Leadership and Self-regulation: The Importance Now More Than Ever

Since last March, working at home has become a norm. Many companies have implemented remote work policies, asking employees to work at home to protect themselves in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

And as the prospects of heading back to the office keep shrinking, it’s about time we adjust to the new normal. Yet, most employees may have little or no experience working at home. Yes, many are still struggling to adapt and be as productive from a couch as they were at the office.

HR and managing directors have plenty to handle here. While changing from routine office life to remote working is a challenge in itself, managing the workers is the most significant hurdle.

On the employees’ side, working at home come with its challenges. From home-schooling kids, elderly parents, or not enough room for an office.

The Fear of Homeworking

There’s a persistent fear in trusting employees who work at home. Lack of constant monitoring is mostly thought to encourage laziness.

But research suggests that job performance when working at home is, at the very least, as productive as working from the office base. Well, other than encouraging social distancing, it also costs much less.

Nevertheless, managerial control doesn’t work for home-based workers. Here, productivity largely depends on self-regulation and empowered decision-making.

Due to these remote working challenges, self-regulation remains the key to increasing productivity.

Home-based Work Management Approach

With the inherited cliché of 9-5 slowly dissipating, as a manager, you need to crafts ways to monitor your team and keep them engaged. With the office at home, the management has to restructure its approach.

Trust and freedom are the keys to efficiency. Working at home may mean an employee has to share the space with their family. So, employees may clock in at their most convenient time and do their work. As such, the deal should not be hitting their set hours but achieving the set targets.

Any attempts to confine the workers to routine work patterns may miserably fail. Self-drive or autonomy, clear communication of targets, objectives, and deadlines, expected outcomes, and excellent hierarchical communication flow would serve you well.

Remote working isn’t for everyone. But home-based workers may even work more hours and perform exceptionally well than their counterparts who operate exclusively from expensive corner offices. An organization stands to save a lot on overheads. But remote working isn’t for everyone.

As a manager, you need to offer trust and freedom to your employees and create systems that empower them to self-regulate.

How to enhance self-regulation for a remote worker

To get the best out of your home-based employees, you need to facilitate them to feel comfortable working from their homes.

Some of the things your firm can do include helping them turn a spot in their house into their home office. Well, this means doing the following:

Since the employees would be working at home, it is also best if you consider stepping in to help them settle overhead costs, they incur as a result of it. Of course, this further motivates them to work comfortably at home.

Work patterns and the nature of the emotional contract between employer and employee has shifted and continues to evolve. Thus, there’s a need to adapt to a new relationship model between managers and workers, home-based workers, to be precise.

As a CEO or an HR manager, showing leadership, and encouraging your team to self-regulate will largely determine the overall performance of your company during this pandemic period, and beyond. Instead of wasting time on commuting, employees can invest the time on adequate rest, and be more efficient when they turn up on the projects assigned to them.

Characteristics of a Social Intelligent Leader

There are a plethora of definitions offered by authors and writers about what makes a person a good leader. Many believe that excellence, ideas, principles, and the measure of success achieved makes a great leader. Despite these qualities, the ability to know oneself and others and how to react determine the quality of one’s leadership. This trait is called social intelligence.

According to Sean Foleno, social intelligence is a person's competence to optimally understand one’s environment and react appropriately for socially successful conduct. This can be reflected in situations like knowing when to talk or listen, what to say, and what to do.

Communication influences a large part of the work that is done within teams and determines the level of efficiency and productivity. Socially intelligent leaders recognize this and weaponize this in handling day to day business and managing people. In responding to people’s behaviour, they are concerned with the motivations for the actions rather than the action itself. This is a better way of understanding people and reacting appropriately rather than causing unnecessary conflict.

This is extended to how a socially intelligent leader will react to criticism. In a case where a member of a team, customer, or client criticizes them, they do not react by denying it. Instead, they accept feedback and find a way to review the experience and make it better for all parties.

Also, in dealing with the feelings of people they engage or work with, socially intelligent leaders validate rather than dismiss people’s feelings. They recognize the fact that it is important for every member of the team to feel included and relevant. They put themselves in the shoes of those they are dealing with and act in the same way they would like to be treated.

Leaders are required to be aware of trends and innovations. For socially intelligent leaders, they recognize the need to focus on the durability of the products of the trends and the foreseeable longevity rather than the need to be trendy.

The nature of leadership involves problem-solving and people management. This means that problems crop up all the time. Social intelligent leaders do not see problems as roadblocks. Instead, they see them as opportunities to review the entire plan and draw out workable solutions. The pattern leaders adopt in reacting to issues determine the atmosphere of the workspace and the growth of the business.

How to Keep your Employees Motivated and Engaged for the Summer

Summer is the time to live easy…but only if you’re on vacation. And for those who have to work through the hot summer months, this season could seem endless. So what can you do to keep your employees present, engaged, and motivated when the beautiful days of summer are pulling them out of their work?

