Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Of course it's much easier to share good news with your employees, but it's perhaps even more important to share the bad news. If revenue is down, or if you've lost a large customer, or if a new competitor has entered the market, let your team know. Your employees need to know about the health of your company or organization. And it's only when they have the full picture -- the good news and the bad news -- that they can rally together with you to brainstorm possible solutions. Don't keep your team in the dark. Don't give them a false sense of the situation by sharing only good news. Keep them fully informed. They can handle the bad along with the good. Most likely they have a sense of the bad already. Or, they'll hear it second-hand. You'll gain their respect when they hear the bad news directly from you.

Here are five handy tips for how to run a better meeting: Limit attendance . Include only decision makers and key implementers. Use an agenda . Give each topic a time limit. Ask your staff to help set the agenda so they'll know the meeting will be relevant. Make sure attendees know at the meeting's beginning the benefit of why they are in the meeting. Create a not-on-the agenda list of topics that will be tabled for after the meeting or for another meeting. Set immediate deadlines for carrying out all decisions that are made during the meeting. If you follow these simple five tips you can prove to your team that meetings can be used to get things done! Learn more about how to host an effective meeting by reading the booklet, "Best Life: Tips for 2009."

The next time you stay at a Marriott hotel look in the nightstand drawer for Marriott's booklet that highlights its milestones and tells the Marriott story. In the booklet, you'll find the following 12 ways that Marriott practices good leadership AND customer service: Continually challenge your team to do better. Take good care of your employees, and they'll take good care of your customers, and the customers will come back. Celebrate your people's success, not your own. Know what you're good at and mine those competencies for all you're worth. Do it and do it now. Err on the side of taking action. Communicate. Listen to your customers, associates and competitors. See and be seen. Get out of your office, walk around, make yourself visible and accessible. Success is in the details. It's more important to hire people with the right qualities than with specific experience. Customer needs may vary, but their bias for quality never does. Eliminate

Eric Harvey and Al Lucia wrote a booklet called " 144 Ways To Walk The Talk ." They provide the following great, simple and straight-forward advice about giving feedback: Make it timely -- give your feedback as soon as possible to the performance. Make it individualized -- tailor your feedback to the feedback receiver. Make it productive -- focus your feedback on the performance and not the performer. Make is specific -- pinpoint for the receiver observable actions and behaviors.

Here are 10 behaviors, techniques and tips you can use to be an effective leader: Respond to questions quickly and fully. Take an interest in your employees and their personal milestone events. Give feedback in a timely manner and make it individualized and specific. Be willing to change your decisions. End every meeting with a follow-up To Do list. Support mentoring -- both informal and formal. Don't delay tough decisions. Do annual written performance appraisals. Explain how a change will affect employee's feelings before, during and after the change is implemented. Have face-to-face interaction as often as possible.