Leadership is a facet of management:

I had lunch last week with a past peer in one of my corporate positions, and we had a discussion how one of our superiors had tried to “manage” a billion dollar company through a particularly difficult situation, when he should have used “leadership” instead.

Leadership is a facet of management:Leadership is just one of the many assets a successful manager must possess. Care must be taken in distinguishing between the two concepts. The main aim of a manager is to maximize the output of the organization through administrative implementation. To achieve this, managers must undertake the following functions:

 * organization

 * planning

 * staffing

 * directing

 * controlling

 

Leadership is just one important component of the directing function.  

A manager cannot just be a leader; he also needs formal authority to be effective. "For any quality initiative to take hold, senior management must be involved and act as a role model. This involvement cannot be delegated."

In some circumstances, leadership is not required. For example, self-motivated groups may not require a single leader and may find leaders dominating. The fact that a leader is not always required proves that leadership is...

Coach Michael Snedeker on How to Build a Successful TEAM…

How to Build a Successful TEAM…

Selecting the right people is just the beginning of building a successful team for your business. However, you cannot simply expect that your team alone will transform your business and take it to its next level of performance.

It is equally important to have the following six elements in place:

1. Strong Leadership:

Tom Landry, the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys, said "Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control."

Strong leadership requires creating a working environment that encourages the cooperation of your team members. By encouraging and inspiring them, they in turn, will inspire and encourage the customers.

The goal of strong leadership is to maximize the "discretionary effort" that team members provide to meet team or company goals. That's the extra effort people provide, if they want to. Too often employees will do just what they have to do in order to get by.

In his best-selling business book Good to Great, author Jim Collins identifies common leadership elements that top performing organizations have in place to allow them to tap into this wealth of discretionary effort.

The most important element is what Collins calls "Level 5 Leadership." While these leaders have the ability to motivate their teams to pursue a clear and compelling vision and generate higher performance, they also demonstrate a unique blend of personal humility and professional will as they lead from the front to create the discretionary effort from all team members.

Another important element is the "the window and the mirror" concept to both protect and energize the leader's team. When things are going well, “Level 5” leaders look out the "window" and credit their team for the success; when things are going poorly they look in the "mirror" and take the responsibility for poor performance.

2. Common Goals:

Teams need to understand what their common 

business goals are and those goals need to supersede all individual goals. Sports teams provide an excellent example of this concept.

If the team understands that a common goal is to win the championship, then it will be easier for all team members to focus and concentrate on the team goal. If one or more team members are focused on individual goals, such as winning the scoring title, the performance of the entire team can be negatively affected.

Business is similar in this respect. If the salesperson is just focused on bringing in orders regardless of the cost to produce and ship that order, the common goal of maximizing profit will be at risk.

As people do what they are recognized and rewarded for, it is critical that the recognition and reward structure for individuals and for teams is consistent with the company's common goals.

Setting common goals for the business always starts with the owner's vision. This must be regarded as the central aim and leaders must enlist the support of all team members to inspire them to do the things that they have to do.

3. Rules of the Game:   

Employees also need to understand the rules that govern the way the owner conducts the business. The rules must be written down and made available to them.

If the owner doesn't provide employees with the "rules of the game" they will go outside the boundaries.



The process of setting the rules of the game will include specifying company culture and values as well as ensuring that individual roles and responsibilities are defined with positional contracts, and operations and procedures manuals.

Without providing defined rules including the company's culture, the owner or manager will need to rely on policing to run the business. Also, if the owner doesn't establish the culture, the employees will create a de facto culture that may not be to the owner's liking or in the best interests of the company.

4. Action Plan:

A key element for a winning team is a strong action plan that is spelled out in clear and unambiguous terms to all members of the team. While the common goals referred to above, help identify what the owner and the business want to do, the action plan identifies how the goals will be achieved. A good action plan will assign ownership of tasks, identify what resources are required, set timelines for when tasks should be completed, and provide measurement details of the current status of the tasks over the defined time-periods.



5. Support Risk-Taking:

Business is all about risk and reward. To make the business grow, a leader must be willing to support prudent risk-taking by the team. If the owner doesn't allow risk-taking, the business will lag behind market leaders. The level of risk-taking is usually related to the company's culture.

6. 100 percent Inclusion and Involvement:

The art of inclusion is driven by communication to all members of the team. By providing 100 percent inclusion, the owner can then require 100 percent involvement as an expectation of the organization's culture.

This will lead to trust and a comfort level by the owner to delegate responsibilities.

Stop procrastinate. The time is now.

Let me guess.You should be doing something else rather than reading this article. But due to some unknown force of nature, you decided to procrastinate by reading an article about how to hack procrastination. You deserve a pat on the back.Fortunately, procrastination is not a disease. It’s just a mindset that can be changed, however, here are some reminders you need to consider for these hacks to really work.First, you need to acknowledge that procrastinating is an unhealthy habit. Not only you’re prioritizing unimportant things, basically, nothing gets done.

