Leaders; Tip: Choose Fewer Words.

The Best Leaders Today Are The Ones Who Read How To Improve.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.  Choose fewer words, however.  Keep your thoughts to yourself and remain stealth on many of the things that run through your head.  Reveal only that stuff that truly needs to be revealed.  This will help you become a better leader.  If you are a manager or an owner of a business model, you will need to improve your leadership skills if you plan to win more often.  Your business success will center around the health you produce surrounding the leadership skills you employ within your management ways.  Your leadership skills will determine the level of health your business model will most likely produce.  The productive work your staff will perform will hinge greatly upon the kind of leadership you inject into the model you lead.  Those people will perform best when they can trust how you think, how you plan and especially how you speak about what you say and do.  Your words will not go unnoticed.  Choose them wisely.

A careless leader who gives little thought to the kinds of things spoken is a leader who does not care much about producing great results.  Great results do not show up on the front porch of a careless tongue.  It would be far greater of an advantage to say nothing at all than it would be to speak out of turn on a subject matter that damages future relationships.  A quiet tongue works better in this kind of setting.  Watch your tongue more often.  Just because it is your opinion does not necessarily mean you should share it with the people you plan to lead.  They do not always need to hear what you think.  Choose your words more carefully.

Owners often believe they must share every business thought they think about with the people they employ.  This perspective, to believe all business thoughts should be shared, is not only a false notion it can become very damaging to the leadership the owner would prefer to direct.  Not all business thoughts are good ones to think. Not all business thoughts will pan out like we describe.  Sometimes we change our minds.  Sometimes we change our beliefs.  When our mouth rolls out every thought we choose our words can become dried solid like cement in the minds of our followers.  Our words dry permanent in the working minds of those who are trying to help our model win.  Wrong thoughts can become dried ways our staff moves.  It takes a lot of extra energy therms to break up old cement and more energy to haul it away.  Be careful with how much you say.  Be careful with how you say the things you say.  Be careful with what you say you will do and how you will actually do it.  Make certain that your words actually match your actions.  Your pure leadership is at stake.

I hear things like, "We need to get better at treating our customers better."  Then just shortly after an owner shares those thoughts with their staff of sales people, that same boss walks by a frustrated customer who is trying to find a particular item.  That boss does not immediately notice what the sales staff sees.  The staff witnesses that boss walk right by that obviously frustrated customer, totally unnoticed.  The staff sees exactly how the boss does not practice what they preach.  Leadership dies.  The age of 'do as I say, not as I do' is long past.  Those days are completely gone.  Anyone practicing those old techniques of leadership ways are the leaders of today who are struggling big time.  Get rid of those old techniques and ways.  They no longer have a productive place in the current world of business leadership.  Those rough and old techniques are useless today.  They add to the contribution of losing ways for the business model to perform.  They will not help growth happen.

Another old technique that no longer works is to threaten your staff to perform better with their working ways or else!  The 'or else' ways of managing people does not work anymore.  They do not need to put up with that kind of disrespect.  Most people have become very smart in how they can disguise what you do not see.  They will project a friendly process for you to witness while at the same time produce far less than what they were truly capable of performing.  The competitor who has a better atmosphere for producing higher levels of leadership ways will actually produce better growth that may destroy your efforts to increase market shares.  You may never actually notice how the competitor does a far better job of group performance than your organization.  Your intelligent staff keeps that view away from your senses.  You will see only those things your staff wants you to see.  Your careless words described what you prefer to see.  Your staff is intelligent enough to make certain this view comes to your surface of sight.  Threats and coercion do not work well anymore.  Find a better plan.  Develop better leadership habits.  Improve how you lead the people you hire.  In the end, they are the ones who must produce their success in better ways.  They are waiting for you to teach them how that can be done.  Threats are not how that works best.

I once had a mentor who told me that it was not how he said what he said that mattered.  It was how I interpreted it that mattered the most.  He further described how sometimes the best lessons came from the instructions for 'what not to do' instead of what 'should be done.'  So often owners look to see what they can do to improve the results of their working ways.  Owners hunger for new ideas that work well.  Owners look for things they can add to their current package of things they do to produce better results.  Good owners are always searching for the next new working idea.  Good owners are constantly trying to find the next new thing that helps them win.  This kind of effort suggests that good things come from added ideas and methods.  That is why we often miss what we can do to improve how cutting out some things will help.  Cutting away at some of the things we do does not appear to be the best way to improve how we grow.  We usually look to find more things to add in order to grow.  When in fact, some stuff needs to be cut out, instead.

