3 Must-have leadership skills

Now more than ever, your business will benefit from your ability to provide a vision, operate within ethic standards and be decisive. These principles will be the glue that holds your business together during challenging times.

Leadership is a basic and essential quality that is paramount to the success of your company. It’s is a critical management skill that is often taken lightly and considered a by-product of your efforts rather than a calculated discipline. Your skills in motivating and influencing others toward a common goal may be more important in today’s business environment than ever before.

Effective leadership can be achieved through numerous methods and by most anyone with the desire to do so. In other words, your approach can be as creative or as basic as you want to make it and can be achieved by employees at all levels. Even though the methods or the messenger may vary, three basic principles are found in good leadership: Having a vision, being ethical and being decisive.

Have a Vision
Your vision must be something that your staff can identify with and something that guides your business. It is important that your vision is not competitive with your core ideology, and that you are fully committed to it. Your employees are motivated by the mental image they see for the future of your business. For some, the mere fact that you always stand for great workmanship is an acceptable vision. Others want to know that your goal is to dominate your local market.

For example, if you’re a residential maintenance contractor, your vision may be to associate yourself with the best, most exciting and dynamic projects in your market. Your staff will feed off this goal, and it will become a leadership tool. Alternatively, other contractors may project a vision that illustrates how they will dominate their market while offering employee advancement and other opportunities appealing to their staff. You must determine why your company exists and what it stands for.

Sometimes new business owners go through an initial stage where they are excited to get to work and excited about the prospects of their enterprise. New business owners tend to be excited to meet clients and excited about their projects. As the newness wears off, your business life can become a grind and less fulfilling. This is where having a strong vision comes into play. Your vision guides you through the way you approach your day-to-day activities and provides you with a core ideology. Each decision you make aligns with the vision you set out to accomplish. A strong vision will focus your business on what is important and focus your energies.

To be effective your vision should be simple, understood and serve the needs of your customer. Have fun with your vision. Make it inspiring and something you have passion for.

Be Ethical
Every business must have core values that it stands for or principles that keep it grounded. Without these core values businesses are unable to navigate and make sound decisions. Business owners must make principled decisions about how they approach their customers, staff and vendors on a daily basis. You must know what really matters and what you stand for. This earns the respect of your fellow workers and creates a path for leadership.

Mission statements are often the treasure chest that holds the core values that you stand for. But as an individual, what really matters to you? Your staff will examine this and want to be led by individuals who care about them, their success and their well being while making them feel good about their accomplishments. Of course your staff works for a paycheck, but the intangibles that are provided through solid leadership will keep employees committed to you and will encourage a meaningful and fulfilling work environment.

Your employees watch, listen and learn. Your commitment to a strong moral compass means something to them and creates trust in you as a leader. Without trust, you don’t have respect. Employees must respect you in order for them to follow you.

Be Decisive
Trust what you stand for and the core values that guide you. Strive to hold true to your core ideology. Use your values to guide you in making ethical decisions in a decisive manner. This is not to say that you make hasty decisions. Good decisions generally take input and involvement from others. In fact the process you use to make decisions can be critical elements to the success and effectiveness of your leadership.

For example, a customer may ask you if it’s possible to complete their work by the 10th of next month. This may be an ambitious request, and it would be beneficial for you to gather your staff and seek their input as to your company’s ability to meet this schedule. With the input of your team you listen to each point of view, digest the information and chart a path that allows you to achieve your goal of meeting your customer’s request and completing the work by the 10th of next month.

Once you make this commitment, you don’t waiver and you make the commitment to your staff that you will provide the resources and labor necessary to make this effort happen. For your company to be successful your staff must have confidence in you and respect your decision making ability.

Businesses with a sound moral compass and a clear vision tend to make decisions that provide long-term benefits and develop strong reputations. Superior leaders in the workplace communicate what they stand for and what they expect to achieve. Once you put these principles into place and lead your business, look at leadership in terms of leading as an individual and leading as a team.


Conclusion
Remember: Why follow when you can lead? Be bold, be prepared, be positive, be eager to learn and be communicative and you will become a solid leader for your business.

Superior leaders in the workplace communicate what they stand for and what they expect to achieve. They know that the word we leads your staff and the word I can be divisive.

Wrap these qualities inside an inspiring vision, strong ethics and solid decision making, and you will find no trouble leading your staff and accomplishing your business objectives.

The author is a past president of the California Landscape Contractors Association.