9 Things Great Leaders Say Every Day #blindpost

This is a blindpost suggested to me by my friend, @cubanx. It’s based on the Inc. article, 9 Things Great Leaders Say Every Day. As is customary with blindposts, I read the title of the article and wrote my version of it without reading the original article first. Writing this particular list made me realize that I need to be better at saying these things on a daily basis.

9 Things Great Leaders Say Every Day

“How can I help?”

Once a leader has put a team in place, its critical that they let the team do their job. At that point, its more important for the leader to do everything he/she can to help the team be successful. That might mean removing obstacles, giving advice, or staying out of the way.

“You’re doing a great job today.”

A leader can never say this enough. Even though I feel this way all the time, I don’t say it enough and its important for people to know they’re doing a great job. I think as a leader you can forget to say this because you’re used to not hearing it (often times a leader has no one above them to tell them this).

“Why?”

A good leader is inquisitive on a daily basis. Asking the simple question, “Why?”, can remind the team that you’re interested in what they’re working on and can help you understand their thought process and progress. It’s also a great way to get the real answer to, “How can I help?”.

“Making mistakes and failing is ok, as long as we learn from them and become stronger.”

A culture of embracing failure starts from the top. It needs to be part of the culture and reinforced by the leader that its ok to take risks and fail, as long as you do so quickly.

“I don’t know everything.”

Good leaders are humble and admit what they don’t know. Bad leaders think everyone expects them to know all the answers and they let their ego get in the way of honest communication.

“What can I do today to move the company forward?”

Obviously something a leader would say to herself rather than out loud, but a question that needs to be asked on a daily basis. If a leader is too busy to ask that question – which is often the case with leaders I run in to – then they aren’t going to be able to effectively navigate the company forward.

“What would you do?”

Instead of just trying to solve the problem, a leader should listen to the team member and ask them how they would solve the problem. This helps them grow in confidence and in most cases, they are better equipped to answer the question than the leader. And I’ve found, they almost always make the right call.

“Let me put that into perspective.”

I find that its important for a leader to help the team members understand how their work impacts the “big picture”.

“That meeting is too long. -OR- That meeting should not have even happened.”

This is more of a specific statement, but helping the team with time management is key for a leader. And meetings are the biggest detractor of actual work being done. The larger a company gets, the more meetings there are, the longer those meetings are and the more people that get sucked into them. It’s a pet peeve of mine: Ways to properly run a meeting (if you can’t run from the meeting)

~ if you liked this blindpost, here are more you can check out. And a handful of my friends will suggest blindposts for me to write from time to time, please feel free to do that too!