With just a few days left in the first half of this year, it's time to check in to see how we're doing with our New Year's Resolutions for 2018.
Congratulations on everything you've accomplished so far. And, if you are still seeking resolutions for this year, perhaps write down (and start working on) five to ten from the following list of ideal resolutions for leaders:
- Don't micromanage
- Don't be a bottleneck
- Focus on outcomes, not minutiae
- Build trust with your colleagues before a crisis comes
- Assess your company's strengths and weaknesses at all times
- Conduct annual risk reviews
- Be courageous, quick and fair
- Talk more about values more than rules
- Reward how a performance is achieved and not only the performance
- Constantly challenge your team to do better
- Celebrate your employees' successes, not your own
- Err on the side of taking action
- Communicate clearly and often
- Be visible
- Eliminate the cause of a mistake
- View every problem as an opportunity to grow
- Summarize group consensus after each decision point during a meeting
- Praise when compliments are earned
- Be decisive
- Say “thank you” and sincerely mean it
- Send written thank you notes
- Listen carefully and don't multi-task while listening
- Teach something new to your team
- Show respect for all team members
- Follow through when you promise to do something
- Allow prudent autonomy
- Respond to questions quickly and fully
- Return e-mails and phone calls promptly
- Give credit where credit is due
- Take an interest in your employees and their personal milestone events
- Mix praise with constructive feedback for how to make improvement
- Learn the names of your team members even if your team numbers in the hundreds
- Foster mutual commitment
- Admit your mistakes
- Remove nonperformers
- Give feedback in a timely manner and make it individualized and specific
- Hire to complement, not to duplicate
- Volunteer within your community and allow your employees to volunteer
- Promote excellent customer service both internally and externally
- Show trust
- Encourage peer coaching
- Encourage individualism and welcome input
- Share third-party compliments about your employees with your employees
- Be willing to change your decisions
- Be a good role model
- Be humble
- Explain each person's relevance
- End every meeting with a follow-up To Do list
- Explain the process and the reason for the decisions you make
- Read leadership books to learn
- Set clear goals and objectives
- Reward the doers
- Know yourself
- Use job descriptions
- Encourage personal growth and promote training, mentoring and external education
- Share bad news, not only good news
- Start meetings on time
- Discipline in private
- Seek guidance when you don't have the answer
- Tailor your motivation techniques
- Support mentoring – both informal and formal mentoring
- Don't interrupt
- Ask questions to clarify
- Don't delay tough conversations
- Have an open door policy
- Dig deep within your organization for ideas on how to improve processes, policies and procedures
- Do annual written performance appraisals
- Insist on realism
- Explain how a change will impact employees' feelings before, during and after the change is implemented
- Have face-to-face interaction as often as possible
