

This method is born out of military situations like the ones Leif and Jocko discuss and has then been improved to work in a business environment.

You can book a free call with me here to see how a battle-proven planning method can save you time and prepare you for the next crisis without any expensive or complex software.

11. Discipline Brings Freedom and Flexibility

Being disciplined as a leader involves doing what’s expected at the right time. It’s about having the drive to follow a routine or structure to stay focused on things that matter. Leaders who cultivate discipline develop the willpower to stay on course regardless of their feelings.

Discipline should give people freedom and flexibility to adjust to new situations. However, leaders must be careful not to impose restrictive discipline that promotes poor performance. A leader should also remember that discipline is a skill that takes time to develop.

A leader should also remember that discipline is a skill that takes time to develop.

12. Leading Requires Prompt Decision Making

Sometimes, leaders have to make decisions with little information and no time. This requires you to be quick at making the best decision that serves the organization’s interests at that time. You can then adjust your actions as you get more details about the situation.

Researching and analyzing a situation is important. However, you must be able to respond to every event within the required timeline to prevent situations from escalating to uncontrollable levels.

“You must make a good enough decision in time rather than the perfect decision too late.”
Gabo (yep, me quoting myself)

As a leader, you have to be decisive and flexible to drop action plans that are not yielding the desired results.

We must be able to detach from our plans emotionally. This is incredibly hard if you have spent a bunch of time committing to it. You need to practice this!

13. Anticipate Threats

The beauty of planning before implementing is that you are aware of the highs and lows you will likely experience. When you know a threat is likely to occur, you should take the necessary actions to mitigate it.

Some risks are unpreventable, but preparing a contingency plan ahead of time helps you manage risks without causing much disruption in the business. I personally love contingency plans; they have saved my butt so many times.

With the experience I have today, I know that situations change incredibly fast, so I spend most of my planning time on contingencies.

While managing your team, you should balance your focus between the present and the future and prepare how you’ll sustain the business amidst disruptions.

How Can You Cultivate Extreme Ownership in Your Business?

If you are new to the concept of extreme ownership, you might wonder where to start to make it work in your business. The answer is simple: it starts with you. You’ll first have to evaluate your leadership style and see where it needs to improve.

Take responsibility for everything that happens under your command.

Once you find areas you need to adjust, you can introduce extreme ownership to your team by:

Building trust: Your team must see you as a dependable person. They should know you have their back and are confident you’ll not use them as scapegoats for your mistakes. You can build trust by communicating openly and taking responsibility for your actions.
Leading by example: Your words should resonate with your actions. People are always willing to follow a leader who walks their talk. You’ll encounter less resistance when you do what you expect of your team.
Getting rid of ego: As a leader, you should cultivate humility by acknowledging everyone on the team and listening to their opinions. It would help if you also promoted this attitude in the team by showing you are all equal and working towards the same goal.
Communicating frequently: When your team has regular updates on the overall mission, they’ll feel involved and recognized. It also allows you to understand your team’s needs.

Final Thoughts

Being a successful leader requires you to adopt extreme ownership. This means you take responsibility for everything that happens under your command. Exhibiting this mindset pushes you to be thorough because there is no one to blame for the mission’s outcomes but you. When you set this example, your team emulates you, bringing efficiency to the organization.

3 Signs You’re Not Taking Extreme Ownership of Your Business (and Life)

When I was 23 years old, my go-to when something didn’t bear in my favor was to blame it on someone or something else. I used to have a bizarre haircut, and it got blamed for the lack of women in my life (sad, I know). True or not, I did nothing to change my situation. But my life drastically changed the day I decided to take ownership of everything in my life. Taking ownership is a critical skill that will significantly affect how you manage your business and live your life.

Signs that you are not taking extreme ownership

Extreme ownership means taking full responsibility for your business and life and focusing on what you can change instead of blaming others. Signs that you need to take more extreme ownership of your business and life include indecisiveness, unwillingness to delegate tasks, and inability to take responsibility.

In this article, I’ll talk about the signs that you’re not taking extreme ownership of your business and life and how these can take a toll on your leadership, management skills, and personal relationships.

1. You’re Indecisive

The ability to make sound decisions promptly is a crucial leadership quality that can make or break a business. Indecisiveness will put your business’ welfare at risk, especially in the face of uncertainty, conflict, and crisis. You must always be on top of things and know how to handle various situations strategically.

Wondering if you are indecisive? The first step is to become self-aware.

Effective decisiveness is about being okay with limited information but still able to make a decision and move forward; action creates clarity.

Effective decisiveness is about being okay with limited information but still able to make a decision and move forward; action creates clarity.

That being said, managing and leading a team doesn’t mean you make all decisions, big and small. You must learn to delegate tasks to competent individuals so the team functions efficiently and synergistically.

Wanting to decide on even the most minor aspects of your business makes you a micromanager, which is not a useful leadership quality.

Our jobs as leaders are to present a what and why but not the how. The how is up to the individual who is closest to the problem. We must trust our team to make the right decisions; we offer feedback and training when they don’t.

Indecisiveness may translate into your personal life and make you feel overwhelmed at times; an excellent tool for improving your decisiveness is the Eisenhower matrix.

Tasks are placed in one of four categories; urgent and important, urgent but not important, important but not urgent, and not urgent and not important. This clearly shows what must be decided here and now and what tasks can wait.

When you want to start prioritizing and making more beneficial decisions on time and minimizing decisions made too late, I invite you to book a call with me to see if we should work together.

2. You’re Not Willing to Delegate Tasks

An efficient leader is one who can delegate tasks.

No matter how skilled you are in leading and managing your team, you will still need other individuals’ help, especially those with a particular field of expertise. The mark of a good leader isn’t one who can do everything all at once. Rather, an efficient leader is one who can delegate to those who can accomplish the tasks the best.

An efficient leader is one who can delegate to those who can accomplish the tasks the best.

Delegation of tasks empowers your team members. It shows them that you believe in their capabilities, which is why you give them autonomy over their work.

The key to practicing extreme ownership and effective delegation is allowing your team members to see the bigger picture. Hence, they understand their unique and significant roles in achieving the goals you’ve set.

Creating a synergistic team is just as crucial in business as in your personal life. Truer words were never spoken than the adage, “No man is an island.” Both in business and life, remember that nobody is entirely self-sufficient. We must all rely on others, one way or another, to succeed.

The Damaging Effects of Micromanagement

The opposite of effective delegation is micromanagement; I think considering why delegation is so important is worth considering.

People generally want enough space and opportunities to do what they think is best. Your team members will undoubtedly appreciate your good management, but they also want to feel they contribute significantly to the business. If you lean toward micromanagement, chances are you’re doing more harm than good.

Here are some of the most damaging effects of micromanagement:

Team members may feel demotivated. Although team members may appreciate support and advice, they might start feeling utterly powerless if you don’t allow them to make even the smallest decisions about how they should accomplish their jobs.
Team morale may go down. Making your team members feel that you don’t have faith in their capabilities may make them lose interest in their work.
Team members may start feeling paranoid. Managing your team too closely may sow seeds of self-doubt in them, especially if you’re constantly scrutinizing every aspect of their work.
Suppression of creativity and innovativeness. If you expect your team members to follow instructions to a tee, you will hamper their ability to think of ingenious solutions to complex problems. You will also hinder them from thinking outside the box and maximizing their full potential.

3. You Don’t Take Full Responsibility

Always take full responsibility and ownership.

