The Essential Guide to Becoming a Great People Leader

If you want to lead others, you have to make sure that your own house is in order. To this end, your first order of business is to recognize that beyond your undeniable strengths, you also have a few weak points.

Then, identify those strong and weak points, and either work to improve on your weaknesses; or work around your weaknesses, i.e., make sure to not let them interfere with your leadership potential. Let us give you a few examples to drive home this point.

Let us give you a few examples to drive home this point.

We already spoke about every leader’s need for self-management in senior leadership, to free up that most precious resource we can bring to our team or organization: our time.

Now, to achieve that, it is vital that you are deliberate about how you spend your day.  Most people’s calendars only show the calls and meetings they attend, with the time in between being more or less randomly assigned to whatever comes up.

If you’re a manager, that’s a perfectly valid strategy.  After all, you are not really expected to be in full control of your time.  Your main job is to get stuff done – to complete certain tasks or to drive a process forward. Continuing in this way in a leadership role, however, could easily run you into trouble.

Not only will co-workers continue to draw on your resources.  As with any managerial role, whether you have an open door-policy that allows people to just walk in and consult with you on the fly, or the only thing that people can reach is your email inbox: your team’s natural need for guidance and feedback can quickly eat up whatever time you have left outside scheduled events in your calendar.

In addition, however, – and therein lies a difference to a purely managerial role –, great leaders recognize another, important part of their role that doesn’t involve scheduled or unscheduled managerial tasks.  Call it “executive time”, “time to think” or “creative session” – whatever label suits your style, a leader must find times and places to nourish the very soil on which vision, strategy and inspiration grows because leadership is a skill that can be learned. 

How do you get there?  Well, by deliberately and intelligently planning out your day.  For inspiration, take Elon Musk, for example.

It’s both a cliché and the source of a common misconception: the idea that the self-declared “Business magnate and investor” plans his days in 5 minute-intervals. So, what does that even mean?

If you think that Elon the Great Funky goes around planning a material portion of his life in 5 minute-units, you got it all wrong.  Rather, that story is really about two things:

First, let’s clear up what people get wrong about the “5 minute-intervals”.  That concept does not, in fact, reflect the idea of a succession of 5 minute-meetings, 5 minute-calls and 5 minute-memo reviews.  Rather, it’s about breaking away from default, pre-conceived notions of how long meetings, calls or other tasks should last.  Look at your own calendar right now and you will find that most of the scheduled events default to multiples of 30 minutes (that’s 30, 60, 90, etc).

By contrast, great leaders who optimize for executive time, know that by converting just six 30 or 60 minute-calendar entries into more disciplined meetings of around 15, 20 or 40 minutes, they can gain a full hour or more to live up to their leadership role.  And that’s what planning in 5 interval-interval really means.

Second, beyond the technicalities of event-scheduling, that story about Elon Musk should inspire leaders to be unconventional and challenge the norm on a broader level. You don’t have to get rid of your cell phone, but in order to maximize your leadership skills and become more productive, you should feel free to experiment around any work-related cultural norms. There’s no magic to this.  Try it with a few parameters you encounter in your work life, the length, content, location, participants or form of your meetings, for example.  Or the timing, form, audience and extent of communication within your team or organization.  Once you’ve deliberately done this a few times, you will see the difference and optimizing for leadership time in this way will become second nature.

Pinterest said it best: the job of a leader is not to create more followers, but to create more leaders.  That’s another way of saying: the race is over, you’ve won.  Once you are in a leadership role, the goal is not to cement your position, to celebrate your position in the hierarchy and to think how you can outmaneuver your co-workers.  If that ever was your game, it has to stop now.

Great leaders build great teams using their people management skills Without a strong team, you can’t achieve great things. To do this, you have to have the right people in leadership roles, and then develop your leadership team so that they perform at their highest level. The best leaders invest in their people — they’re constantly asking, “How are we doing?” and “What more do you need to be successful?” They recognize that the path to personal and professional growth is different for everyone, so they provide a variety of mentoring opportunities.

