Today we’re talking about the 10 habits that highly successful leaders do without thinking. 

You know those people… When everything is overwhelming and stressful, they seem to be confident, calm and completely put together and on top of things.

That CAN be you too… you just have to grab hold of these top ten leadership habits.

Number 1: Listen more than you speak

And 

Number 2: Seek first to understand then be understood. (Thank you Stephen Covey.)

Leadership is about communication. Communicating ideas, priorities, decisions. 

And if ever anyone asks “How can we communicate better?” The answer is almost always: Listen more. 

The first part in supporting and helping someone on your team, is knowing what’s really bothering them. 

The first part in getting your message across is understanding the minds of your audience. 

Stephen Covey was bang on with his habit “Seek first to understand, then be understood.”

To put this into practice start EVERY conversation with “What do YOU think about it?”

When you’re the leader, don’t fall into the trap of saying what you think first. Turn it around. Always ask their opinions before telling them yours.

Number 3: Remember that your team are PEOPLE with lives and complications. Not robots building widgets for you. 

Yes. Your team has to deliver their work, complete the tasks and hit the deadlines.

But… perhaps more so now than ever… 

Life is complicated. More and more families are dual income and NEED to be dual income to make ends meet. Caring responsibilities are more integral to many more working lives. 

The more your people feel that you see them as human beings, understand they have lives beyond their nine to fives, and give them whatever support you can in dealing with the demands of those lives… The more they will respect and trust you. 

People often say “respect and trust are EARNED”. But the truth is, they almost always need to be GIVEN first. 

If you want someone to trust you as a leader… Trust them. 

If you want someone to respect you as a leader… Respect them. 

Respect the fact that their lives are messy. Trust the fact that they will juggle things appropriately and not neglect their work. 

Number 4: Remember that your team don’t work for you. You work for THEM!

This is a mind flip I got from the TV show NCIS. The US Secretary of the Navy said… “The 300,000 people in the US Navy that I work for… expect me to behave properly!”

The 300,000 people that I work for. 

Your job as a leader is to fight for your team. Get them the resources THEY need. Take decisions in THEIR best interests. Make THEIR world a little better. 

They don’t work for you. You work for them. 

Number 5: Prioritise. 

Find what REALLY matters and focus on it relentlessly. 

This is one of the most important things you have to do as a leader. I could talk about it for hours. But let’s just do three reasons. 

First: The 80:20 rule. 80% of your impact comes from just 20% of what you do. So you HAVE to make sure you identify that 20% and make time to work on it. That’s what prioritising is!! Get it wrong… and you’ll miss out on 80% of your impact. 

Second: In all of our roles these days, but especially in leadership roles, there’s stuff coming at you all the time. Your customers, your team and your boss will pour work at you 24 hours a day. It can be completely overwhelming. The only way to keep your head above water is to prioritise. 

And third: If you don’t prioritise effectively, that torrent of overwhelming workload, leads to stress and burnout. When you ARE prioritising properly, your stress goes down, because you KNOW you’re getting the most important things done. 

If you want to be a better leader… prioritise learning to prioritise!

Number 6: Repeat yourself. 

Number 7: Repeat yourself. 

Messages only sink in when they’re heard over and over again. 

Just because you announced something in the weekly newsletter, doesn’t mean everyone read it, understood it, internalised it and is now acting on it. 

The 777 rule says: To get a message to sink in you have to say it seven times in seven ways as if you’re speaking to a seven year old. Not because we think our colleagues are children. But because in the noise and distraction of emails, social media and just the complexity of life… the only messages that have a chance of sinking in are the ones that are really clear and simple..

Number 8: Tailor what you say to your audience. 

The things you say to marketing will be different to the things you say to catering. 

The discussion points for a meeting with senior senior managers will be different to the ones for a conversation with junior administrators. 

Why? Because different groups,and different individuals care about different things!! 

Right at the beginning of this I said: Listen more, and seek first to understand.

One reason for doing that is to help tailor what we say to different audiences. Whatever the issue of the day, when we understand where people are coming from, we have a better chance of USEFUL discussion. 

And this tailoring what you say to your audience has a big special case that is a thing on it’s own.

Number 9: TRANSLATE between your team and management. 

You sit between them. You have to talk both languages. 

My friend Tammy over at On The Level Leadership once told me that early in her career she felt frustrated she wasn’t getting “recognised” and brought forward for promotion into the higher leadership levels. 

But she realised that she was always coming at things from her team’s perspective. Understanding them. Fighting for them. 

But it was when she really started understanding the management/corporate perspective, bringing that to her team as powerfully as she took her team’s views to management, that the higher-ups started to pay attention. And she started to get real traction in her leadership journey.

But then… After doing all that…

Number 10: Rest and recover. 

Leadership is hard. Everything is your responsibility. Everything is your fault. Everything ends up on you. 

And when things are so busy it’s really easy to fall into the trap of working longer and longer hours, pushing aside the gym, or your music night, or storytime with the kids… 

When things are stressful, the first things we give up are the things that help us deal with the stress. Don’t make that mistake.

As a leader you HAVE to rest and recover. Especially when things are difficult or stressful. You have to keep YOUR head in the game and not push yourself to the point of breakdown and burnout.

It’s OK to hold onto your life. In fact… It’s necessary.