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| Leadership: The Secret Sauce | August 14, 2007, 2:33 pm | visits: 94 | wordcount: 502
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By Harald Anderson
One normally tends to associate leadership with an ability to obtain greater productivity from employees. The fact is that some leaders are clueless about employee productivity. Does this mean that productivity is some kind of magic? Not at all, in fact, it's much simpler than one would think. There is no need for any advanced training or greater knowledge or great sums of money. All it requires is a bit of common sense. That's all!
In our search for answers we sometimes have a tendency to overlook the obvious. Of all the managements surveys that are done each year what is proven over and over again is that people like to be treated authentically and with respect. Great leaders appear to instinctively understand this.
It is important for leaders to realize that they were employees at one point in time. Remember how you felt when menial tasks were assigned to you or when you had to spend long hours just waiting for the senior management to turn in their reports, which were far behind schedule. Given that you are now in a position of responsibility and authority, how are you handling such situations? It is not enough to treat people just as "employees". You need to identify and respect their ability to add value to your business. This can be done only by showing respect to their capabilities and recognizing their efforts and achievements. Effective and efficient leadership means seeing the true value of your team and making them know that you care and appreciate their hard work. Leadership is bound to fail if you think that you can trick or manipulate your employees to do anything. This only leads to the leadership's fall from grace leading to loss of control, loss of time, fall in quality of work and much more. While there may be different styles of leadership, an overbearing style will certainly blow up in your face.
The answer to effective and efficient leadership is so simple and staring at you all the time. Show appreciation to your employees and communicate that you appreciate the work done by them. Common sense, isn't it? Such an approach will automatically result in greater positivism in attitude and hence greater employee productivity. Employees will be inspired to come to work than being forced to come to work. As a leader, if you do not possess this simple quality, then it's time that you enrolled in a course on self development and people sensitivity. It means you are not ready for the leadership role yet.
It is rather difficult to teach common sense. One either has it or not. So if your current leadership is showing negative results such as falling quality of work, missing deadlines, and high attrition rates then it might be worth your while to examine your attitude towards your employees. It's time to show respect to your employees, communicate that you appreciate their work and recognize good work. Know that your success lies in the success of your employees.
Harald Anderson is the co-founder of artinspires.com one of the internets leading inspirational poster galleries. His goal in life is to become the kind of person his dog already thinks he is. Military Art
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