In order for leaders to effectively manage their people during summer, they’ve got to be realistic. Managers should expect their employees to request for days off, take week-long vacations, and just lose their focus at work. With all that said, here are some tips on how you can make your team members enjoy summer without necessarily abandoning your business.

Turn Sick Days to Personal Days

It is customary for organizations to offer holidays and sick days to their employees. And so, those employees who would like to take a day off during summer opt to fake being sick. No employer wants to hear such excuses. Thus, you have to be honest to your employees about the importance of them being at work, and turn your sick days into personal days off so that your employees won’t have to lie about taking a day off.

Offer Summer Hours

If at all possible in terms of your business’s workload, it is a good idea to offer a work schedule that allows employees to get at least every other Friday afternoon off. This is an excellent way of boosting employee morale and will also discourage fake sick days.

Offer Options for Remote Work

Depending on the nature of your business, it might be possible for your employees to do their jobs outside the office or at home. Come up with a remote work policy that will not compromise productivity while at the same time allowing your workers to enjoy the privilege of working from home or outside the office.

Enjoy Breaks Out of the Office Together

Taking breaks outside the office is a great bonding experience you can have with your staff. You can have coffee together during your morning break, or you may invite everyone to take the afternoon off to watch a movie together. This will give all of you a chance to enjoy the warm days of summer, plus you can get to know your team on a more personal level as well.

Plan Team Events

Find a way to bring summer fun into the workplace so that employees can enjoy it somehow. For instance, you may plan for some summer barbecues where employees and their families can get together to enjoy the warm weather. Such team building activities will be greatly appreciated by your workers, and can help motivate them and boost their morale.

How to Make Your Next Team Meeting More Effective

Is it important for teams to hold regular meetings? Well, definitely yes! Meetings matter not just to make sure the job gets done. They also serve as a great means of communication among team members, who need to have a clear understanding of the activities and needs of the team. Meetings also allow for creative brainstorming and group innovation. It is also through team meetings that work skills are developed, interpersonal relationships are deepened, and team morale is boosted.

When team meetings are considered useless or nonproductive by its members, there will certainly be a negative impact on how workers perform in their respective jobs. Thus, it is of utmost importance that team meetings be planned well and conducted systematically and with purpose.

Making Team Meetings More Effective

Aside from the obvious points about being prepared, on time, and making sure everyone is involved, there are other things that can help make your next team meetings productive and effective. Here’s what you should do:

Have a Purpose

Why is the team having a meeting anyway? Is it because it’s a requirement? Or you have a specific reason for holding the meeting? Before you even plan a meeting, you’ve got to figure out what the purpose of the meeting is. You have to make it something that your members will look forward to, and not something they think is just a waste of their time.

Less Is Often More

Meeting your team several times a week can leave you holding meaningless team meetings. It is always better to have fewer but more meaningful meetings with your members. If certain issues arise, check if they can be addressed through one on one conversations or email messages perhaps. Meeting less frequently will increase the chances of your team meetings becoming more purposeful and useful.

The Meeting Agenda

The success of any team meeting pretty much depends on its agenda. It is important that your agenda be specific so that participants will know what to expect from the meeting. A vague agenda can cause members to be uninterested in the meeting. Be sure also that you distribute the agenda ahead of time to allow members to make the necessary preparations for it.

Acting As a Facilitator

There is a difference between facilitating a meeting and chairing a meeting. You’ve got to figure out what your role will be. Knowing how you should run the meeting will give you a clear idea of how you should start the meeting, how the meeting should run and how it’s supposed to end.

Ask for Feedback

There will always be a way your team meetings can improve. But you will never know how to improve it unless you ask your team members for feedback. It would be of great help to you if you could know what they think and how they feel about your team meetings.

Work with a Mentor

If you’re not used to holding meetings with a group of people, it is recommended that you work with a mentor. Perhaps your company offers executive coaching programs you could join. This will be a great opportunity for you to learn from the more experienced individuals in the organization.

Leadership Tips on how to be a better Manager

If there’s one thing a hardworking manager still needs to do in order to get to the next level in his or her career, it will be to know how to turn management skills into leadership skills. Managers are the ones expected to make important decisions that will boost employee productivity, and thus, having great leadership skills is an absolute must.

What Sets a Leader Apart from the Rest?

In today’s business world, companies are opting to retain and offer promotions only to their managers who have outstanding management skills and demonstrate qualities of a good leader. The good thing is that while some people are born great leaders, leadership skills can be learned and developed, but only if you know where to put your efforts into.

The key to becoming an effective leader is to understand that leadership is all about bringing people together for the fulfillment of one goal. You, as a manager, not only have authority and power, but a great responsibility to lead your subordinates so they may contribute to the growth of your organization.

How Managers Can Become Great Leaders

Learn from customers and staff every single day.

Checking in on a regular basis leads to better communication. You don’t have to hold general meetings to do this. Short staff meetings scheduled regularly and implementing an open-door management policy can help you establish clear lines of communication with your staff. You would also learn a lot about how to improve your products or services by soliciting feedback from your clients or customers.

