What Is Leadership and Management?

What Is Leadership and Management?

How do you become a good leader, and what does it look like to be a good leader while you’re managing a team of people in the workplace? That’s a big question, but it starts with something very important.

Forbes describes some things that must be in place for a good manager, which we already talk about like honesty, integrity, confidence, inspiration, passion (a big one now that the workforce is largely dominated with millennials who’ll see right past you if you’re not being genuine or authentic with your emotions), clear communication, and developing accountability in your workers.

Each of these attributes are certainly present in some combination or another with good leaders, but before you can act on any of that effectively one thing must be done.

Keep Your Emotions In Check

Control your emotions. As a leader you must have the ability to control your emotions, because if you can’t you will have a hard time being a clear communicator, and it will be difficult to act genuinely in front of your employees. When you’re wrapped up with outside influences that may be affecting your day in the office, it can prove near impossible to focus on all of those attributes of good leadership.

Our emotional fitness as leaders has the power to forge great cultures, families, and communities; or utterly destroy them. - Myles Adcox

Myles is a director of leadership for the OnSite retreat, and is extremely intelligent, making tremendous positive impact on a number of companies throughout his career. One of the things he teaches is precisely this idea of controlling your emotions as a vehicle towards great leadership.

Your employees shouldn’t necessarily know what your morning, day, or weekend was like. When you’re frustrated, if you had a hard time getting the kids ready for school, or if you didn’t have a good night’s sleep, it shouldn’t be apparent to your team. Going into the office, no one should be able to say “the boss is in a bad mood today”.

Be a rock, and a source of positive emotion. If you want to foster positive emotions within your team, you’ll need to take hold of yours first. If you let it slip, you can cause unintended destructive impact to your team, and your company.

Maybe your employees will become scared to approach you, so they don’t come forward with something important to speak with you about— or worse, they had a great idea that could propel the company into the future... but they’re fearful in chatting with you because you couldn’t control your emotions that day.

Only Be Angry on Purpose.

Don’t just focus on outside factors in your life, but also control your emotions when things go poorly in the office too. When something happens, somebody says something, does something, never be the person that response by slamming your phone against the receiver, or yelling obscenities in a reactionary way.

Only be angry when you aim to use it as a tool, to motivate a positively motivate your team. It should never be an emotion that’s deployed in response to an action.

This Week’s Take Away

You cannot come into the office letting everyone know what type of day you’ve had. So, create and develop a procedure unique to you that ensures your emotions are under control. This can be as simple as a prayer, or reviewing motivational quotes... or reading a book and meditation. This needs to become a ritual, that you do every morning before you head into the office, so when you walk though those doors you’re on your game and your rock solid.