Skip to main content

70 Ways To Be An Effective Leader

Searching for some more ways to become an effective leader? Here are 70 things you can do:

  1. Don't micromanage
  2. Don't be a bottleneck
  3. Focus on outcomes, not minutiae
  4. Build trust with your colleagues before a crisis comes
  5. Assess your company's strengths and weaknesses at all times
  6. Conduct annual risk reviews
  7. Be courageous, quick and fair
  8. Talk more about values more than rules
  9. Reward how a performance is achieved and not only the performance
  10. Constantly challenge your team to do better
  11. Celebrate your employees' successes, not your own
  12. Err on the side of taking action
  13. Communicate clearly and often
  14. Be visible
  15. Eliminate the cause of a mistake
  16. View every problem as an opportunity to grow
  17. Summarize group consensus after each decision point during a meeting
  18. Praise when compliments are earned
  19. Be decisive
  20. Say "thank you" and sincerely mean it
  21. Send written thank you notes
  22. Listen carefully and don't multi-task while listening
  23. Teach something new to your team
  24. Show respect for all team members
  25. Follow through when you promise to do something
  26. Allow prudent autonomy
  27. Respond to questions quickly and fully
  28. Return e-mails and phone calls promptly
  29. Give credit where credit is due
  30. Take an interest in your employees and their personal milestone events
  31. Mix praise with constructive feedback for how to make improvement
  32. Learn the names of your team members even if your team numbers in the hundreds
  33. Foster mutual commitment
  34. Admit your mistakes
  35. Remove nonperformers
  36. Give feedback in a timely manner and make it individualized and specific
  37. Hire to complement, not to duplicate
  38. Volunteer within your community and allow your employees to volunteer
  39. Promote excellent customer service both internally and externally
  40. Show trust
  41. Encourage peer coaching
  42. Encourage individualism and welcome input
  43. Share third-party compliments about your employees with your employees
  44. Be willing to change your decisions
  45. Be a good role model
  46. Be humble
  47. Explain each person's relevance
  48. End every meeting with a follow-up To Do list
  49. Explain the process and the reason for the decisions you make
  50. Read leadership books to learn
  51. Set clear goals and objectives
  52. Reward the doers
  53. Know yourself
  54. Use job descriptions
  55. Encourage personal growth and promote training, mentoring and external education
  56. Share bad news, not only good news
  57. Start meetings on time
  58. Discipline in private
  59. Seek guidance when you don't have the answer
  60. Tailor your motivation techniques
  61. Support mentoring - both informal and formal mentoring
  62. Don't interrupt
  63. Ask questions to clarify
  64. Don't delay tough conversations
  65. Have an open door policy
  66. Dig deep within your organization for ideas on how to improve processes, policies and procedures
  67. Do annual written performance appraisals
  68. Insist on realism
  69. Explain how a change will impact employees' feelings before, during and after the change is implemented
  70. Have face-to-face interaction as often as possible
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Benefits Of When Everyone Leads

It’s only January and the new book, When Everyone Leads , could likely be my pick for the best new leadership book of 2023. It’s that good. There’s still nearly a whole year ahead of us so we’ll see what other books debut. In the meantime, add this book to your must-read list.   You’ll learn that: Leadership is an activity, not a position. Leadership is mobilizing others to make progress on the most important challenges. Leadership is interactive, risky and experimental. Leadership comes in moments. Leadership is always about change.   When Everyone Leads , by Ed O’Malley and Julia Fabris McBride , presents a revolutionary approach to leadership; not based on position or authority, but an activity that anybody can undertake by learning to spot opportunities for improvement and taking the initiative to engage others.   “It can be unfamiliar and uncomfortable, but in a culture where everyone leads, organizations start to make progress on their most difficult proble...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To Become A Catalyst CEO

Catalyst leaders are individuals who accelerate decision-making, empower teams, and spark innovation. To improve your catalyst leadership skills, you’ll want to read the new book by Constantine G. Alexandrakis , which provides a hands-on guide for building leadership teams and cultures that ignite business transformation.   The book is The Catalyst CEO: Why CEOs Can’t Lead Transformation Alone―And What The Best Do Instead . Drawing on decades of experience advising world-leading companies, Alexandrakis challenges the cult of the hero CEO and offers a powerful new paradigm on what it truly takes to make business transformation happen―and stick.   Alexandrakis defines transformation as more than change. “It’s a deliberate reinvention of how a company creates value through its people, its business model, and its place in the world.” He adds that “Real transformation depends on teams that are willing to argue clearly, and directly, while still finding a way to decide and move ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To Be A Tough Enough Leader

    Tomorrow brings a compelling and timely book about how tough enough you need to be as a leader to lead your team to greatness without being a jerk. The book is Tough Enough , by leadership coaches John Baird and Matt Hunter .   The authors explain that building a high-performing team requires a new form of toughness―not based on bullying and bravado, but rather pushing for exceptional results in a way that is firm, fair, and respectful.   Drawing on decades of coaching top CEOs, elite founders, and ambitious leaders, Baird and Hunter break down seven specific habits that define the strongest, most effective leaders, from being clear about the company culture to strategically unleashing emotional thunder. They set the record straight on when to prioritize understanding and empathy, when it’s time to be direct―and, most importantly, how to do both at the same time. Their no-nonsense approach gives readers the tools to calibrate their toughness and compassion in a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To Improve The Way Teams Think, Collaborate And Make Decisions Under Pressure

