Make people want to do things.
Making people want to do something is a subtler process than “selling” them on doing it. The latter is usually just another name for forceful persuasion and is no more effective. In thinking about this rule, consider the term want. The words need and want are synonymous. Think about people’s acquired needs. Then think of the characteristics of needs, behavior, and goals.
Study team members, and determine what makes each tick.
Most of your dealings are with “others” in general. But some of your dealings are with Joe, Tomás, and Aisha as individuals. What kinds of things must you know about each person working with you? Most experts say that knowing one’s team members is the main tool of leadership.
Delegate the responsibility for details to subordinates.
Delegating responsibility is the essence of leadership. You are not a leader if you do not delegate, just as you are not a machinist if you cannot run a machine.
Be a good listener.
Effective leaders know their people. The easiest way to learn about people is to encourage them to talk, to draw them out, and to ask them questions. A teller, by contrast, only encourages people to keep quiet. Never dominate a conversation or meeting without a good reason. A good trick: Always give the other person the right-of-way when you both start to speak at the same time.
Criticize or correct constructively.
Get all the facts. Review them and get agreement on them. Then suggest a course of action. Or better still, have the person whom you’re correcting suggest a remedial action. When you criticize, be sure to criticize the method, never the motive. Precede criticism with praise, but be careful. When this becomes routine, people get wise and resent the technique.
Criticize or correct in private.
This is among the most obvious of rules, but people break it constantly. Why is a public reprimand such a poor human relations practice? Think about the effect of public criticism on the average person. Try to think of a situation in which public scolding would be justifi able and effective.
Praise in public.
This is a result of the preceding rule. But when praising, take a few precautions. Make certain the person deserves the praise. Make sure to praise everyone involved in the task. And avoid praising so frequently that the group is unimpressed.
Comment: This means we also reprimand/discipline in private.
Be considerate.
Nothing contributes more to building a strong, hard-working, and loyal team than a considerate, courteous leader. Such leaders put themselves in the team members’ place before making decisions that affect them. These leaders realize that team members have personal problems in school, on the job, and at home. They know that people have personal and social needs, and that team members will work effectively when others recognize and respect—not trample on—those needs.
Give credit where it is due.
The leader who takes credit for followers’ work is something of a tyrant. In the military, superiors sometimes impose taking credit on a subordinate leader. The leader is responsible, and the leader’s boss is concerned with mission accomplishment, not how and by whom the mission was accomplished. Credit for new ideas, special projects, and the like, however, belongs to the person who developed them. As a leader, you must ensure that if you or the team receives recognition for such achievement, the individual concerned gets recognition, too. In turn, you get credit for building a good team and for representing the individual members well.
Avoid domination or forcefulness.
Effective leaders think of the team as working with, not for, them. Dominant, overly forceful leaders stifl e people who have initiative. Such leaders do their teams no favor: If the chief runs everything, the best people will try to get out. The weaker people will let the chief do all the work.
Show interest in and appreciation of the other person.
Be a human being. Not everyone is warmhearted, but even the most self-centered and coldest leader can take steps to maintain warm relationships with subordinates. For example, use fi rst names in private conversations, talk about hobbies and family news, and arrange occasional friendly bull sessions. Keep informed on workloads and hours of overtime, and investigate any evidence of fatigue and unhappiness.
Occasionally it’s a good idea to say, “Joe, you look tired; knock off a few hours early.” Gestures of this sort pay great dividends in loyalty and ccomplishment. But avoid going too far in such matters. Don’t violate the unwritten law of effective leadership: Keep your professional and personal lives separate.
Make your wishes known by suggestions or requests.
If your people are not hostile and resentful, requests and suggestions are more effective than orders or commands. When a leader must frequently order team members to take action, the situation is a sorry one.
Be sure to explain the reasons for your requests.
People want to know both what they are doing and why they are doing it. This is a “must” in the American culture.
Let your assistants in on your plans and programs as early as possible.
Sometimes you cannot discuss plans too far in advance. But you should talk them over with followers or team members before you fi nalize them. The sum of your assistants’ ideas, plus your own, will ordinarily be better than your ideas alone. Getting the group involved in planning is a signifi cant undertaking in leadership. Participation by subordinates in planning is a valuable leadership tool. When people know what is coming and why, they can gear their thinking more realistically to the goal.
Never forget that leaders set the style for their people.
If your habits are irregular, if you’re consistently late for appointments or careless about facts, or if you usually look bored, you can expect your followers to follow suit.
It’s not easy to explain this reaction. You might simply think, “Well, that’s the way people are.” But researchers have identifi ed a scientifi c basis for this phenomenon. A way of behaving may become a need. For example, the craftsperson acquires a need to do excellent work. Most of us have acquired the need to imitate. And most likely this need has become generalized to many goals. People learn to talk by imitating the members of their family. People learn to express happiness or approval by copying their parents’ or guardian’s behavior. People are especially likely to imitate the behavior of those they are dependent on.
Play up the positive.
For most people, praise is a better stimulant than criticism. Appreciation is better than a lack of appreciation. Ambition is a more effective motivation than punishment.
Be consistent.
A leader who fl ies off the handle, sets off fi reworks, or gyrates wildly in mood, reaction, and manner bewilders and frightens followers.
Show your people that you have confi dence in them and that you expect them to do their best.
People tend to live up to what you expect of them. When goals and standards are realistic, most people do a fi rst-rate job. If a leader shows confi dence in his or her team members and expects high standards of effi ciency and production, that is usually what will happen.
Ask those who work with you for their counsel and help.