If you often point fingers whenever something doesn’t go as planned, it may indicate that you’re not taking extreme ownership of your business. Leading a team involves taking full responsibility for every aspect, both the good and the bad, even if you delegate tasks to people you highly trust. Remember that the bottom line is everything, and everyone depends on you.

If you often point fingers whenever something doesn’t go as planned, it may indicate that you’re not taking extreme ownership of your business.

The ability to take full responsibility and ownership of your business will be evident in how you live your daily life. Do you frequently find yourself blaming others, especially the people you love most, whenever things go wrong? Is it easy and almost instinctive for you to put the blame on others in the face of blunders and frustrations?

If so, take it upon yourself to step more into the spotlight and take full responsibility for various aspects of your life and business. Take these failures as learning opportunities to improve yourself and enhance your modes of action and tactics. Show your team (and your friends and family) that you — whether as a team leader, spouse, or parent — are willing to step into the line of fire for the betterment of the people around you.

You are often not the reason why something happened, and you might not even be able to do something about it. But if you approach life with a sense of genuine ownership, the direction of your life, just as mine did, will profoundly change for the better.

Suddenly you are the king of whatever happens, and it’s better to be king than a peasant, especially in a shitty kingdom.

Signs of Not Taking Extreme Ownership	Description
Indecisiveness	The inability to make sound decisions in a timely manner can put a business at risk, especially during uncertain times. Effective decision-making involves being comfortable with limited information and taking action to create clarity. Leaders must trust their team to make decisions while providing feedback and training when needed.
Unwillingness to Delegate Tasks	Good leaders delegate tasks to individuals with the right skills and expertise, empowering team members and helping them understand their roles in achieving goals. Practicing extreme ownership involves allowing team members to see the bigger picture and take ownership of their work.
Failure to Take Full Responsibility	Effective leaders take full responsibility for the good and the bad, even when delegating tasks to trusted individuals. Blaming others for mistakes and failures indicates a lack of ownership and responsibility. Taking ownership of one’s actions is crucial for success in both business and personal life.

Signs you’re not taking extreme ownership of your business

What Is Extreme Ownership in Business?

Extreme ownership in the business is the idea that you, as the leader, own everything relating to your business. You take full responsibility for each triumph, failure, and obstacle. You can simultaneously manage all aspects despite all that is happening in your professional and personal life.

You should delegate tasks to people you trust but also to those you don’t trust; delegate the less important tasks and let them slowly build confidence back up.

However, remember that you’re still in the driver’s seat, and it’s your job to ensure that the people on your team are aligned with organizational goals.

Extreme ownership is significant because it forces you to focus on your impact on the situation; it’s the difference between focusing on “why the problem arose ” and “how do we fix it.” The first will look for something/someone to blame, and the latter will direct you toward a solution.

Extreme ownership is, in a way, telling yourself, “There are no excuses; I will get it done.”

The book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win (available on Amazon.com) is an excellent source of information and insights on the value of extreme ownership in your business (and life). The lessons learned from these SEAL officers will help you better manage and lead your team toward success.

Lead as If You Had The Experience! (8 Tips For New Managers)

Confident managers make it seem like leading a team is easy. But every leader had a moment where it was the first time they were in charge of a team. Most of us felt nervous and anxious, and we thought, “I better not screw this up so they think I’m a bad boss.” Maybe you have these thoughts right now? So how do you best lead a team as a new leader?

To lead your first team successfully (without prior experience as a manager). You must understand your weaknesses and strengths, be transparent with members, and ensure the team knows you are open to feedback.

Twelve years ago, when I ran my first small team, I was terrified; what if I make a mistake? What if I don’t know the answers? What will they think of me? If you have ever had thoughts like this, you are in the correct place.

Today we will discuss how to improve your chances of having success with your first team.

Team Management Essentials for Inexperienced Leaders

Team management essentials for inexperience leaders

Finding yourself in charge of a team without experience frightens most of us. Fortunately, new managers can learn about their roles by studying their predecessors’ mistakes and successes. However, considering a managerial role is essential at various organizational levels, there’s a blueprint for going about it.

Here are some aspects you should focus on:

1. Analyze Your Leadership

Take a moment to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, and notice the traits that will help you approach this new role. By analyzing yourself, you can spot potential flaws that may hinder being a team leader and work on them early on.

You also get to see what you’re good at, which, If you exploit it correctly, will make you a more effective and confident leader.

For example, if you’re good with group communication, you can rest assured that you will quickly get along with team members. It also means you can quickly form bonds with your team members, helping you understand their strengths and weaknesses.

However, let’s say you are like me, and you hate routine logistical tasks, and you know that from time to time, you tend to avoid them in favor of something you think is more important. If you let your team know about these weaknesses, They can help remind and support you in those duties.

According to a study from 2015, allowing your team to see you have weak spots will also build trust.

You also want to assess how your organization works, its values, and its strengths. This analysis will give you a grasp of the strategy you should employ while managing. By understanding your organization thoroughly, you can also understand how to allocate different assets while managing your team.

Understanding the organization sets you up for reaching your targets, and hitting the team goals means you are competent as a leader, and competency is one of the pillars of intra-team trust.

2. Tell Them It’s Your First Time

Whatever you do, don’t apply the method of “fake it till you make it.” I have seen so many leaders try this, but sooner or later, your team will find out that you are fake, and when they do, you will have lost all the trust you’ve been trying to build, and your performance will plummet.

Whatever you do, don’t apply the method of “fake it till you make it.”

While it may seem weak, letting your team know it’s your first time managing can make things easier for everyone. The members are more likely to forgive your mistakes if they know it’s your first time in this new role.

However, there’s a caveat – some members may want to test you in this role and can challenge your authority in some issues. This is OKAY and is to be expected; after all, they want to ensure they have a competent boss who will take them toward their individual goals.

Be open and ask questions, but when it is time to decide, You need to be firm and decisive.

3. Delegate Everything You Can!

The most challenging part of leading a team for the first time is the mindset shift that needs to happen when you first step into the role. Remember that you were selected for your ability in the organization and the contribution you have made. However, now that you’re managing a team, success is based on something other than your efforts.

Now you need to transition from being excellent at doing to being excellent at leading. This is a totally different skill set.

Now you need to transition from being excellent at doing to leading.

Results depend on team efforts and not on any single member. As such, you are responsible for ensuring the whole team functions as a unit and churns work that meets the organization’s standards. You must recognize the change in your role and adapt accordingly. This change, like your work, can take some getting used to.

Results depend on team efforts and not on any single member.

Many new managers need help to delegate work and try to do specific tasks themselves. They start micromanaging projects by giving members roles and interfering in how their team carries out these roles. The tendency for new leaders to micromanage

While having high standards is a good thing, wanting things to be perfect or just how you’d like will surely kill your career as a manager. It would be best to avoid the narcissistic tendency of thinking you are the only one who can do this to standard.

Trusting your team to carry out their specific roles without your interference is crucial.

Trusting your team to carry out their specific roles without your interference is crucial.

The managerial position allows you to bypass unnecessary measures or complete the project more efficiently if you can think of one. This power will enable you to get work done by delegating to members. And you must learn to share the workload if you want to be successful as a team manager.

Delegating work is an essential skill to possess as a manager and requires practice to understand. Delegating doesn’t mean handing off a large chunk of work to various team members.

Instead, you sit with your team and outline your project together. Then, you must assign specific tasks to each member, giving them the tools and authority necessary to carry out these tasks. While controlling everything is tempting, allowing team members to lead specific processes is crucial for effective management.

You tell them what to do and when it should be done, but they decide how it should be done since they are the ones who will interact most closely with the problem.

