How to be a Great Leader

Jerold E. Novack, CFO & SEVP of Bluerock Real Estate

In the ever-changing environment of business, how do you motivate, connect with, and inspire your team?

Maintain your role as a leader, but…

• Find a healthy balance between leading and remaining relatable to your employees

• Practice compassion

• Be someone your employees are proud to work for and with

• For all leaders practicing different leadership styles, there are practical tips to implement into your methods to make you the best leader possible

Here are six practical tips that can be applied to a myriad of environments to help you lead and lead great!

Emphasize the Why

When you take the time to outline why a project, assignment, client, etc. is so important, it helps gain buy-

in from your team. It can motivate a team member to finish a project in a day as opposed to dragging it out over a few weeks. Letting them in on your rationale as

well as your expectations helps team members feel they’re more valued

Practice Compassion

When a mishap occurs, and it will, exercise compassion and empathy before coming

down on your employee or jumping to conclusions. You should be hard on results, but soft on the person giving those results to you; understand what went wrong and

how best to help that individual from making the same mistake again.

Skill vs. Will

Underperformance usually comes from one of two places: a lack of skill or a lack of will. Taking time to uncover and

understand the difference between the two in relation to a certain employee’s underperformance is key to fixing the

problem. Skill gaps are easy to close with the proper coaching, training, and support, while will gaps are more difficult to close

and require more digging into where your employees motivation lie.

Family FirstFamily issues are often unavoidable when

managing a group of people, and allowing your team to make it their number one priority

in dire times is key to performance. If they aren’t able attend to personal issues,

performance will most likely suffer, and they’ll feel like their personal lives don’t matter

outside of the work environment. They do, and let them know that.

Communicate Frequently

While we all get caught up in our own daily tasks, personal lives, and the like, it’s important to make

your team feel like they aren’t forgotten. Don’t wait for a quarterly or annual review to give feedback

on performance, or even worse, for your team member to ask for it. Stay ahead of the ball, and

regularly check-in with your staff to help them stay motivated, productive, and heard.

Trust Your Team

Experience has shown that staff will go above and beyond to keep an employer or managers trust, so give

them all of it. Meddling in the minutiae of what your team is up to instead of giving them the tools and

support they need tends to produce mixed results. So trust your staff, and they will produce great results.

To discover more ways to become a great mentor, educator, and leader, visit Jerry

Novack’s blog at…

http://jerrynovack.net/