  “Great decisions don’t happen by accident—they happen by design,” shares Dr. Ricardo Valerdi , author of the new book, The Five-Tool Team: Bringing Out The Best In People To Make Better Decisions .  This book is not about finding perfect answers. It is about building a framework that allows you to make good decisions repeatedly, even when conditions are imperfect, information is incomplete, and outcomes are uncertain.  More specifically, Valerdi reveals a practical framework for improving the way individuals and teams think, collaborate, and make decisions under pressure.   Drawing on lessons from sports, business, engineering, and real-world experience, Valerdi shows how the most effective leaders build teams that question assumptions, analyze consequences, and make choices grounded in clarity rather than instinct or urgency.  “Writing this book has been a phenomenal journey that started in 2018 when I was a visiting professor at the United States Military Ac...
Post a Comment
Read more

40 Timeless Lessons From Southwest Airlines

A few years ago, Southwest Airlines celebrated its 40th year and was kind enough to share in its in-flight magazine 40 lessons it learned since 1971.  The lessons provide good tips for business leaders. If you missed the full list, here are some of the highlights of timeless lessons: Invent your own culture and put a top person in charge of it .  A crisis can contain the germ of a big idea . Simplicity has value .  For Southwest, simplicity means using 737s for most of its fleet, which makes maintenance more cost-effective and allows more efficient training for flight crews and ground crews. Remember your chief mission . Take your business, not yourself, seriously. Put the worker first .  For Southwest, that meant being the first U.S. airline to offer a profit-sharing plan, in 1974.  Employees now own 13 percent of the airline. The web ain't cool, it's a tool .  Southwest was the first U.S. airline to establish a home page.  By 2010, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Proven Strategies For Keeping Teams Focused During Times Of Uncertainty

  “Crisis leadership is not only about operational efficiency—it is fundamentally human-centered. Leaders who communicate openly, prioritize safety, listen empathetically, and empower teams can sustain trust, engagement, and performance, even in life-threatening circumstances.  Organizations that maintain this balance are not only surviving—they are building for the future,” explain the authors of the new book Against The Storm: How True Leaders Prevail When The World Shakes .   The authors and leadership experts  Tom Kolditz  and  Mariana Khomitska  share in their book a practical framework that can be applied across industries and roles.   “One of the primary purposes of our book is to pass along leadership tools for crisis management,” explain the authors. “Effective crisis management is fundamentally about reducing uncertainty to restore a sense of control and stability." Key strategies focusing on minimizing the effects of uncertainty a...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To Rewire Your Mind To Build Your Adaptability Quotient

    Alec Litowitz argues that the most valuable skill of the next decade isn't IQ or even EQ (Emotional Intelligence). It's AQ: your Adaptability Quotient, the ability to question assumptions, update beliefs, and respond effectively when reality changes.   Litowitz is the author of the forthcoming book (releasing on September 15, 2026)  The Adaptability Quotient: Rewiring Your Mind For Success In The Next Human Era .   And he shares that “AQ is a learnable way of using your mind like a high-performance machine: to model risk, absorb feedback, make faster corrections, and create repeatable advantages in conditions where most people stall out—or drown.”   In short, it’s all about how to move from “making the right decision” to “making decisions right.”   “As artificial intelligence, media, and scientific advances reshape the cognitive landscape, adaptability becomes the essential discipline for reclaiming human agency,” adds Litowitz. “And a s AI resha...
Post a Comment
Read more

James G. Ellis Shares The Leadership Lessons Behind A Lasting Legacy

  In his new book, James G. Ellis shares the lessons he learned throughout his career as an entrepreneur, CEO, professor, mentor, and one of the nation’s most respected business school leaders. He is the former Dean of the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.   For aspiring leaders, educators, and entrepreneurs, A Journey of Insights: Lessons In Leadership And Legacy , offers a roadmap to success grounded in real-world experience, with a focus on humility, listening, and building strong, collaborative environments. The book is both a personal memoir and a strategic guide for those aiming to leave a lasting legacy in business.   At the core of his message is the central theme that listening to voices around you throughout life is the key to success. “In essence, ears can speak louder than voices,” shares Ellis.   The book also explores pivotal moments that helped define Ellis’ understanding of leadership, including encounters with Pres...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To Become Your Best-Self Leader Everyday

“By focusing in specific ways on five key leadership elements— Purpose, Process, People, Presence, and Peace —you can increase your time, capacity, energy, and ultimately your leadership impact,” explains Amy Jen Su , author of the book, The Leader You Want To Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self—Every Day . Su shares both Western management thinking and Eastern philosophy to provide a holistic yet hands-on approach to becoming a more effective leader with less stress and more equanimity. She draws on rich and instructive stories of clients, leaders, artists, and athletes. And, she focuses on three foundational tenets: s elf-care, self-awareness, and personal agency . Most important, Su explores in depth, chapter-by-chapter the Five Ps : Purpose – Staying grounded in your passions and contributions, doing your highest and best work that has meaning and is making a difference. Process – Relying on daily practices and routines that honor your natural energy rhyt...
Post a Comment
Read more