4. Emphasize Transparency

Emphasize trasnparency — Emphasize transparency

One of the best things you can do as a new manager is to be transparent about your goals and the organization’s goals. And in turn, encourage your team to be open and communicative with you about their goals and where they see themselves. Emphasizing transparency is one of the quickest ways to build trust within the team and ensure they are engaged with the work.

Emphasizing transparency is one of the quickest ways to build trust within the team and ensure they are engaged with the work.

Aside from the trust factor, transparency ensures team members know what they’re working towards. Without transparency, most individuals perform their role in the team without understanding how it fits into the bigger picture.

And when someone needs help seeing their contribution and how it ties into an overall goal, it can be hard to stay motivated. Being transparent also means telling the team what you hope to achieve in the coming year.

When your team knows your goals as a manager, they can work together to help you achieve them. And if you take the time to learn their personal goals and motivations, they will feel part of the bigger picture – an essential factor for success in any project.

Being transparent also means letting team members know when you mess up instead of keeping it under wraps and hoping no one notices. Managing this way will encourage your team members to be open about their mistakes so everyone can work towards a solution without feeling bogged down by guilt.

5. Get “Lagom” Personal With Team Members

“Lagom” is a Swedish word that translates into something like “sufficient,” but the actual meaning goes beyond the translation. It’s when situations are hard to measure but need to be centered or balanced. Something that is “lagom” is “just enough,” but in a perfect way.

Most new leaders I have trained make the mistake of taking on the role of a superior and creating emotional distance between themselves and team members. This may seem an effective strategy at the outset, as you want to avoid being too emotionally involved with your team.

However, creating this distance can make you seem cold and uncaring, even unapproachable. Instead, it would help if you strived to create an environment where open and honest communication is valued. Of course, you must set personal boundaries as this is a work environment, and you are the manager.

However, there’s a difference between having boundaries and being too closed off and unavailable. While your team should respect you, they must also feel you can be trusted when discussing their issues at work.

If possible, schedule regular one-on-one meetings with team members so you can learn more about them. During these sessions, I encourage you to discover their goals and motivations and where they see themselves in the organization.

Here, you can also ask them for feedback on how you can help them better as a manager. Finding out what your members need from you has two benefits:

You can provide them with the assistance they require in a timely manner.
You can understand what’s holding them back and help them so they contribute more to the team.
Truly listening to someone is a great way to build a relationship.

Scheduling personal meetings will also help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of various members and their psychological makeup to an extent. This knowledge allows you to delegate work in a way that plays to individual members’ strengths.

By understanding their tendencies, you can eliminate the mistake of putting people in roles that may not naturally suit them.

Additionally, knowing individual motivations will allow you to help your team members achieve their goals. And when you help each member, they are motivated to carry out their duties more efficiently since their goals are also considered necessary.

6. Become a Conflict Resolution Expert

Issues between team members or against the new manager can quickly devolve into full-blown conflicts that can destroy enthusiasm and prevent a project from progressing. And as a manager, you must bring issues to light and professionally handle them.

The issue may be between two members of your team or a problem one of your team members has with your management style. If you sense a problem, bring it up and discuss potential solutions. Allowing an issue to fester can breed resentment among team members and lead to unnecessary conflict.

When resolving a conflict, you need to focus more on understanding the problem than on solving the problem. If you become good at understanding problems, the solutions will appear automatically.

As a manager, you have the authority to delegate tasks and a duty to know if team members are happy. By proactively bringing up issues professionally, you eliminate the passive-aggressive tendencies that many organizational teams tend to exhibit between members.

Resolving conflict also helps bring different team members closer, increasing overall productivity.

Constructive conflicts are a means to building high-performing teams!

7. Make Feedback a Part of The Routine

While you want to do it sparingly (usually once per week is too much), consider setting a time (I recommend once a month) to discuss team efficiency shortcomings when you meet with team members. Here, having an open mind and trying not to take things personally is crucial.

Ask your team members for feedback on your managerial style and the areas they believe you can work on. Conduct these meetings after a project is complete, so you can run through the project and figure out areas that may need tweaking.

Remember to ask all team members, not only the outspoken ones or those whose opinions you value the most. You may be surprised at the feedback from the more silent members of your team, which can be crucial to leveling up as a manager.

I have gotten my most productive feedback from the people I like the least and who are the most different from me.

Conducting these feedback sessions shows your team that their opinions matter, which is great for motivation and cooperation. You also gain insight into your managerial style and how the team functions. This information will allow you to make the necessary changes.

8. Reinforce Your Wins

As a manager, it’s crucial to have team members feel like winners. For example, when the team completes a project, it’s a good idea to go through exactly and precisely what they did that was appreciated by you and that led to success.

Rewarding outstanding work and doing so visibly is crucial so other team members are aware. Publicly acknowledging a team member helps raise their morale while indicating to other members that rewards await those who do the work. But aside from team celebrations, it’s crucial to reward individual team members when they show promise or complete specific tasks.

Of course, it’s best to have a system to ensure these recognitions and rewards are given on time and distributed in a way that doesn’t build nepotism or unjust favoring of particular individuals.

Team Management Essentials for Inexperienced Leaders

Final Thoughts

While managing a team for the first time can seem like a daunting experience, it’s also exciting when you consider the new skills you will learn and how your career will grow.

Being a small team leader is the most exciting and rewarding thing I have ever done. It is also the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it has all been worth it.

Enjoy!

Why Your Virtual Assistants Aren’t Meeting Expectations

Summary: Frustrated with your team consistently falling short of your expectations? Discover the secret to successful delegation with Gabriel’s PER Framework, and turn your virtual assistants into high-performing assets.

Hey folks,

if you’re an online course creator, agency owner, or coach who relies on screen recordings to delegate tasks to your team, and yet they still aren’t meeting your expectations, you’ve landed in the right spot. Today, I’m going to unveil how three words can drastically enhance the quality of your team’s work, allowing you to focus more on the activities that truly drive your business forward.

Why Your Virtual Assistants Aren’t Meeting Expectations

When we fail to delegate tasks effectively, we often end up overwhelmed, doing everything ourselves. Let me share a relatable experience to highlight this.

A Relatable Story: How Ineffective Delegation Can Ruin Your Day

About a year ago, I was in Sevilla with a friend trying to pick a restaurant. She’s incredibly picky, and even after 20 or 30 minutes, we still hadn’t decided where to go. I offered my help and she agreed, but her requirements kept changing—vegan options, the right ambiance, affordability, among other things. Eventually, I just gave up. I’m sure many of you have faced similar situations. It’s the same in business. We set tasks but fail to provide clear instructions, leading to frustration and disengagement.

How to Fix Poor Delegation in Your Online Business

A common issue we face is giving our teams tasks they can’t solve due to lack of information. Specificity and clarity are crucial. Consider this: asking for a birthday gift and feeling disappointed when the gift doesn’t match your expectations. The same principle applies when delegating tasks in business.

3 Simple Steps to Improve Task Delegation

Here’s what you’ll gain by sticking around today: the three magic words to make your tasks crystal clear for your virtual assistants or team members so they can work autonomously with minimal guidance.

I’ll also provide a fill-in-the-blank template that fits this framework perfectly, ensuring your team understands exactly what you want. The PER Framework stands for Purpose, End State, and Rules. Let’s dive into it.

Leadership Lessons from Military Bomb Disposal

I used to be the team leader for bomb disposal in the Swedish Armed Forces. This role required me to delegate critical tasks to ensure our success and survival. If I could delegate effectively in such high-stakes situations, you can certainly manage delegation in your business.