Second, your commitment to change is very important. You should be physically, emotionally, and mentally determined to change this habit. If not, then you’ll just succumb to the tempting lure of doing other things rather than your tasks or chores.Here are some tips to improve productivity and keep yourself from procrastinating at work:When we are productive, we efficiently finish various tasks and achieve better results. However, there are many bad habits that are killing our productivity, yet we don’t recognize them at all. In order to improve your productivity, you have to give up these bad habits.

After a busy working day, everyone tends to sit in front of the TV, then move to the bedroom and continue watching TV. Many people think it relaxes them. However, it just makes them more tired. Sometimes, you don’t even realize how much time has passed when watching TV shows, and you end up falling asleep very late at night instead of falling asleep immediately. Get the TV out of your bedroom and soon you’ll notice that you sleep better and longer, and you feel fresh when you wake up. Moreover, being positive and fresh in the morning will certainly boost your productivity at work. Instead of watching TV shows, use the time before you fall asleep to evaluate your day and have intimate conversation with your partner. You can also focus on self-improvement by signing up to an online college where you can improve yourself and learn how to become more productive and efficient in your field of work. Turn off TV, bring education and intimacy in your home.

Social networks are great for staying in touch with family and friends. However, when chatting, posting, sharing, and looking at various funny photos, we lose the sense of time and waste hours just scrolling through pages. Usually, before we fall asleep, we decide to check if there is something new in the news feed and end up falling asleep very late at night. You then feel tired in the morning and incapable of doing anything that demands focus and hard work.Also, while working, we get interrupted all the time by the notifications that someone posted something or commented on our status update. You look at the notification and, instead of working, you get lost in the world of social networks. You become less focused on work and less productive. When at work, turn off the notifications and don’t log in. Instead of spending your free time on social networks, if you have something to share and want to do something productive you can learn how you can create a blog and escape your daily routine, while providing entertainment and information to others at the same time.People neglect physical activity because of their busy schedules, but let’s face it – we all have 20 minutes per day to spend working out. Before you go to work or when you get back, you can go hiking or jogging for 20 minutes. It is not much, but your body and mind will definitely benefit from it. If there is no place for jogging around your home, you can do simple exercises in your living room. If you have more time, you can take some yoga classes, which will help you not only to be physically active and fit, but also to become more productive and focused. When working out, you won’t feel any back pain caused by stress and sitting all day. You will definitely feel better and healthier, which will contribute to being more productive during the whole day

We are all proud when we say that we are multitasking, and some even consider it a necessary skill of successful people. However, it is not a virtue and is slowly killing your productivity. When you multitask, you may be concentrated and focused, but that doesn’t mean that you are focused on every task equally. Moreover, not every task will be finished on time, and the results won’t be so good.Getting fully focused on one task at a time will certainly bring you better results, because you will be able to perform them without distractions. If you are used to multitasking, try organizing yourself and doing one task at a time, and then compare the results. You might be surprised.

A person who is dedicated to their work always strives for perfection. However, some people are never satisfied with their work, which leaves them with unfinished work and a lot of stress. When striving for perfection, you may start over-analyzing things and focusing on tiny details. Being detail-oriented is a virtue, but if you are paying attention to every little detail, you are losing a lot of time on unimportant little tasks. In this way, your productivity decreases and you become exhausted. Put effort into the task and be detail-oriented, but don’t waste time, talent, and effort on the things that don’t affect the outcome of the task.

Spontaneity should be present in our lives and not everything should be predictable. But when it comes to work management, we should organize our time well. When you are going with the flow, the work just keeps piling up. A chaotic schedule can lead only to decreased productivity, which usually results in failure.Learn how to organize your time and make a good working plan in order to improve productivity and the chances of success. Moreover, the key to success and being productive is to determine both short-term and long-term goals.It is impossible to be productive and focused all day. The times when someone will be productive depend on the individual. Some people are productive in the morning, some in the afternoon and some are night owls.  Find out when you are most productive and organize your schedule accordingly

.Many people think that they can save a lot of money by doing everything themselves, but they are wrong. They are losing money and time: instead of working on demanding tasks, they get lost in doing unimportant things that only waste their time. Smaller tasks should be outsourced, since there is no need for you to put effort into completing them. Outsourcing will pay off, and you will be able to finish important tasks successfully and on time.

Since we all want to complete some tasks successfully, we tend to postpone finishing them, because we need some time to think about how to get the best results. This always leads to procrastination, which leads to decreased productivity. If you want to be productive, you should trust your instincts, talent, and knowledge, and don’t question your success. Don’t let your virtue, to achieve the best possible results, destroy you.

Learn how to deal with stressful situations, because they are negatively affecting your health, mood, and productivity. Negative feelings evoke the unwillingness to perform certain tasks, and you end up doing them unsuccessfully. The recipe is simple – just be happy. Avoid stressful situations and learn how to cope with them. Find a way to get rid of negative emotions and stress and gain some positive energy. When you are happy, you can do everything with little effort. You will notice that 

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