Listen before speaking.

It takes a lot of practice and determination to become a good listener. And when you become one, you will see how positive its effects are to your people. Employees appreciate managers who know how to listen to them. Customers can also see your sincerity in offering great service.

Learn from what other leaders did in the past.

Take time to know what your predecessors did in the past. You can apply what worked for them, and avoid those that didn’t. The past is always a good source of knowledge, especially for those managers who don’t have much experience yet.

Get staff involved in the decision-making.

It is always a good idea to get your people involved in the decision-making process, especially if the decision to be made relates to them. All you need to do is encourage them to be creative and to share their ideas. You may even give rewards to acknowledge their success.

Focus on the positive…always.

As a leader, your people look up to you and even get inspiration from you. Thus, you should always focus on the positive, so that they may do the same.

Climbing up the corporate ladder is every manager’s dream, but this can turn into reality if they learn what it takes not just to be a manager, but a true leader. Taking part on executive coaching programs is an important step if you’re looking to acquire and develop the skills that will make you an effective leader.

How to Engage Your Team to Be More Productive

Full time workers spend many hours of each day and a huge part of their lives in the workplace, so it matters to them how they feel about the work they do. For managers, it is equally important to keep their employees engaged in whatever the company does. If workers are disengaged, there is a huge possibility that they will look for other opportunities. What’s worse, their attitude can have a negative effect on the productivity of the entire team.
Good leaders acknowledge the fact that employee engagement is a huge asset to the organization, and that implementing a solid engagement strategy is a priority. Here’s what you should do to keep your employees engaged and productive:

#1 Take Time to Know Your Employees

Get to know your people better by asking and learning about what they love doing. This will help you build better relationships with your employees, which has a direct effect on their motivation and engagement. Also, demonstrate even in the smallest and simplest ways that their happiness and wellbeing matter to you.

#2 Offer Your Employees Basic and Essential Training

Effective managers pay attention to their employees’ career advancement by providing them with the training they need. By making sure they have the skills to complete their tasks properly, you are giving them motivation to achieve their goals, and this can lead to a higher level of engagement. Managers should realize that employees feel more engaged when they have a clear understanding of their responsibilities and roles in the organization.

#3 Recognize and Appreciate Your Employees

Getting some sort of recognition from a manager is an important motivator for workers, which also promotes productivity and positive behavior.
To be an effective manager, you have to make employee recognition easy and visible to your employees. It does not have to include money or expensive things; in fact, even a ‘nice job’ or ‘thank you’ can go a long way in making your employees feel good about themselves.

#4 Emphasize the Importance of Teamwork

Teamwork is the result of trust and openness between employees and managers. When employees are made to feel that they are an important part of a team in the company, they become more enthusiastic about their jobs.
You can encourage teamwork by acknowledging the efforts of those employees who offer their help to others, and creating channels in which workers can recognize one another’s efforts. When trust is formed between employees, they become more engaged and obviously happy with the relationships they have with their coworkers.

#5 Do Not Ignore Employee Feedback

Employee surveys are conducted to determine if there are changes in the organization that employees wish to have. Thus, any executive coaching professional would always emphasize the importance of acting on employees’ feedback. If they don’t see any changes in the way business is run in the company, they will feel like their voices are unheard and ignored. Indeed, lack of action on the side of the management can significantly reduce employee engagement and productivity.

What it Takes to be Persuasive

Even if your job is not to sell, there will come a time when you will have to persuade someone. Persuasion happens not only between salespeople and their potential customers. As a manager, for instance, you may need to persuade your subordinates to perform at a higher level. And if you think you have a brilliant project in mind, you should learn how to persuade your boss to take on it. Needless to say, the ability to persuade somebody is a desirable one, and something that you can actually learn and develop. What you will learn in this article are the things you should do to become persuasive. (more…)

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence among Leaders

When talking about a ‘perfect leader’, we easily think of someone who seems to be always in control. This person never allows his temper to overcome him no matter how difficult the situation is. You may also imagine a perfect leader in a person who is trusted by his staff because she is someone who knows how to listen to her subordinates and has the ability to make informed decisions. If you try to analyze such traits of a good leader, you will realize that it takes a high level of emotional intelligence to become a perfect leader.

This article will help you understand how important emotional intelligence is for leaders. As a leader, you will also learn here how you can improve your emotional intelligence to eventually become a perfect leader. (more…)

Tips on How to Prepare For a Management Interview

The most important ingredient to a successful management interview is the way you prepare for it. As a department manager, you will have to work not only with your subordinates, but also with the upper management, the managers in other departments, and even with clients and customers. (more…)

The Path to Becoming a Good Female Leader

One of the biggest fears that career women normally have is their inability to get noticed by their boss, especially when it’s time for promotion. They are worried that they will be stuck in their current position and will not have the chance to hold a leadership position. Unfortunately, many companies also lack the resources or funding for the professional development or training of their staff. For women in the workplace, a bigger challenge for them is how they could grow, improve, and develop as professionals. (more…)