Why Screen Recordings Aren’t Enough for Effective Delegation

Screen recordings often fail due to their focus on “how-to” instructions without addressing the underlying purpose. Think of assembling an IKEA table. Even with step-by-step guidance, if the required tools are missing, progress stalls. This is why it’s essential to communicate the why behind each task along with the rules.

The PER Framework: A Game-Changer for Delegation

Instead of focusing solely on the “how,” shift your attention to the “purpose” (why the task is important), “end state” (what the completed task looks like), and “rules” (what can and cannot be done).

Purpose, End State, and Rules: Your Blueprint for Success

When a team understands the purpose—like knowing a table has to seat eight guests for a birthday party—they can better improvise if necessary. Knowing the end state ensures the final result meets expectations, and understanding the rules allows for acceptable deviations from standard procedures.

Transform Your Team with the PER Framework

The PER Framework—Purpose, End State, and Rules—enables your team to become more engaged, capable, and cooperative. Imagine delegating tasks and consistently receiving outcomes that exceed your expectations.

If mastering delegation sounds complicated, don’t worry. We have a comprehensive template to streamline this process for you.

Ready to transform your team’s output? Book a free assessment now and discover how our PER Framework can revolutionize how you delegate tasks. Say goodbye to micromanagement and hello to seamless, autonomous productivity.

Book a Free Assessment to Master Delegation

For more insights and to join our community, check out the links in the description or show notes. In our next episode, we’ll discuss what to do when delegation seems to create more work instead of less. Stay tuned!

How to Get Top-Notch Performance From Your Average VAs, With Three Simple Words!

Introduction: The Problem with Delegation

Hey there!

If you’re an online course creator, agency owner, or coach struggling to get the most out of your team despite detailed screen recordings, you’re not alone.

In today’s post, we’re going to uncover how three simple words can drastically improve your team’s output, giving you more time to focus on what truly moves the needle in your business. Ready to transform your delegation game? Let’s dive in!

Is This You?

I’m going to start with a little story I’m sure many of you can relate to. About a year ago, a picky friend and I were trying to decide on a restaurant in Sevilla. After half an hour of indecision, she finally asked for my help. I found a vegan place, but she didn’t like the ambiance. I found one with great ambiance, but it was too expensive. Eventually, I gave up.

Sound familiar? This is often how we run our teams—giving unclear instructions and getting frustrated when they don’t meet our expectations.

The Key to Effective Delegation

Just like the restaurant dilemma, we often hand out tasks that are almost impossible to complete due to lack of clarity.

The secret to overcoming this? Be specific. You need to communicate clearly what you want, or how can someone else give it to you?

The Three Words That Change Everything

So, how do you get your team on the same page? It boils down to three powerful words: Purpose, End State, and Rules (PER).

“My Tasks Are Too Complicated To Delegate”: Read This 👇🏽

For those who don’t know me, I have a background in military bomb disposal for the Swedish Armed Forces. Imagine approaching a bomb with a clear focus while your team handles all other critical tasks—that’s how clear communication works. If I could rely on my team to handle life-and-death situations, you can definitely delegate tasks like website creation and social media posts.

Why Screen Recordings Aren’t Enough

Relying solely on screen recordings is like trying to build an IKEA table without knowing the purpose, rules, and end state.

No wonder your team gets stuck when something goes off-script. They need to understand more than just the steps—they need the why and the framework.

The PER Framework: Purpose, End State, Rules

Let me break it down:

Purpose: Why is the task important? How does it fit into the bigger mission of the company? When the team understands the purpose, they’re more engaged and aligned with the end goal.
End State: What will the final result look like once the task is complete? Clearly defining the end state helps your team know what they’re working towards and ensures consistency.
Rules: What are the boundaries for completing the task? Outline what can and cannot be done. This ensures your team works within acceptable limits, but with the freedom to innovate and problem-solve.

Applying the PER Framework

Think of building an IKEA table. If the purpose is to seat eight people for a birthday party, the end state is a fully built table readyfor guests. The rules are: follow the instructions, but if the tool’s missing, find an alternative that achieves the same result. Your team, understanding these three components, can adapt and succeed without constant oversight.

Conclusion and Next Steps

By implementing the PER Framework, you’ll transform your team’s performance. They’ll not only meet expectations but exceed them, making you feel confident in delegating more tasks. To make this even easier, I’ve created a crystal-clear delegation template that you can use right away.

Want to delve deeper into effective delegation? Tune into this podcast episode, where we discuss how to avoid common delegation pitfalls and share actionable tips for empowering your team.

Ready to unleash your team’s full potential?

Join our free community “CEO School: For Online Entrepreneurs” for extra training and support.

Types of Leadership Development Programs

Your journey as a leader doesn’t end when you assume that coveted, top-tier position in the company. In fact, your voyage has just begun because you must continuously cultivate, enhance, and expand your skills and experiences to retain your position and eventually move further up the corporate ladder. A leadership development program provides this opportunity and is an excellent way for businesses to stay ahead of the game.

The types of leadership development programs include skills training, coaching, and mentorship. You can also go beyond the confines of the workplace and try volunteerism and outdoor training. Online training is a great option, too, for those keen on flexibility and broader network opportunities.

If you’re looking to train and develop your leaders, you’ve come to the right place! This article talks about what a good leadership development program can do for your leaders and your business and what types of programs you can choose from depending on your unique needs and preferences. We’ll also discuss some of the common leadership development mistakes businesses make so you can avoid the same pitfalls.

Should You Seriously Consider Leadership Development?

You should consider leadership development for your business because it’s a great way to help your leaders excel in their roles. It also gives you a chance to attract top talent within your industry. You can focus on specific leadership skills, depending on your needs and prospects.

Biggest Mistakes in Leadership Development

Launching a leadership development program for your business is no easy feat. It takes some planning and coordination, demands time and effort, and entails costs. However, the benefits are innumerable and varied, making it one of the best investments you can make for your business.

Unfortunately, not everyone gets it right. I remember a story a friend shared when she conducted a leadership seminar for the sales department of a car manufacturing company. She discussed practically everything she knew about leadership, facilitated group discussions, and even led games highlighting their acquired learnings.

Regrettably, feedback from the company 3 months later revealed that the leadership seminar could have been more effective. There were no notable improvements in the client base, number of sales calls, and actual unit sales.

My friend then realized that leadership development isn’t just about sharing useful facts — it has a lot more to do with translating all the information into adopting the right mindset and practices in the workplace.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest mistakes in leadership development:

Lack of support from senior management. Senior leaders must be interested and invested in leadership development even if they’re not directly involved in the process. These programs usually fall through when accountability doesn’t come from the top down and when top leaders don’t buy into the plan.
Insufficient budget allocation. Leadership development can be expensive. Books, modules, courses, and activities entail costs. Businesses must commit to setting aside sufficient funds for leadership training and ensure they follow through until the end.
Failure to translate learnings into real-life scenarios. Adults usually retain only 10% of what they learn in classroom setups. On the other hand, ⅔ of learnings are retained when acquired through experiential training. Businesses must find the most cost-efficient way to develop their leaders and maximize the effects of leadership development.