As a great people leader, you should:

Also, a great leader should always be developing and delegating responsibilities to the leadership team, allowing them to grow professionally and build their own teams. This is a symbiotic relationship. The leader gives the development opportunities, and the leadership team does the work to establish a strong team of their own.

The best leaders don’t just care about their own role; they care about the success of the entire leadership team. They realize that they will only be as good as the people they lead, and so they make it a priority to invest in their top talent and help others grow.

The most important part of being a leader is helping other people grow so that they can reach their true potential. Great leaders know this, and so they focus on developing their team members (and themselves) rather than just getting things done today or this week or this month.

Great leaders provide positive recognition and reinforcement every day. What does this mean? It means that when someone does something above and beyond, you bring it to their attention. It also means that when someone just “does their job,” and they do it well, you still bring it to their attention. In fact, when you’re trying to build a highly engaged team, you should be providing positive reinforcement for doing the right thing even more than pointing out problems with how things were done wrong.

Great people leaders are always looking for ways to recognize and reinforce positive behavior. That doesn’t necessarily mean giving out raises and bonuses, although those are certainly great ways to do it. Good leaders know that sometimes a simple “thanks” or “great job” can go a long way in making employees feel valued and engaged, especially if it’s done in front of their peers. This is also a great way to develop future leaders, because you’re teaching them how to give positive reinforcement, too.

A great leader makes a point of recognizing team members during the day. Even if it’s just a quick note saying thanks or a word of praise, it’s important to let people know they’re valued. If you’re not in the habit of doing this already, try to thank one employee every day for at least two weeks. You’ll see results almost immediately, and you’ll start to feel better about your leadership skills.

You need to be your most productive self! Your employees are counting on you, and they will be at their best when they see you at your best. For a people leader, as a good manager, time and attention are your two most precious resources. Both of them are in short supply. They are finite!

Time is our most valuable asset, yet we often waste it without even realizing it. We spend too much time on the wrong things, the unimportant and non-urgent tasks that don’t contribute to success. So whether it is managing emails, meetings or even focus time, managing your time well is so important. And what you spend your time on should be focused on the most important things that will help you achieve your goals. As a people leader, you need to become very good at managing your own time and attention well – prioritize what needs to get done and make sure that happens first!

You should focus on what matters most! If you want to be effective, you can’t get distracted by every little thing that comes your way. You need to have a clear vision for what you want to accomplish, and then make sure you put your time into things related to those goals.

Great people leaders have a vision, and they work collaboratively with their team to achieve it. To do so, they inspire their team to meet expectations, and then some. They listen before they talk. And they empower their people to build trust, confidence, and loyalty within the organization.

The three steps to be a great people leader:

1. Inspire.
2. Listen
3. Empower

One of the most important things you can do as a leader is differentiate between being a boss and being a leader. But semantics aside, as far as leaders and bosses go, we can sum it up by saying that you need to be able to talk the talk, and walk the walk! There are many times when you need to be one or the other, but oftentimes as people leaders we get stuck in being just one of those things. If we focus on just telling people what to do (the boss mentality), we miss out on so much potential with our teams.

What is the difference between leader and boss? Sure, there is a huge difference between “leader” and “boss”! In fact, going on with the theme of “seven”, there are at least 7 differences between a leader and a boss:

One of the most important things you can do as a leader is differentiate between being a boss and being a leader. But semantics aside, as far as leaders and bosses go, we can sum it up by saying that you need to be able to talk the talk, and walk the walk! There are many times when you need to be one or the other, but oftentimes as people leaders we get stuck in being just one of those things. If we focus on just telling people what to do (the boss mentality), we miss out on so much potential with our teams.

Are you a people leader? Be great at it by following this list of seven things that any great people leader should be doing on a daily basis. They may seem pretty simple, but they can make a huge difference in your business and in your team’s morale. So get to it—if you’re looking for a way to lead by example, start with these!

AllActivity helps you develop the “great people leader” in you! Whether you are an executive playing in a corporate arena, a manager managing direct reports in a small team, or startup entrepreneur trying to hit your SaaS nut—AllActivity’s guidance and wisdom can facilitate a successful business outcome. With AllActivity, managing people becomes not just easy but also fun! Check out Allactivity Academy.