This gets them involved. The mission of the group becomes their “baby,” and people tend to consider their “babies” to be important. Equally signifi cant, team members have good ideas that may never see daylight unless someone asks for the members’ advice and help.
Give people a chance to take part in decisions, particularly those affecting them.
When people have had a say in a decision, they are much more likely to go along with it enthusiastically. If they agree with the decision, they will go along. If they had a part in making it, the decision is their own “baby.” Even if they don’t agree, they will go along, since they had a part in it. They know the leader considered their views. Many experts in leadership believe that group dynamics is the major determiner of success or failure of all leadership activity. You are on the right track if you consider the group to be the most powerful single factor in influencing human behavior.
Listen courteously to ideas from your followers.
Even far-fetched ideas deserve a full hearing. Never disparage or ridicule an idea. An original idea is valuable to the team, to the leader, and especially to the originator. Even a very bad idea is the originator’s own “baby.”
If you adopt a team member’s idea, tell him or her why.
If the originator knows why you approve of his or her idea, it reinforces that person’s line of thought. The team member will likely apply it to other problems. If you do not adopt an idea that a team member suggests, you should also explain why. If your reasons are good, the person will accept them. If you never respond to your followers’ ideas, your followers will become discouraged and perhaps even resentful.
Give weight to the fact that people carry out their own ideas best.
When two ideas of equal merit appear, choose the one presented by the person who will carry out the project. Here again, the project is someone’s personal “baby.” Carry this point one step further to a subtle technique of leadership: It is a good tactic to plant seeds of ideas in others’ minds. The person who executes the idea will feel that it is his or her own. He or she then is responsible for proving that the idea is workable.
When you are wrong or make a mistake, admit it.
No one expects a leader to be perfect. Leaders don’t lose face by admitting they are wrong, provided they aren’t wrong too often. By admitting mistakes, you gain the confi dence of your team in your fairness and honesty.
Plan what you say and how you say it.
When you talk to your team members as a group or individually, your words have a dramatic impact. Why? Think this one through carefully. Consider the impact of words and tone of voice in people’s lives. For example, people associate harshness and curtness with anxiety, reprimand, disapproval, and hostility. You can acquire the most benefi cial leadership skills in this area of communication. Even an artless person can learn to say things in a pleasant,
encouraging, and stimulating way. You can speak in an atmosphere of approval even when you are criticizing someone.
In any event, effective communication is a signifi cant leadership and human relations tool. Carelessly chosen words, an unintended infl ection of the voice, or dismissal of a subject that someone has raised can breed unhappiness and misunderstanding. Words that you forget the moment you speak them can cause unproductive days and sleepless nights for those who hear them.
Perhaps you think that such sensitive souls make poor team members. Perhaps you’re right. But your value judgment doesn’t alter the nature of the American teenager or adult. You are not going to break down a lifetime of acquired motives just because you think it is easier to be curt and inconsiderate. Your job is to get the best out of your team. You do this by capitalizing on human nature. And in the realm of communications, a pleasant voice, well-chosen words, approval, and understanding get better results than harshness, curtness, apathy, and impersonal speech.
Don’t let moderate complaining upset you.
In small doses, griping serves as a safety valve. It helps people let off steam. Frustration is part of the very nature of life. This is true of any work situation. Someone once said that if a leader were perfect, people would gripe because he or she was perfect. Accept mild complaining as a normal outlet for frustration. Vicious personal griping is another story, however. Try to determine the cause for such complaints and eliminate them.
Use every opportunity to build up in team members a sense of the importance of their work.
People like to consider their roles in life and on the job to be important. Many people even have a need to feel they are essential to a particular job. Without this, they are unable to click.
Give your people goals, a sense of direction, and something to strive for and achieve—keep them informed.
People need to know where they are going, what they are doing, and why they are doing it. People can’t stay interested simply in working from hour to hour and day to day. They must see how their day-to-day work fi ts into the framework of larger goals. On the other hand, long-range goals mobilize less energy than immediate goals. This may seem paradoxical, but it isn’t. Consider carefully the nature of complex motivated behavior. Remember that immediate goals are only
a means to an end. For example, consider the long-range and immediate goals in the following situations:
-
The Marine recruit undergoes harsh treatment, vigorous physical training,
and long hours of classroom work. -
A potential Rhodes scholar is drafted. He chooses to go to radar training.
Then he asks to be assigned to an isolated radar defense installation. -
A sick man undergoes an operation.
-
An overweight person goes on a diet.
-
A business executive takes an honorary government post at reduced salary.
Let your people know where they stand.
The day of “Treat ’em rough and tell ’em nothing” is gone. Leaders should always let their team members know their strong and weak points. Both regularly scheduled and informal ratings of people are a must in sound human relations. The most devastating work situation is one in which an
employee doesn’t know where he or she stands with the boss.
Your team members must know what you expect. They will inevitably try to please you. Your good opinion is their bread and butter. Evaluating your people is among the most diffi cult human relations problems a leader must deal with. Ordinarily, if a person has a weakness and knows it, he or she probably considers the weakness to be a matter of minor importance. If you as a leader believe this weakness is of major importance, that person will be very unhappy when you bring up the matter.
Such situations demand real skill in human relations. Criticism or evaluation must never place the person in a position that prevents him or her from regaining the leader’s confi dence and approval. As a general rule, evaluations that involve both praise and criticism are the most effective form of long-range motivation. But the criticism must be constructive. The individual will want to correct weaknesses when this change will satisfy more-important needs.
As a leader and a follower, practice these leadership maxims on a daily basis. Continue this tradition of leadership excellence and pass it on to others.