Benefits of Leadership Training

The gains of a leadership development program typically include:

Keeps leaders’ knowledge and skills up-to-date
Provides a suitable venue for setting new professional goals
Helps build self-awareness and self-confidence
Provides support for the advancement of critical leadership skills
Retains high-quality leaders
Retains employees keen on improving and succeeding in their careers
Attracts the best leaders from outside

Different Types of Leadership Development Programs

Exceptional leadership requires continuous learning and diverse experiences. It may come as a natural ability to some, but it’s learned and developed over time for most people. This is where leadership development steps in — there are a myriad of strategies to choose from catering to various needs and preferences.

Let’s take a closer look at some of them:

1. Skills Training

Skills training hones in on specific leadership skills, such as decision-making, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. It’s an immersive type of training where current and aspiring leaders are exposed to scenarios wherein they can exercise their learnings.

Examples of skills training activities are:

Leadership conferences. These allow participants to interact with like-minded professionals in the same field. They’ll have breakout sessions and presentations where they’ll get to mingle and practice what they’ve learned.
Leadership workshops. Generally, these are geared toward specific competencies. If the workshop is on problem-solving, participants will be exposed to scenarios where their strategic planning and critical thinking skills will be tested. The key is effectively translating their learnings and experiences to real-life workplace settings.
Public speaking courses. Speaking coherently and confidently in front of an audience is a critical leadership competency. Some are daunted by public speaking, but it’s a skill necessary to ensure proper communication within the organization. Often, excelling in the art of speaking just takes getting used to.

2. Coaching and Mentorship Programs

A coach guides another person to help them achieve their goals, often through a structured approach. On the other hand, a mentor shares their knowledge and experiences with their mentee to help them develop their skills and grow in their professional career, often through a less-structured approach where emphasis is given on establishing a solid professional connection between mentor and mentee.

Coaching and mentoring are great techniques for developing individuals. They’re frequently interchangeable concepts in the workplace since they’re very closely related.

Micro-mentoring, in particular, is fast becoming a trend in leadership development because it provides a time-constrained, easier, and more personalized way to pass on crucial information and know-how from seasoned leaders (mentors) to newbies (mentees) in the leadership scene. It can also target specific leadership skills and allow mentees to immediately apply their learnings.

3. Volunteerism

Providing your leaders diverse opportunities to exercise their strengths will do wonders for their confidence and leadership abilities. One way is to organize community projects in which leaders will be given the chance to volunteer their time and talents for worthy causes.

Volunteerism helps strengthen critical leadership skills by providing hands-on experiences in areas such as decision-making, crisis management, and problem-solving. It can also help establish solid networks that can be useful in business.

Additionally, being part of a group with a bigger sense of purpose fosters unity, engagement, and commitment. Furthermore, it provides a heightened sense of achievement when goals are realized.

4. Online Learning

These days, companies are becoming more geographically diverse. Their teams are united by common goals, not just by location or proximity to one another. This is why interactive online learning is another trend quickly gaining ground lately. By providing their leaders and employees a choice, leadership development isn’t sacrificed despite location differences.

Online learning generally offers a variety of learning styles. Participants can choose from video presentations, leadership quizzes, and simultaneous courses. They can journey through leadership development at their own pace and on their own terms.

Here are some ways online learning can make a difference in leadership development:

Offers global networking opportunities. You can establish connections not just within your business industry but in the broader global industry as well.
Promotes psychologically safe environments. Participants will thrive in this setup, especially those who prefer to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Online learning can be an excellent training ground for speaking up, participating in discussions, and feeling more comfortable about being in the spotlight.
Offers flexibility. Busy employees and leaders can more easily work around an online learning schedule. They wouldn’t have to worry about travel times, can plan the workflow around the program, and can work practically from anywhere with an internet connection.

5. Outdoor Training

This experiential approach to leadership development banks on first-hand observations and experiences that can help enhance leadership competencies. This strategy focuses on letting you practice and apply what you’ve learned rather than just teaching you concepts within the confines of a room’s walls.

Outdoor leadership training provides excellent opportunities for you to exercise crucial leadership skills, such as empathy, delegation, and problem-solving. You also get to experience the wonders of nature, go to amazing destinations, and engage in fun activities with your team.

Here are some outdoor activities ideal for experiential leadership training:

Whitewater rafting
Camping
Mountain climbing
Scavenger hunts
Relays/team races

Outdoor training is excellent for business teams like yours who want to foster collaboration, trust, and excellent decision-making. Book a free call with us at Sancus Leadership so we can help design an experiential leadership development program tailor-fitted for your unique needs. We’re always eager to lend a hand in developing future leaders!

Storytelling and Leadership Development

I spent more than a decade in the military, and among the many life lessons I learned is that sharing more of yourself with the people around you helps foster solid relationships and makes working together much easier. Work ceases to be just that when you know each other more personally. Through storytelling, I was able to foster trust and solidarity in my team — essential factors that made us more efficient and effective as a unit.

Storytelling and leadership development work together to mold your team into a streamlined, productive force. Through stories, you can give a glimpse of your personal side and share essential messages in a more creative, impactful way. A good story can make a lasting impression on your team.

This article discusses the value of storytelling in leadership and why it’s a crucial technique in effectively conveying vital messages and establishing your leadership role in the team. We’ll tackle some of the biggest misconceptions leaders have about storytelling and the many benefits you can enjoy when you master this skill. I’ll also provide tips on boosting your storytelling techniques.

Is Storytelling Valuable in Leadership Development?

Who doesn’t love sharing or at least listening to fascinating stories? It’s something we can all relate to, especially since it stirs up many childhood memories — funny stories shared with friends in the cozy comfort of makeshift tents in the backyard, long-winded stories shared around the dinner table at the end of the day, and the ubiquitous bedtime stories for which we willed our eyes to stay open for so we could hear the much-anticipated happy endings.

Storytelling is a valuable skill beneficial to carry well into adulthood. In the business setting, it makes a difference in how well you evolve as a leader. When you’re a good storyteller, you’re able to:

Strategically arrange facts, ideas, and opinions
Effectively convey corresponding emotions
Expertly weave facts with emotions
Inspire your team members to act
Influence changes in the organization
Inspire empathy in your audience

A good leader who is an excellent storyteller can practically breeze their way into the hearts and minds of their team members.

The Biggest Mistakes in Storytelling in Leadership

Many leaders need help understanding just how valuable storytelling skills can be. They’ve linked it to some pretty convincing misconceptions that relegate this competency to mere secondary importance.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest mix-ups most leaders have about storytelling and leadership development:

Storytelling is as simple as accurately recounting events. Surprisingly, it’s not as simple as you might think. If you don’t make your story exciting enough, your audience may quickly get bored and lose interest in what you’re saying.
Storytelling in leadership should only involve facts. Good stories appeal to emotions without resorting to false information and deceit. Emotionally engaging stories will help you build rapport with your team, gain their trust, and earn their respect. It can also create a strong bond and sense of unity within the group.
You should always portray yourself as a winner. Leadership doesn’t imply faultlessness and excellence. To be more relatable and approachable to your team members, you must be willing to admit your faults, own up to your shortcomings, and be accountable for your mistakes.
You don’t have any stories to share. Come on now — everyone has something to share! Be it a tale from your childhood or a funny experience this morning, a good story can firmly establish your leadership role in your team. All it takes is practice so you eventually feel comfortable sharing even your personal stories and reflections on life experiences, all of which molded the kind of leader you are today.
Storytelling isn’t professional or ethical. As long as you don’t use your stories to manipulate anyone in the organization, you can use them to share information in a more meaningful, impactful way.

How Storytelling Makes A Difference in Your Leadership Brand

You might never have guessed that your storytelling skills will be helpful in your leadership journey. You’d be pleasantly surprised to find out these seemingly trivial skills can mean the difference between being a successful or frustrated leader.

