Description:
Dr. Larry is a mental health professional and business leadership trainer of many years. Check out our Executive Leadership site for a schedule of his open trainings, as well as to consider booking a training for your company or organization.
Effective leaders are expected to be of good character. Ask any ten people what "character" means and you will hear ten different answers. That is because good character is a composite of many qualities in a person. Honesty is certainly one of those qualities.
How does honesty play out in the business setting? Take as a given that habitual thieves, criminals, and liars are not leadership material. Even putting morality aside in the discussion, it is simply bad business for the boss to be crooked: bad business in that it exposes the company to liability, it breeds mistrust and deceit by way of response, it gives the company a bad reputation, and it destroys employee morale.
So how does the quality of honesty come into play in business leadership? The easiest way to say it is that the leader needs to be a straight shooter: communicate clearly and accurately. Communication can be spoken or written. If you are the leader you will want those you l
Business leadership requires vision, character and ability.
This year is one of those during which Americans decide who should lead the nation. By day and by night we are hearing and seeing leadership qualities in political candidates being examined, discussed, dissected, compared and evaluated.
America has always romanticized leadership. We often equate heroism with leaders, and bravery with leadership. Great leaders become our heroes and we assume heroic qualities make for good leaders. We do love great leaders!
Business leaders know that good leadership in business is rarely glamorous or heroic. It has much more to do with fundamentals and basics. What are the fundamentals of good leadership?
The leader needs to have a vision and believe in the vision, whether that vision comes from the leader or someone else. There is no point in leading if there is no journey and no goal towards which those led are being directed. Lacking
February, March and April are hard times. Most people would identify hard times with economic matters: recessions are hard times; high unemployment and tight credit make for hard times; high interest rates or burdensome taxation, uncertainty about the economy and instability in energy supplies constitute hard times. All of this is true enough. But year in and year out the late winter and early weeks of spring are a hard time due to weather.
People all over our country every year go through the same weather cycle: a time of instability, violence, danger and damage from weather events. The blizzards are ferocious. The twisters are intense. Mountain winds can rage at one hundred miles an hour. Grass fires are a huge danger. Flooding is always an imminent danger. Because these weather events are so dramatic they become news. Nearly every day we see one or more weather disasters going on somewhere. High water, high snow drifts, demolished buildings, homeless survivors,
In the corporate food chain the higher up one climbs the more lonely it becomes. At the very top life can be lonely. “Lonely” not so much in the sense of not being around people. Indeed, the CEO, president and chairman will find themselves constantly around people. Everybody wants to communicate to them.Access to Number One is a peak experience for the average person, a badge of honor, something about which to brag.
Life at the top and near the top is lonely in the sense that there are no peers. When a person of power has no equal they have become isolated from anyone to be real with day in and day out. In the corporate world and in the organization world this means that all the interactions with people become roles to play. Oftentimes the roles are forced upon top management and often enough are not even accurate.
New Year's Day is a time for good resolutions. We have all had time to eat too much and not be at work. We have been reminded about all the things we should have done differently during the last year. Out pops a good resolution, sometimes several good resolutions, sometimes a whole list.
Far be it from this writer to bad-mouth good resolutions.
But I come in praise of good routines. For those who are serious to improve the business they manage, look to your routines as the place for improvement that will last. Routines are habits. Once established, they simply become the way we do things, automatic, known to all, predictable - and enduring. Here are some examples.
Cash flow: the first thing you do each morning as the manager is to check the cash flow. How much money is available in checking, how much credit is available and how much will you need today and the rest of the week? Nobody is to disturb the manager during this very short but importa
The best-kept secret of our times is that the Christmas holidays are filled with extreme stress. There is a veneer of good cheer, anticipation and good will towards all. The children are told this is the happiest time of the year and of course in some ways it truly is a happy time. Of late the veneer is wearing perilously thin.
In addition to some of the largest and most destructive winter storms on record (this seems to happen every winter anyway) the economy hangs in the balance, people hate Congress, the presidential candidates are squeezing out Santa because of the early primaries and crazed gunmen seem to be bent on killing worshippers who come out of church. The nation is bickering over war, health care and national policies while a very large number of families slide deeper and deeper into poverty and the whole world threatens to go up in flames.
As the novelist put it long ago, these are the best of times and the worst of times. It has been thus at Christm
Managers often react to the mention of business plans the same way they react to mention of tax returns: a headache. The headache comes for two reasons.
First, in order to have a good business plan the manager must do a great deal of detailed research and number-crunching. This is necessary in order to determine what it will cost to make the product or provide the service. What will it cost to ship in any needed components and to ship or deliver the finished product? What difference will it make whether the orders and sales are single item or volume?
Factors in considering overhead include such things as the amount and cost of advertising, marketing, materials, labor, interest, insurance, breakage, storage, taxes, warranty and packaging.
Second, each funding source has its own business plan format. No matter how a given business finalizes the business plan it will not likely be right for the bank or inve
As the holiday season approaches each year bosses and managers often think about ways to show appreciation for those who work for them, as well as to customers, vendors and associates.
The best way to show appreciation is to do right by all the people related to your business, all year long. There are many ways for the manager to do right by his or her people, far too many for any one list. Here are some bedrock ways, however. As a manager you will discover that observing these fundamental ways of treating people well brings you and them a reduction in stress. Violate these basically decent and morally right standards and everybody's stress will rise, including your own. Observe them and stress levels will drop.
Be honest and fair. Pay your workers and vendors what you agree to pay them. Pay on time. Do not "nickle and dime" anybody. Do not cut corners when it comes to compensation for hours worked, overtime or compensatio
Stress in the business world is like dandelions in the front lawn: it's everywhere. Burnout is a buzzword for too much stress over too long a period of time that finally renders people ineffective, disgusted, exhausted or disillusioned with their work.
There are distinctive kinds of burnout. Recognizing these patterns early on provides one of the avenues for countering the stress and heading off the train wreck. Make no mistake, when anyone burns out on his or her job it is a train wreck! Two of the most prevalent forms of burnout in business are what is known as "Leaving Forever" and "Trapped in a Golden Cage".
Leave Forever
This type of burnout comes from too much enthusiasm and idealism. It is common but not exclusive in the "people and helping" businesses such as healthcare, education, recreation, credit management, home repair, dining, travel, beauty, real estate, golf course
One way of describing the small business manager's typical day: organized chaos.
In clinical terms, however, it would be more accurate to say that for much of the time managing small business involves a great many frustrating episodes occurring among people who may also be angry because of other events and relationships not related to the workplace.
Consider the many daily events and situations that must be dealt with but cannot be controlled:
phone calls from everyone in North America: solicitations, charitable causes, customers, wrong numbers, vendors, employees, and family members.
persons walking in with no warning and no appointment.
complaints.
workers who arrive late or need to leave early.
production and delivery snafus.
reports that are overdue.
requests for meetings.
bills waiting for your attention and checks to be signed.
