Top tips to become a balanced business leader - Business Works
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Top tips to become a balanced business leader

Frederick Tsang, Owner, Posterita Many entrepreneurs and business leaders would have read all about how leadership is about "inspiration and perspiration", as well as other cliché-ridden pieces of advice relating to being a great leader or manager. While such advice is useful in some respects, it also leads to the artificial creation of managers and leaders who are the products of the last book they read. Businesses around the world become inundated with lunatics who are the embodiment of Malcolm Gladwell or Ken Blanchard.

While those are two people aren’t bad people to seek advice from, there probably isn’t a well-known business book in the land that just talks simply about being a balanced leader. Many will touch on the fact that you need to take emotion out of the equation, but this just leads to ruthless fanatics who become military generals rather than business leaders.

We looked at how to be a truly balanced leader.

Take the good with the bad

Don’t get us wrong. When, as the business leader, you get praise for things going well, then you might as well soak up the plaudits and enjoy it, because you know that when things go wrong, the flak is most certainly headed your way.

The key to being a balanced business leader is not getting too up or too down either way, while still motivating your team by playing up your successes. Retail is a great industry to look at for this – one day a store might be up 30% against projections and the next day be 30% down, or vice versa. Achieve a great personal balance by focussing on the business and the results will take care of themselves.

Have a plan

A leader who has a clear, thoughtful plan also has credibility, and will have the confidence of those working for them as well as superiors. There are many ways a plan is critical to being a balanced leader. Having direction helps when you have those 30% down on target days, as you can show you are working towards something. It will motivate people to want to work with you to achieve your goals.

The biggest critical point of a plan, however, is actually executing it and continuing to evolve it. Enjoy your achievements while acknowledging there is always room for improvement and you will go far as a leader.

Trust people

Many feel the key to being a great leader is to work in a "command and control" style where you are always checking up on people. Yes, you should audit individuals’ work and hold them accountable; however, you should also trust them to deliver the goods. Leadership is not just about providing direction, but also about allowing the talent that works for you to develop and become great in its own right.



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