• Care for your team. This means knowing what is important to each member: their health, their spouses, their children, their relatives, their interests, their hopes, their fears.
• Meet your team. Frequently - daily, weekly or monthly, depending on the place and type of work you do - have a meeting of all team members. Keep the meeting short, focused and action-oriented. Make sure each team member contributed in some way and admit that.
• Train your team. Each member of the team must have at least two days of training a year. New partners and more senior should have more. If they did not ask to go on training sessions, suggest some suitable courses.
• Grow your team. Through a variety of experience and training regularly, you need to develop each team member to be more and more confident and more skilled.
• Inspire your team. Consider making a motivational quote or story every week or month
• Set objectives for each team member. As far as possible, such as SMART objectives - Achieved Specific Measurable Timed source.
• Evaluate the performance of each team member. At least once a year - at least quarterly for the first year of a new team member - have a review session where you assess performance, give feed-back and agree future objectives and training.
• Receive constantly. The words "Thank you" take seconds to say, but means so much.
• Praise always. The words "Well done" take seconds to say, but will long be remembered and appreciated.
• Communicate on an ongoing basis. Do not assume that people know what you are doing, still less what you are planning or thinking. Tell them, using all the communication tools to hand: team briefings, electronic newsletters, newspapers organizations.
• Representative. You do not have to do everything. Develop your team members to train them to do more and trusting them to take over some of the things you have done.
• Empower. A leader who truly effective set clear objectives for his team members, but leaves detailed implementation of these objectives to the discretion and judgement of the individual members of the team.
• Facilitate. A confident leader does not try to micro-manage the team, but make it clear that, if team members need advice or help, he was always there to facilitate and support.
• Be on time. Always start meetings on time and finish them on time. Natural breaks keep people fresh. Short meetings concentrate the mind.
• Really listen. Many of us - especially those who think they are important - not really listening, but instead think about what they are going to say next. Give the speaker your full attention to you and really take on board what they are saying.
• Accept honest criticism. Criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, friend, acquaintance or stranger - but it is a powerful tool of learning. Above all, assess criticism on merit, without regard to the originator.
• Have a mentor or friend, someone who does the same job in the same or a similar organization with whom you can regularly and frankly discuss your progress and problems you as a leader.
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