Benefits of Excellent Storytelling Skills in Leadership

Here are some of the most significant benefits you can expect from incorporating excellent storytelling in leadership:

Lets your true character shine through. Storytelling allows you to introduce yourself to your team in creative, engaging ways. It can also exhibit your trustworthiness and credibility to your team.
Simplifies complicated ideas and strategies. Good stories can spark your team members’ curiosity in what you have to say. If you successfully grab their attention, sustain their interest, and perhaps appeal to their emotions, you can trigger action and arouse innovation.
Provides a more impactful method of communication. Getting your message across to your team becomes a more exciting endeavor. Communicate your team’s core values, visions, and goals through well-crafted stories that inspire them to remain engaged and committed.
Helps inspire change in a team. Stimulating, relevant stories can motivate your team members to facilitate positive, beneficial changes in the organization. These can encourage them to work more efficiently and to always be at the top of their game.
Promotes authentic leadership. Your personality shines through your stories, allowing your team members to get to know you on a more personal level. This helps promote trust, respect, and transparency within the team.
Provides an alternative technique of instruction. Imagine never having to put your team through boring and painful lectures and presentations again. Storytelling can best be utilized to share crucial information through a more creative, exciting, and impactful way. Do you ever notice that the best videos are stories, capable of attracting and holding your attention?

How To Use Storytelling To Make Yourself a Better Leader

A friend shared a story about when she worked as a financial advisor for an insurance company. She employed all the sales tactics and tools she learned from countless training sessions, but after being in the industry for 3 months, she was still unsatisfied with her sales performance.

This was when she decided to take on a new strategy in convincing more people about the benefits of investments and insurance — she turned to storytelling as a more effective means of getting her message across. Instead of just presenting graphs, slideshows, and figures to her clients, she also shared with them authentic stories about families and individuals who have benefitted from insurance.

Her favorites included the story of a housewife and mother who was able to send all her children to good schools despite the unexpected demise of her husband. She also loved sharing the story of her grandmother, who was able to leave a substantial legacy for all her grandchildren — in fact, she used her share of the proceeds to purchase her first home fully.

These stories tugged at the heartstrings of her clients and helped them realize the practical benefits of investments and insurance.

Similar to how storytelling helped my friend get her message across to her clients more effectively, you, too, can reap the benefits of being a good storyteller and leader.

Here are some pointers:

1. Establish a Clear Goal

A good story needs these:

a hook
a clear message
good flow
an intriguing point of conflict or catalyst
a protagonist (to whom they can relate to)
challenges
a climax
a resolution
a lesson to be learned or vital information to be absorbed

Your story should also be attention-grabbing, relevant, and relatable so your audience will want to stay and hear your story to the end.

2. Get To Know Your Team

To be a compelling storyteller, always consider your audience’s needs, interests, and personalities — not your own. Craft your stories to pique your audience’s interest, keep them glued to their seats, and make them want to hear more.

These can be pretty challenging to do in the workplace because your stories revolve around facts and figures (typically boring subject matters for compelling stories, if you ask me), but your ability to stir up your audience’s emotions will set you apart from the rest.

Remember, you must make maximum impact to leave a lasting impression.

3. Be Authentic

Be as genuine and sincere as you can be while telling your story. Here are some tips:

Maintain eye contact
Use gestures and facial expressions
Vary your tone to emphasize specific points
Use descriptive and sensory words
Show enthusiasm
Add a dash of humor, if appropriate
Engage your audience (ask questions and encourage them to share their insights)

Consider sharing personal anecdotes to help demonstrate your messages more effectively, lighten the mood, and elicit your audience’s partiality. You can even exhibit a dose of humility by talking about your shortcomings or failures relating to the topic being discussed.

Final Thoughts

A poor storyteller can instantly kill a great idea, while a good one can influence this same idea to grow, thrive, and develop into something big. Storytelling may come naturally to some, while it must be learned and practiced for others.

If you’re keen on developing your storytelling skills for leadership development, we at Sancus Leadership can help! Book us a free leadership call right away so we can start helping you find your leadership stories, match these with your intentions, and share with you some helpful storytelling techniques that can strategically direct your career.

SMARTER Goals for Leadership Development

As a new leader, do you sometimes feel at a loss with all the changes and progress around you? If so, setting SMARTER goals will help you gain better control over the reins, evolve into a competent, reliable leader, and realize your full leadership potential.

SMARTER goals for leadership development are specific, measurable, actionable, risky, time-keyed, exciting, and relevant. They should be challenging, contribute to attaining long-term goals, and help bring out the best in you. They should help plot your professional and business trajectory.

If you’ve been looking for ways to elevate your leadership game, today’s your lucky day! We will discuss SMARTER leadership development goals and the benefits of setting them early in your leadership journey. We will also briefly talk about the biggest mistake leaders make in goal-setting so you can avoid falling into the same plight, then I’ll offer some examples of SMARTER goals that can help give you a jumpstart on leadership development.

What Are SMARTER Leadership Development Goals?

SMARTER goals are well-defined, challenging, stimulating, and practical goals that provide your business a framework to benchmark growth and success. SMARTER stands for:

Specific: Goals should be clear and precise to avoid uncertainties and confusion. For instance, rather than saying, “To improve team performance,” be less vague by saying, “Achieve a 10% increase in month-end sales performance.”
Measurable: Goals must be quantifiable so you can easily track your progress. Consider establishing precise metrics to work with. For example, instead of “To attract more customers,” say, “Close at least 5 new deals every month.” This way, you’ll know if you’re on track or you’re falling short of your objectives and need to tweak your strategies.
Actionable: Your goals must be achievable, and you should be able to effectively act on them. Actionable goals have practical value and are not purely theoretical. For instance, don’t just say, “Be a great mentor.” Instead, say, “Conduct one-on-one feedback sessions every Friday.” This lets you know exactly what needs to be done and how to achieve it.
Risky: Your goals should challenge you and have a high level of difficulty. They must require you to step out of your comfort zone. On the other hand, they shouldn’t be too lofty either, to the point that they’re already unrealistic — irrational goals may make you feel discouraged, frustrated, and overburdened.
Time-keyed: Set a clear and reasonable timeframe for attaining your goals. Not having a deadline for your goals might make it seem like these crucial aspects are just being dragged on. Don’t just say, “Earn an extra $1,000,000.” Rather, set your goal as, “Earn an extra $1,000,000 within 6 months” to give yourself a sense of perspective and urgency.
Exciting: Your goals must excite you — their realization must be something you’re looking forward to. This will make you focus on your goals and avoid procrastination. Exciting goals will also keep you motivated and eager to get to work every day.
Relevant: Your goals should fit the bigger picture and must connect with the overall purpose. Relevant goals inspire you, make you love your job, and make you feel like you’re making a difference. They make you feel empowered to later on move on to bigger dreams.

Is Goal-Setting Necessary in Leadership Development?

Goal-setting is necessary in leadership development to ensure continuous and efficient improvement. Without goals, you wouldn’t be self-aware and won’t have focus and direction. You may also suffer from a lack of motivation, disorientedness, and unrealized potential.

The Biggest Mistake in Goal-Setting

Goal-setting can sometimes be tricky. If executed improperly, it can lead to disastrous consequences that may hold you back from realizing your full potential.

Perhaps the biggest mistake in setting leadership development goals is the notion that all goals must be big. Some say that if your goals aren’t lofty enough to scare you, they’re not worth your while.

