2 Things You Should Keep in Check as a Manager

I talk a lot about time management and focusing on the few things that create the most value for your business quite often here and with my business coaching clients. And for the majority of leaders those two areas will set them up for growth, but there are two more areas that I believe make a world of difference not only in their ability to lead their team, but also to scale and handle growth down the road. So, today I wanted to discuss the two things that I think you should keep in check as a manager or leader.

Want 36 FREE Tools to grow your business and get your life back? Click here to find out more!

Becoming a Role Model

The two areas that I want to discuss have to do with your behaviors as a leader. Your team looks to you for guidance in how to deal with difficult and nuanced situations, and your behavior will either show them the proper way to deal with things in your absence or they will show them what not to do. The choice is yours. And this will become a bigger issue down the road when you try to scale or grow your business. Being able to keep tabs on every decision and every employee behavior becomes virtually impossible, so creating a culture of good behaviors is key to being able to grow an owner independent business down the road.

Growth Mindset

The first area you want to keep in check has to do with your mindset.  Specifically, how are you looking at and behaving in the day to day?  Are you focusing on just working hard, or are you focusing on doing those fewer things that have a bigger impact?  And not just your behavior; where are you focusing with your staff?  If you model a growth mindset and only take on tasks or projects that will benefit the company, your team will start to take notice and begin doing the same. If you value your team’s growth mindset, and allow them to help prioritize tasks and projects that will move the needle, they will do the same for those that they manage. And you will soon have a company-wide growth mindset that will allow you to scale with ease.

Emotional intelligence

Another area you want to keep in check is your emotional intelligence level. This is what you do when you’re stressed, scared, excited, or triggered.  When you get this emotional behavior as a manager, if we can’t deal with that ourselves well enough by having enough emotional intelligence, it’s going to strongly and negatively impact the rest of your team.  But if you can model good behavior others will follow. So, choose your actions wisely and decide how best you want to model behaviors when things go south. How you lead during times of stress or turmoil is what really makes a leader a leader, so practice and show emotional intelligence to your team. It’s ok to be vulnerable and admit when something didn’t work the way you intended, but as long as you grow and learn from the experience and handle it in a mature manner your team will follow suit.