A lot of leaders who lack self-awareness are great at bossing their employees around but less adept at helping them succeed. Self-aware leaders understand that helping is different from directing because it focuses on what you can do to support your employees so they can thrive and excel instead of forcing them to complete tasks. The standard leadership model is like sports coaching, where you talk at people and push them to do something, whether they want to or not, rather than finding ways to have them motivate and educate themselves from within.
Helping is a valuable tool to improve staff morale, increase productivity, build stronger teams and promote excellent workplace communication. You can delegate more effectively and give your staff the opportunity to demonstrate what they can do. Here are some tips you can use to begin being more self-aware and helping instead of giving orders:
- Offer educational opportunities.
- Praise the things they do well.
- Support employee skills and talents.
- Don’t discipline, help people learn from their experiences.
- Let employees have independence.
- Give employees decision-making ability.
- Use employees’ ideas.
- Allow various points of view and approaches.
- Brainstorm.
- Listen to employees.
- Problem-solve collaboratively when appropriate.
- Help employees find their own solutions.
- Direct less.
- Meet regularly to listen to employee feedback.
- Help people keep growing and advancing.
Self-aware leaders know that, when their employees feel their skills and abilities are being recognized and utilized, the organization benefits. By helping instead of bossing, you get to create a happy workplace environment which, in turn, reduces turnover, hiring costs, morale problems and other glitches.
Helping is an ongoing process that encourages employees to learn and grow. When you help someone, you move from directing to encouraging them to succeed based on their own interests, talents, and abilities. What will you do to increase self-awareness, boss less, and help more?
Cheers,
Guy