If you practice coercion to motivate your staff and its performance desires, cut that out.  Get rid of that technique.  It does not work anymore.  Trust me, it is completely dead.  When your horse is dead, dismount.
There is nothing more goofy to watch than a business owner trying to use old rotten methods of motivation to inspire people that are not listening.  What a total waste of time.  Learn new motivational techniques.  Go online and get some help.  There are virtually thousands of wonderful sites to visit.  Go get help.  Your business model is waiting for you to improve.  Give it a better chance to do what it was meant to do.  Some of the old ways we used to lead were always wrong.  Now our staff knows it.  What used to work occasionally no longer applies.  Our staff now knows better.  They have grown up to be more inclined to gravitate to the direction of improved respect.  People are so much more informed today than ever before.  Recognize this truth and learn how to respect what they can and will produce.  Put away the whip and learn who to become a better leader.  Kill the threats.  They no longer work the magic they once produced.

Make Sure You Actually Apply What You Learned!

If you want to increase sales, say so.  Tell your staff how much you would prefer to see.  Ask them if they have any good ideas for making that kind of growth happen.  Listen.  Watch the quiet ones.  The quiet ones have opinions, too.  In fact, I have discovered some very good things that came from the ones who speak the least.  They have some very passionate things they quietly protect about how they see and what they know.  I have often discovered some very telling things hidden deeply inside the minds of those who speak the least.  I like the way they are able to observe.  They quietly take mental notes of the things others say and do.  They see the truth and understand how things are really working.  I enjoy learning about their quiet perspectives.  It might be some good listening for your future ways.

Once you describe how much sales increase you prefer to see, listen to how the staff believes that can be done.  Keep in mind they will disguise some of the best thoughts from your view.  It is a natural thing to do.  They will protect the best thoughts they have from being wrong or criticized.  We hate criticism.  We actually  fear it more than death.  Criticism is our most troubling fear.  We disguise our words in ways that help us to protect how we truly feel.  This will place certain levels of protective shadows over the ideas your staff believe to be good.  Recognize these truths when you listen in.  Some of what they share will come to your senses in a very guarded way.  They will hold back the stuff that will cause them potential harm.  Your improved leadership will go a long way in helping them get to the parts that will truly help.  Learn how to draw those parts out.  Learn who to respect how they are delivered.  Do not become the killer of the messenger.  If the message is not what you want to hear, make sure they do not know how you feel.  They will clam up immediately if they sense your respect has gone.  There will be a lot of things about your organization that will prove to be uncomfortable.  You need to see those perspectives as well.  Learn how to turn bad news into good news.  Make sure the bad news does not remain under cover.  It can easily grow and fester into something very damaging in the future.  Get good at respecting what they share.

Most leaders want the one-way road.  Unfortunately, the one-way road is filled with too many ruts and pot holes to endure.  Get off of that leadership road.  It no longer provides the best path to follow.  Get re-trained about improved leadership ways.  Your business model will perform better when your leadership skills improve.  You will be expected in the new ways of leadership to manage multiple-lane roads.  It will not be easier to do.  However, it will produce better results.  Remember, we are not looking for easier ways, instead, we are looking for better results.  Better results do not come from easier ways.  Whomever taught you this crazy rule or belief was dead wrong in their teaching ways.  Junk that notion.  It will not become easier to learn how to improve your leadership skills.  It will get harder to do.  Only your results will become more noticeably better.  You will not likely become more satisfied with how you will feel, but at least your checkbook will be thicker for it.  Working to improve your leadership skills will be a hard thing for you to do.  Accept this fact and begin to work on securing those lessons.  Your future results are waiting for your future efforts.  Accept this challenge and get on with it.  Drop the old ways out and begin building new ones to replace where the old ones failed.

Watch what you say, say what you mean and mean what you say.  Become a better person of your word.  If you make a promise to someone, do it.  Deliver what you said you would do.  Become accountable to the words you choose.  That is exactly why you might want to consider saying less.  There is a great book written titled, "Hung By The Tongue."  Even if you are not a Christian, read it.  It carries a tremendous lesson about how we speak the things we do not want.  I highly recommend it.  It will only add value to the effort you apply for improving your skills on leadership ways.  Go get the improved information.  It will help your business model become more successful.

Until next time...