Step Out and Step Up In Your Leadership

Economic value is created by human value in any company. People drive the engine of every company, not matter what the product. As a leader, you must realize that employees are looking for more than just success they are looking for significance. Your role as a leader is to create a culture of significance for those working with you. When you create a culture where your ideas and the contributions of others have value, you increase your ability to succeed in the marketplace.

Keeping Emotions in the Workplace

Often employees are working to keep their emotions in check at work. Certainly, as a leader you do not want to spend your day in overwhelming emotional roller coaster, but having emotional skills will step up your leadership. Using our emotions instead of our emotions using us up – our emotions are a resource for our work and for your team. As a leader, saying yes to the emotional needs of your team creates a pathway for emotions becoming fuel for your working together, rather than a stopping point.

Put People Before Paper

The daily tasks can get all of us on a hamster wheel of endless details. We are emotional beings, even at work, though our emotions are in the background. When you see people taking time to talk by the water cooler or have a coffee together, remember that they are creating relationships that will strengthen their ability to work together, thus creating a strong workforce. A leader who steps out and finds ways of encouraging meaningful conversations with coworkers empowers their team to feeling significant in their work. Significance leads to success.

One bit of advice that I read recently told job seekers to look for work in which the most mundane and frustrating tasks of the daily job bothered them the least. Essentially, this advice echoes a sentiment I have said over and over again – find something you enjoy doing and your enjoyment will override the mundane tasks that all of us must accomplish to move forward. As a leader, you can step up by making the tasks a part of the work day, while making the job – the heart of the work, the value of the work, the reason for the work – the focus of your team.

When you bring together the head and the heart of your team, you step up and step out in your leadership. By creating a culture of significance you increase the value of the individuals around you and you increase the value of your work.