Michael McKinley, CSP, CPAE, is a professional speaker. He can be reached at
800-225-4769 or mike@RealMikeMcKinley.com

Other articles by Mike

Take Care of Your Business…Or Someone Else Will

Every business I know has a key leader. Most times it is an appointed person such as the president or CEO, or it's often an owner in an entrepreneurial business. Whoever it is, the picture is clear-cut: If the person leads, management will follow.

Many leaders today will tell you that they are team-oriented or want their people to be self-managers. This model can work if it goes beyond lip service. For people to self-manage, the environment cannot be dictatorial and people cannot feel frightened to fail or to make decisions.

One of the key ingredients to creating more positive, self-driven organizations is to have leaders constantly asking themselves some questions regarding the progress of their businesses and the people they employ:

What are your people best at?

Too many times, leaders do not let their people excel at what they're supposed to do. How many salespeople do sales only a small percentage of their work time? They are doing paperwork or other business-related extra-curricular activities but are not selling. · What do your people need help with? How can we make their personal and work lives easier and, therefore, improve efficiency? What are the weak points throughout the work process? What training is needed for today and tomorrow?

What standards have you set for your people?

If you want a clean and efficient work environment, everyone has to know and believe what is priority. · What are the different personalities of your people? How flexible are you? If managers treat everyone the same, you will have chaos. One of the biggest challenges for any leader is to model how to manage different people differently.

How do you let your people know of your expectations and their responsibilities?

Does everyone have a job description yet know when to be flexible and cross over to help in other areas? Are people rewarded if they meet expectations and, if they don't, do they know that there are some consequences?

How do they want to be managed?

Simply ask. People want evaluation-both for praise and correction. Also, if there is not an educational plan along with an evaluation plan, then evaluation is almost worthless.

Leadership needs to understand that they are the role models for the business. Who they are and how they act will be remembered much longer than the words they say.

Most people want strong leadership. When leadership only dances in place, the people won't move their feet.