Challenging yourself to go beyond your comfort zone can sometimes be highly beneficial, but other times, it can get to a point where you become so overwhelmed that you feel too intimidated to even try.

Remember, small goals are just as acceptable, especially since they’re generally more achievable and are thus more motivating and inspiring. Rather than being too ambitious, you can break your big goals into smaller ones so they’re easier to manage.

Think of it as similar to wanting to climb Mt. Everest. You won’t just go there one day and try your best to clamber up its tricky and challenging slopes — frankly, that seems like such a foolish thing to do. The smarter option would be to first conquer more viable peaks and gradually work toward scaling the most challenging heights. Only then should you start considering your readiness for Mt. Everest.

Benefits of Setting SMARTER Leadership Goals

Proper goal-setting addresses these key aspects:

Effective communication of leadership development goals clarifies what needs to be accomplished within a specific timeframe.
Leadership goals are excellent measures of progress and create accountability in achieving the established metrics.
Leadership development goals compel you to focus on what truly matters, especially since it can be easy to lose sight of the essentials with so many distractions, challenges, and obstacles getting in the way.

3 SMARTER Goals for Leadership Development

Leadership development doesn’t happen automatically, nor does it occur involuntarily. It’s a work in progress, where individuals need to continuously strive toward achieving the goals they’ve set for themselves to improve their knowledge, skills, and experiences.

At Sancus Leadership, we can partner with you in identifying your SMARTER leadership development goals. When you’re ready to level up your leadership game, take the first step toward self-improvement by booking a free leadership call with us. Whether short-term or long-term, goals can help get you on the right path toward becoming the leader you aim to be.

Here are 3 SMARTER leadership goal examples that can get you started on the road to leadership development:

1. Foster Entrepreneurial Spirit and Integrity in Your Team

Leadership isn’t all about ticking the boxes and getting things done on time. Good leaders are also regarded by their team members as upright, trustworthy, respectable, and someone with integrity. A good leader believes in transparency and sees their team members as business allies, not just subordinates.

When you lead with integrity, your actions and mindset will eventually rub off on your team members, creating a culture built around honesty, trust, and respect.

SMARTER Goal

Specific: Maintain open communication lines with your team members by including them in decision-making processes. Consult them before making big decisions that impact critical aspects in the team and encourage healthy discourse.
Measurable: Develop 2 aspiring leaders within 6 months and prepare them for promotion by the 7th month.
Actionable: Conduct brainstorming sessions every Monday. Discuss pressing issues in the workplace. Make team decisions on relevant topics that need action within the coming week and assign group leaders per session.
Risky: Allow team members to share the spotlight with you, specifically for those who exhibit strong leadership potential. Learn when to take a backseat so you can better observe and train budding leaders.
Time-keyed: Explore the opportunities presented by artificial intelligence decision-making tools within the next 2 weeks. Utilize and examine at least 3 options: decision trees, decision matrices, and dashboards. Combine this with the 6-month training for aspiring leaders.
Exciting: Identify potential leaders in the team, especially those who exhibit crucial core competencies like integrity, efficiency, and trust. Focus on building these aspects to prepare them for future leadership roles.
Relevant: Contribute to the organization’s proposed expansion by helping develop a credible, proficient leadership pipeline.

2. Instill the Value of Teamwork and Collaboration

Leadership is not always about doing things yourself and making decisions on your own. You must be comfortable with delegating tasks to your team members because this empowers them and motivates them to always give their best in whatever they do. It’s also a great way to effectively manage your time and maximize available resources. Furthermore, task delegation helps improve team productivity.

SMARTER Goal

Specific: Delegate specific tasks based on each team member’s strengths.
Measurable: Achieve at least a 10% increase in team productivity (compared to last month’s performance)to be measured by the number of tasks to be accomplished versus number of tasks actually carried out.
Actionable: Conduct weekly team meetings to monitor progress and ensure everyone is on track with their specific tasks and objectives. The meetings will also provide opportunities to make adjustments when necessary.
Risky: It might seem disconcerting, but let go of the ropes every once in a while to train your team to be independent and remain functional and productive even when you’re not in the picture. Delegate critical tasks, such as presiding over meetings or taking charge of interpreting and discussing reports, to bring out the best in your team members. It’s also a great way to identify leadership potential.
Time-keyed: The 10% rise in productivity should be reflected by the end of the month and each succeeding month thereafter.
Exciting: Better teamwork and collaboration leads to higher productivity and a more engaged, inspired team. Each team member will feel empowered and will strive to consistently deliver high-quality results.
Relevant: A boost in your team’s productivity will reflect in the organization’s overall performance.

3. Establish a Mentorship Program

As a leader, you must develop a keen eye for potential within your team. As soon as you identify those who can move on toward taking on more responsibilities and leadership roles, be quick to train them, enhance their leadership competencies, and share with them your knowledge and experiences in your own leadership journey.

A great way to keep the best people in your team and attract new talent is through a mentorship program. Essentially, mentors are trusted, experienced leaders in the company eager to assist aspiring leaders as they journey through their desired career paths.

SMARTER Goal

Specific: Identify team members with strong leadership potential and partner them with promising leaders willing to coach and mentor them.
Measurable: Establish metrics for mentors and mentees, focusing on key leadership competencies, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, conflict resolution, ethics, and accountability. Make sure to note the effects of these competencies on the team’s performance — with a 20% increase in product sales by the end of the 2nd month.
Actionable: Conduct weekly meetings with each pair of mentor and mentee to track progress, listen to insights and suggestions, and monitor the agreed-upon metrics. Equip each pair with the tools they need to make the mentorship program a breeze — utilize graphs, charts, strategy maps, or decision trees to help make the execution of tasks easier.
Risky: Mentorship programs may take time away from getting more things done in the workplace since mentors and mentees will have to divide their time between the program and their work responsibilities, but the risks outweigh the benefits. Besides, you can also use this time to foster the value of proper time management.
Time-keyed: Weekly progress checks with each pair of mentors and mentees must be conducted to ensure everyone is on track. This also gives the opportunity to air out insights, suggestions, and feedback. At least 50% of the mentees should occupy leadership positions within the company by year-end.
Exciting: Mentors will enjoy a boost in their confidence levels when they’re given the opportunity to witness how their mentees progress in their careers. Mentees, on the other hand, will feel privileged to be mentored by top leaders, individuals who can be their role models in their professional growth.
Relevant: A mentorship program should coincide with the organization’s expansion plans. It’s a great way to retain your top talents and attract high-quality leaders from the industry.

Leadership Development Through Mentoring

When I was in the military, we worked closely with our team leaders, always functioning as a unit and ensuring commands were executed to a tee. This synergistic working arrangement with my mentors impacted me so much that I fully embraced most of their leadership strategies. This is why, to this day, I believe mentoring is one of the most effective ways to develop proficient, reliable leaders.

Leadership development through mentoring is an effective way to support your best people in their journey toward self-improvement and career development. They become more efficient, productive, and loyal to your company when you value them. Mentoring can bring out the best in your workforce.

Let’s talk more about why you should consider launching a mentoring program for your business and how it could benefit mentors, mentees, and the entire organization. We’ll also discuss some of the most common misconceptions about mentoring and how these could significantly damage your workforce’s morale. I’ll then offer some tips on mentoring, including goal plotting, result monitoring, and feedback gathering.

What Leadership Mentoring Is All About

Mentorship plays a crucial role in developing proficient, reliable leaders. Good mentors provide support, guidance, and motivation. Moreover, they help their mentees steer their own career paths by sharing relevant, helpful information and acting as role models worth emulating.

