101 Secrets Of Leadership

1. Understand and champion your company's mission.

2. Value your company's customers and products.
3. See company goals as personal action steps.
4. Be responsive to the needs and interests of customers.
5. Understand your roles with others, where and how you fit in.
6. Work within the scope of your responsibilities and authority.
7. Follow company policies and procedures.
8. See how your duties/responsibilities relate to other areas of your company.
9. Understand your company's budget, financial reports, and other management data.
10. Question the decisions or actions of others you think may cause problems or jeopardize
operations.
11. Respect the confidentiality of team discussions and problem-solving activities.
12. Support management when you or your co-workers are unhappy with policies and decisions.
13. Do not pass your frustrations and negative opinions down-the-line to others.
14. Bring the same energy and commitment to your responsibilities when things aren't going well
as you do when they are.
15. Learn and grow as a participant in your organization from week-to-week.
16. Accurately understand and value your skills and limitations.
17. Be well organized and prepared when handling any responsibility.
18. Handle every task in a timely manner.
19. Take personal responsibility when you see something that needs done and no one is doing it.
20. Pitch in and work a little harder, do a little more whenever the opportunity presents itself.
21. Invest most of your time and energy in taking care of business.
22. Keep your focus primarily on what's working, on what's going well in your company.
23. Focus most of your attention and energy on how to get ideas to work and away from why they
won't work.
24. Don't hold yourself out as the standard for how others should think, feel, and behave.
25. Assume people believe what they say, and don't intentionally misrepresent anything.
26. Understand and remember that people seldom complain when there isn't a real problem.
27. Stay open to ideas and suggestions of others.
28. See and understand problems and ideas from the other person's point of view.
29. Make sure a job needs doing and is worth doing before expecting others to do it.
30. Make sure a job can be done before holding anyone accountable for it.
31. Provide clear instructions and directions for your customers and co-workers.
32. Develop incremental steps, procedures, and checkpoints for tasks and goals for which you're
responsible.
33. Help your co-workers understand how their jobs fit in with company goals and activities.
34. Keep your focus on people's abilities and strengths instead of emphasizing their limitations
and weaknesses.
35. Tell them, show them, and then tell them what you showed them.
36. Give people reasons and explanations, when requested for your behavior and actions.
37. Clearly define and communicate your goals and motivations.
38. Be clear about what you want and expect from others.
39. Be sure people know why whatever you do needs doing, why it's important.
40. Make sure people know how to do what you expect before holding them responsible.
41. Remember that you cannot pass on your responsibility just because you've delegated tasks
and activities.
42. Don't delegate duties that require your direct involvement.
43. Don't delegate a task and then try to manage it.
44. When delegating, delegate both activities and related functional authority.
45. Delegate as much scope of authority as necessary to get the job done.
46. Be familiar with, and know how to use, outside resources to benefit your company and to
customers.
47. Be familiar with, and use, all the internal resources of your company.
48. Understand, and use, the informal procedures and processes within your company.
49. Know about and tap the knowledge, skills, and abilities of others.
50. Make sure that whenever you assign work to others, it's distributed fairly.
51. Distribute work and responsibilities based on people's strengths, preferred areas, and away
from weaknesses.
52. Don't take advantage of people who cannot refuse.
53. Don't take advantage of people who are especially good-natured or cooperative.
54. Don't hold yourself out as necessarily the best judge of how the company environment is for
others.
55. Advocate for your needs and interests within the context of the needs and interests of your
company.
56. Trust your co-workers to act in the best interest of your company and its customers.
57. Exercise as much personal control as you appropriately can over your work environment.
58. Spend part of your company time socializing and hanging around.
59. Don't take credit for the ideas and work of others.
60. Give credit where and when it's due.
61. Be sensitive to the motivations and interests of others.
62. Be open to the feelings and opinions of others.
63. Value the varying styles and personalities of people.
64. Be patient and tolerant with others.
65. Anticipate problems and opportunities.
66. Deal with problems and conflicts as soon as you become aware of them.
67. Don't let your sense of responsibility get in the way of your sense of humor.
68. Be slow to confront or argue.
69. Fit the intensity and forcefulness of your reactions and criticisms to the seriousness or
importance of the problem or incident.
70. Be assertive but tactful.
71. Ask people to help solve your problems instead of simply trying to get them to accept your
solutions.
72. Be hard on problems and soft on people.
73. Deal more with the problem and less with the people when people are upset or unhappy.
74. Be flexible and willing to compromise.
75. Do not deal with people in win/lose terms.
76. Accept shared responsibility for assuring others get their interests met, that they get a good
deal.
77. Remember and own what you've said, agreed to, and what you've done.
78. Work to decrease use of power and control and to increase your influence.
79. See each of your decisions as an opportunity to improve conditions for customers or co-
workers.
80. Try to understand the what/why of problems before taking action.
81. Evaluate the cost/benefit of actions before taking them.
82. Make the difficult or unpopular decisions and accept responsibility for them when you believe
it's necessary.
83. Be prepared to handle people's being upset or unhappy with you at times.
84. Understand there are usually several ways to get the job done and not a best way.
85. Do not over-manage or over-control activities or people.
86. Attend to details without getting bogged down in them.
87. Understand the 80% rule: not until 80% of the people involved in an activity are doing it right
80% of the time should you expect 100% performance.
88. Give people clear, frequent, and accurate feedback.
89. Spend more time telling people what they're doing right than what they're doing wrong.
90. Assume people are trying to do well, are trying to succeed.
91. If people are not succeeding, assume they don't know how, don't think it matters, or are being
prevented from succeeding.
92. Teach others to work smarter instead of pressuring them to work harder.
93. Be quick to praise and slow to criticize.
94. Don't praise people for a job done less well than you expected.
95. Hold others responsible only for what they can do and can control.
96. Handle it as a training opportunity when people cannot do what you expect.
97. Handle it as a leadership opportunity when people won't do what you expect; but be sure not
to confuse will not and cannot.
98. See attitude problems in others as leadership opportunities, and intransigent attitude problems
as leadership failures.
99. Compliment publicly, criticize privately.
100.Before criticizing others, make sure they knew what behavior was expected, new how to do
what was expected, could have done what was expected, and actually didn't behave reasonably
and responsibly.
101.When criticizing anyone, keep it short, limited to your immediate point, and end by affirming
the person's value and abilities.