To truly excel as a leader and set the tone for career success, it is essential for business management graduates to understand, recognize and utilize ‘best practices’. Once you complete your business management degree or business management degree online, you’ll be looking for the competitive edge as you go head-to-head with colleagues vying for the same jobs. A leading-edge business college will have adeptly prepared you for the technicalities of positions in the industry, but beyond the skills you need to have, is the practical knowledge and know-how of supporting and leading your team. Here is the topline information that provides a foundation for your to build a thriving and empowering career on.
10 Best Practices Essential for Tomorrow’s Business Management Leaders
1. Incite Mission and Vision Buy-In
In order to inspire your team to believe in your vision for the future and day-to-day mission to deliver quality products/services to your end-user, you must know what they are. Your vision, what you aspire to do and create – and your mission, the action you take every day – must ignite your senses and motivate you. If you’re working for someone else, determine what the company’s vision and mission are, internalize them and share them with your team. If you’re leading a company or department, make this process a priority.
2. Operate from Integrity
In business and in life, our success ultimately depends on our ability to be trusted, by our colleagues, our leadership team, our customers, and clients and those who come to know us. Trust is earned by consistently doing what we say we’re going to do, living up to higher values and ideals and communicating effectively with honesty and openness. If you live from and act in integrity, you can expect this from your team, you will lead by example and co-workers and clients alike will come to know they can count on you and count on your team.
3. Clarify Goals
Communicate company goals, work with your team to outline clear and attainable targets and empower them to reach those goals through support, regular check ins, open communication and addressing challenges as they arise and finding creative and solid solutions, together.
4. Encourage Creativity
Creative, out-of-the-box ideas drive innovative and successful companies; you want to give yours the best shot at being one of them. Whether you’re running a department or an organization, ensure that your team knows their ideas will be considered, not always used, but always put into the mix, and that they will be honoured for their contributions. This will go a long way to encouraging the next breakthrough.
5. Fail Forward
In line with #4, recognize that innovative thinking and creative testing can go hand in hand with results that do not turn out the way you thought. Good! If you glean from what you did, if the lessons allow you to mark off something that didn’t work to make way for something that could, then “Eureka!”. If your team knows they’re safe from the repercussions of trying something new, and that you’re all about “failing forward”, learning from any and all experiences, you’ll have a jazzed team and perhaps achieve the wow-factor you’re seeking.
6. Engage and Educate
If you pick people to work for you that are always striving for more, for the best, then you’ll need to keep up with propelling them forward. Engaging your team means connecting, understanding their goals, and aligning them with the organizations’, communicating consistently, appreciating and recognizing effort and educating them to achieve the next level of success. If you learn together, you’ll thrive together and you’ll have the loyalty and drive from your team that all leaders dream about.
7. Lead from Values Not Rules
When looking to build a team that is self reliant, self driven and keen on creating a harmonious team environment that drives results, they don’t need rules, they need to recognize your common values. Now, this is just a matter of semantics really. Rules create lines; value-discussions create an understanding about why the line exists. Rules are for children, assuming they won’t understand the ‘why’ and just need the clarity. But most children, and all adults, thrive in being included in the larger conversation and being treated with respect. Lay out the values of your company, ensure your employees are aligned with them and then discuss the policies that ensure those values are kept sacred. Your people will feel included, appreciated, and will work harder to deliver on those value-promises and policies.
8. Set the Tone for Active, Positive Communication
However you would like your team to be, be and do that. Listen intently, clarify to ensure you’ve understood, communicate effectively and positively, address challenges openly and focus on solutions collectively. Whatever qualities and traits you’d like to cultivate in those you work with, emulate those and watch how people grow in that direction.
9. Trust and Deliver
Develop leaders by recognizing where a team member’s gifts lie, focus on empowering them in their areas of interest and expertise, and then for goodness sake, let go of the reigns and let them run. This goes with delegating, allowing others to start and finish tasks solo or with other colleagues, no matter the outcome, trusting that even if it isn’t a perfect, you’re honing leadership skills in others for the long haul. And remember if you say they can take the lead, even when you want to fix it, resist. Follow through on what you said you would do … let go and let others shine. See how that came right back to the integrity piece?
10. Celebrate. Celebrate. Celebrate.
Celebrate the “Yes!” Moments of your team. See when things are going well, a goal has been achieved (no matter how small), people have stepped up, clients are thrilled, colleagues overcame a challenge, someone implemented a new idea, and take a pause to identify and recognize the win. This will encourage and inspire others to get in line for the next high-five. And our companies and our world could use a lot more of those.
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Thriving leaders, thrive by implementing best practices and setting ever-new standards for exceptional work environments, customer service and community contribution. As a new business management graduate, you have the opportunity to bring these to your team and watch as your career soars to new heights.
If you’re thinking that a business course, or business studies online may be for you, you can determine the fit by taking the “Anderson College Business Career Training Readiness Quiz”. Or if you’re ready to dive in and are interested in pursuing your Business Management career, book a virtual appointment with our Admissions team. We’re here to help you navigate your way to being confident and in demand in your new career!
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