4 Daily Leadership Habits That Most Benefit Your Team

This article comes from Entrepreneur.

4 Daily Leadership Habits That Most Benefit Your Team

Here are four daily habits that will have such a positive impact on your team, it will function like a well-oiled machine, even without you.

1. Tell your people at the beginning of the day that you recognize and are there to support them.

Rewards and recognition are given after a job well done. What if you reverse the order? What if you inspired and invited your people to make the most out of their day for their enjoyment before the day unfolds?

When you were learning to ride a bike, it didn’t matter what happened the first time you removed the training wheels. Mom or Dad was there to steady you, encourage you, cheerlead you. You rode on their confidence to step into the unknown, give it your best and test yourself. You had support before you even got started.

Your team members are likely not children. However, think about this: do you give a degree of unconditional, professional love to your people? Receiving it makes for healthy children. It complemented our fierce sense of adventure to test our limits. As adults, this approach still has an incredible impact on us. As opposed to providing support remedially when something goes wrong, could you inspire them to more confidently charge out of the gate at the beginning of the day?

2. Be present and go into battle with them side by side.

Those leaders and managers, who are the best at solving their team’s problems and driving high performance, know their people. They can and know how to empathize strongly with their team experiences. They appreciate what rejection feels like for their salespeople. They stand up for their employees who are disrespected, harassed and bullied by clients and customers.

When you are prepared to transparently declare your values and ethics to defend your people and their values and principles — not to peacock your own agenda and self-righteousness — your team members will remember how you made them feel. In the future when you ask them to participate in a particularly grueling challenge, they will willingly feel indebted to go to battle for you also. Some of the limitations of organizational hierarchies crumble to the betterment of the team, and your team has opportunities to truly showcase what they are made of.

3. Discuss what you believe in, not just the figures and numbers.

When conversations tickle both the mind and the heart, greater bonds are created. Without sharing your deepest darkest secrets or divulging buckets of tears, be wise and consider sharing what frustrates, upsets and saddens you just as much as what pleases you. Don’t just share your insights. Ask for and listen to theirs.

Be wise about how transparent you are and when. However, when people see and can feel you are human and you accept them as human, they relax and feel less worried about being themselves in their work. They feel freer to perform at their best.

4. Encourage and create opportunities for your people to grow, learn and self-improve.

Carol Dweck has long been researching and sharing results which illustrate the positive impact nurturing a growth mindset has on confidence, performance, creativity and productivity. However, investments in learning opportunities and training that are not a suitable fit, not well planned nor timed well can actually be a waste of time and money. Assigning people to training when their motivation and desire to improve is not present, is unwise. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

Not all your people are motivated to learn. Not everyone desires to improve their intellectual assets and technical skills. Some people simply don’t have workplace goals, let alone goals at all. That’s fine. Suggest they end each day reviewing three things they know today that they didn’t know yesterday. Probe them to think this way, and they’ll start enjoying this expanded way of thinking.

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