The Biggest Mistakes in Mentoring

The concept of mentoring is pretty simple, but many leaders find it challenging and tricky to carry it through until the set goals are realized successfully. If implemented incorrectly, leadership development through mentoring can do more harm than good.

Here are some common blunders involved with mentoring:

Mentoring aims to make the mentee a “clone” of the mentor. Mentors should focus on helping their mentees develop and evolve into better leaders without disregarding their unique personalities, leadership styles, distinctive objectives, and career paths that may be different from theirs. Creating their replicas through mentoring may make mentees feel unmotivated and uninspired.
Mentors are supposed to tell their mentees precisely what to say and how to act. Remember, mentors are meant to guide, support, and motivate — never to dictate. If mentors expect their mentees to do exactly as they say, they’re snuffing out the flames and keeping them from achieving their individual goals and full potential.

Benefits of Leadership Development Through Mentoring

The benefits of mentoring are multifaceted — the mentor, mentee, and the organization can use this experience to their advantage.

Here are some of the key benefits you can expect:

Benefits to the Mentee

Boosted confidence on the job (87% of mentees and mentors say they feel empowered and more confident about themselves because of mentorship)
Increased knowledge of how the different areas of the company functions
Increased awareness of how co-workers get things done
Expanded understanding of various approaches to work
Opportunity to widen their network
Availability of a reliable adviser who they can turn to for various work-related situations
Increased likelihood of getting promoted

Benefits to the Mentor

Increased self-confidence and sense of accomplishment
Enhanced communication skills
Improved mental health (a Harvard Business Review study revealed that mentors experienced less anxiety because interactions with their mentees were therapeutic and fulfilling, allowing them to find more meaning in their work)
Opportunity to widen their network
Opportunity to develop and practice competencies necessary for effective leadership
Opportunity to influence positive changes in the organization

Benefits to the Organization

Opportunity to develop high-potential leaders
Opportunity to earn the loyalty of top-tier employees and leaders through the commitment to continuous learning and leadership development (93% of businesses grapple with employee retention, and one way of addressing this is through a mentorship program)
Fosters inclusivity, unity, trust, diversity, engagement, and collaboration
Promotes employee empowerment and a positive work culture
Establishes a company culture of mentorship and continuous learning
More goals are achieved (studies show that there is a 70% increase in the likelihood of achieving goals if these are shared with someone to promote accountability)

Leadership Development Through Mentoring

Successful businesses continually seek ways to support, develop, and retain their best people. It’s not an easy feat, but fortunately, the best people also constantly search for ways to improve themselves and advance in their careers.

This paves the way for leadership development programs, such as mentorship, where mentors, mentees, and the organization all profit from a synergistic learning and development opportunity.

Let’s dive right into leadership development through mentoring:

1. Be Clear on Your Desired Outcomes

The first step is identifying your purpose and goals for developing a mentorship program. Make sure these are aligned with the organization’s thrusts and visions. Here are some questions that might help you out:

Have you already lost some of your best leaders and employees?
Is team motivation low?
Is there a need to develop and nurture new leaders?
Is your business growing and expanding?
Is there a need to develop your leaders’ skills?

Establish key metrics that will help you track progress and determine the rate of success (or failure) of your mentorship program. Here are some of the most crucial KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to take into account:

Employee engagement
- Number of signups
- Number of mentoring sessions (daily, weekly, or monthly)
Employee satisfaction
Promotion rate
Employee retention rate
Team productivity

2. Determine the Parameters

Once you’ve figured out the rationale behind your business’ mentorship program, it’s time to decide on some vital details, such as

Number of slots available (for both mentors and mentees)
Duration of the mentorship program
How to launch the mentorship program and make it enticing to your team
How monitoring will be implemented

Also, you need to decide how to recruit employees and leaders to join. Will you choose the participants, or would they need to apply for the role? How will you match the mentors and the mentees? This is a great way to expand the organization’s leadership pool, share organizational know-how, and recognize untapped potential in the workplace.

3. Monitor Results

Regularly check in with your mentors and mentees to ask for feedback and monitor their progress. If you need to make adjustments in the program, do so quickly so issues are nipped in the bud before they could snowball beyond your control.

Here are some vital factors you need to keep in mind:

Utilize surveys, feedback reports, or polls to get the participants’ pulse
Track the number of objectives set vs. objectives realized
Keep tabs on sales, number of new clients, or any other benchmark applicable to your business that the mentorship program may have influenced

Utilize monitoring tools, such as bars, charts, and other project management instruments, to track your determined metrics, quickly identify problems in the system, and resolve critical issues promptly.

Final Thoughts

Leadership development through mentoring is a great way to expand your leadership pool, discover new talents, and provide support for your best people. It can help enhance team engagement and productivity, and improve your business’ employee retention rate.
At Sancus Leadership, we can help you develop strategies and programs to assist your workforce, especially your leaders, in improving their critical skills with the help of leadership development programs, including mentoring. Book us a free leadership call when you’re ready to take this step toward helping your workforce reach their full potential.

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3. Develop Your Strategy

4. Take Your Time To Learn and Listen

Conclusion

How Self-Management Skills Benefit Employees and Employers

Increased Productivity

Reduced Workplace Conflict

Enhanced Communication Between Team Members

Improved Problem-Solving Skills

It Guarantees Honesty and Integrity

Improved Adaptability

Improved Work-Life Balance

Conclusion

Extreme Ownership Summary

The 13 Principles of Extreme Ownership

1. A Leader’s Mindset Is Key to Success

2. Leading Requires Accountability

3. Teams Are Always a Reflection of Their Leader

4. You Can Only Lead From a Place of Clarity

5. The Mission’s Success Should Override Personal Interests

6. Teamwork Requires Proper Coordination

7. Simplifying Orders and Plans Avoids Confusion

8. Pressuring Situations Require a Leader To Set Priorities

9. Sharing Power Propels Success

10. Plan Before Implementing

11. Discipline Brings Freedom and Flexibility

12. Leading Requires Prompt Decision Making

13. Anticipate Threats

How Can You Cultivate Extreme Ownership in Your Business?

Final Thoughts

1. You’re Indecisive

2. You’re Not Willing to Delegate Tasks

The Damaging Effects of Micromanagement

3. You Don’t Take Full Responsibility

What Is Extreme Ownership in Business?

Team Management Essentials for Inexperienced Leaders

1. Analyze Your Leadership

2. Tell Them It’s Your First Time

3. Delegate Everything You Can!

4. Emphasize Transparency

5. Get “Lagom” Personal With Team Members

6. Become a Conflict Resolution Expert

7. Make Feedback a Part of The Routine

8. Reinforce Your Wins

Final Thoughts

Why Your Virtual Assistants Aren’t Meeting Expectations

A Relatable Story: How Ineffective Delegation Can Ruin Your Day

How to Fix Poor Delegation in Your Online Business

3 Simple Steps to Improve Task Delegation

Leadership Lessons from Military Bomb Disposal

Why Screen Recordings Aren’t Enough for Effective Delegation

The PER Framework: A Game-Changer for Delegation

Purpose, End State, and Rules: Your Blueprint for Success

Transform Your Team with the PER Framework

Introduction: The Problem with Delegation

Is This You?

The Key to Effective Delegation

The Three Words That Change Everything

“My Tasks Are Too Complicated To Delegate”: Read This 👇🏽

Why Screen Recordings Aren’t Enough

The PER Framework: Purpose, End State, Rules

Applying the PER Framework

Conclusion and Next Steps

Ready to unleash your team’s full potential?