7 Horrible Ways to Lead a Team (and the 1 Mistake Everyone Makes)

Leadership is not, "Hey, you, go do this thing for me."

When we think about leadership, we tend to think in terms of hierarchy--those at "the top" are considered "the leaders" and those at the bottom are considered "the followers."

The problem with this sort of perspective is that, in all honesty, just because you hold a formal position on the ladder does not necessarily mean you are a "leader."However, lots and lots of people wear their title and their badge of honor proudly--while at the same time ignoring the fact that they are, in fact, horrible leaders.

Don't fall into the trap of doing any of the following, simply because you have a position of power--especially this first one.

1. You expect others to follow rules that you yourself do not follow.

This is, bar none, the most common mistake in leadership. 

You cannot, and should not expect others to follow rules, codes, processes, and all the rest if you cannot follow them yourself. If you're not showing up on time, don't expect others to as well. If you aren't diligent and organized, don't expect those beneath you to somehow cultivate better habits.

When you are a leader, you do not realize how much of an influence you have on your team--even down to the smallest habit. You are the leader for a reason. Everything you do must have a purpose so that those who look to you for guidance will do everything with purpose as well.

2. You do not keep your word.

The fastest way to lose respect (and earn resentment) as a leader is to say you're going to do something and then not do it.

First and foremost (going back to No. 1 here), it's because it encourages a very bad habit in those around you--"If he/she can slack off, so can I." As a leader, it is so crucial that you do the things you say you are going to do. And if you cannot do them, you need to communicate that openly to your team in advance.

For those looking to rise and become leaders, this is equally important advice. If you want to climb the ranks, this is one of the most effective ways to do it. Keep your word. That's it. Keep your word and people will soon learn that you can be trusted--they can count on you, no matter what. And that in itself will propel you to where you want to go.

3. You do not (genuinely) admit when you are wrong.

Some "leaders" believe that admitting when they're wrong is a sign of weakness.

It's not.

In fact, being wrong or having made a mistake and yet being incapable of owning up to it reveals an even bigger weakness--and makes your team question whether or not they can trust you. 

If you make a mistake or were incorrect about something, just say so. This will establish trust and an even playing field with you and your team, showing them that you embody the same traits you expect of them--a humility to be able to step back and take accountability.

4. You make promises you cannot keep.

This is a rabbit hole of disaster. There is no worse habit as a leader than making promises you know you can't keep.

All this does is welcome in feelings of being let down. And the next time you say you're going to do something for someone, they will not believe you--and even worse, they will become angry at you for thinking you can fool them again and again.

Where No. 2 is about following through with what you say you're going to do on your end, No. 4 here is about keeping promises that you make to someone else.

5. You want to be the star.

As a leader, it's your job to inspire, guide, direct, teach, motivate, and ultimately help others succeed. It's not to steal the spotlight.

The greatest leaders are the ones who, as Steve Jobs so eloquently put it, "play the orchestra." Fantastic leaders know how to step back and let others shine. They know how to put others in positions to succeed themselves--which benefits the whole orchestra. 

However, as long as you want to be the star, with the spotlight on you and no one else, you will squeeze the talent around you and keep it from ever unfolding. 

6. You criticize others but cannot take criticism yourself.

Healthy criticism is how teams members push each other to improve and get better--iron sharpens iron. Harsh criticism is what instills insecurity, fear, and an unwillingness to take chances.

If your style of leadership is healthy and positive, expect others to do the same with you--which means you too will continue growing and improving. But if your style of leadership is harsh, then expect the same to come back to you--or worse, cause your entire team to go silent.

7. You believe your way is the right (and only) way.

And finally, the oh-so-debated topic of what is "the right way" of doing something.

The truth is, there are very few things that have just one single "right" way of doing them. So much of life is subjective, and that goes for the work we do as well. "Creative" to one person might be "boring" to another. "Clean and sleek" to one is "dull and lackluster" to another.

If you are a leader looking to build and scale your team, it is important to learn and realize that your way is not necessarily "the right way." It may be "one of the" right ways, but it is not the "end all."

It's important that you acknowledge this; otherwise, you will cultivate a team of people who aren't searching for the best solution to the problem, but rather the best solution to appeal to your own unique subjective definition of what is "right."

 source : http://on.inc.com/2b5DIcy

5 Things I’ve Learned in Social Media

I have had the great pleasure of meeting amazing people all over the world because of the industry of social media. Each of the relationships may have started online, however, many of them came offline and I now have more meaningful connections, friendships, and business partnerships because of social media. I wanted to share with you a few things I’ve learned from social media.

We know you want to know! By implementing these simple things you too can see how social media can help you in your business endeavors and much more!

1. Reach Out and Say Thanks –

Everyone would love to hear that they have made someone’s day. The next time you are reading an article on someone’s blog or you see a sentence in someone’s tweet that really speaks to you, reach out and say THANKS to that person. Whether you send an email, a personal note, a DM (direct message) or you post it publicly on their wall, everyone loves to be appreciated. Far too many people only take the time to reach out to someone if there is something negative to say.  So even if it is the service at the fast food place that happens to be your lunch for the day, reach out and say THANKS! Not because you want to get acknowledgement, but because it might just be what someone else needs in their day to keep them going.

2. Research Your Influencers – 

As in any field you want to make sure the people that you think are great and influence worthy are all they say they are.  Have you ever read an article on a blog post and just felt that it was scam-like or not really a ‘tested theory’ but more so someone just blowing smoke? Sometimes it might feel that obvious and other times it might really seem much more difficult to tell.  I’ve found that once you put yourself into the industry you are seeking to learn more about, you can really start to see certain people popping up all over the place and ‘doing a great job’ or as being an ‘influencer’.  The reason it matters is because you want to ultimately have great people to look up to and learn from within your field. Specifically in social media, I love checking out about 5-10 websites every single day of people that are ah-mazing and I know they are credible, trust-worthy and putting out consistently great content. If you are just following someone as an influencer because someone told you so, it doesn’t really give you the edge you really should have by knowing the ‘why’ they are great.  So, dig down into google, check around and really get to know the people that are out there doing amazing things. Trust me, the research will pay off in the long run because you’ll feel confident in the people that you are connecting with as influencers.

3. Not All Social Media Platforms Are Created Equal – 

You may just use some of the social media platforms such as Facebook and Pinterest but you don’t even know what Instagram is or even more so, how people are using it for business. Maybe Twitter intimidates you.  Or maybe you find yourself in a conversation at lunch with someone and you say, “I got twitted today” and everyone looks at you like you have three heads.  There’s a lingo, there’s value and there certainly is a purpose for all the various social media platforms.  For instance, Twitter is extremely powerful for using targeted searches to find potential clients by joining conversations that are already taking place. It is also great for reaching out to and making connections with influencers. Instagram is great for all visual graphics because it has a focus on one photo and allows you to bring stories to life through beautiful pictures. Whether you want to sell something, offer a service or give tips, encouragement, etc.. And the list goes on.  But what is true is that you need to focus first where you really want to get strategic and really be on social media and do it well.  It is far better to do one thing such as Facebook and do it consistently well rather than doing Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Instagram sporadically and with little clarity of what you are on social media for in the first place.

4. Hashtags are Powerful –

If you don’t think that the pound sign has any significance we’ll make sure that you know that is NOT THE CASE.  In social media, when you use the pound sign (called hashtag from this point forward) in front of a key set of words (with no spaces between) it is very powerful because it allows you to search and focus on specific things. For example, if you want to make a post and put #ColumbiaSC in it because that is the city/state that you live and you are a local hair salon, that might be a smart strategy to not only see who else is using that hashtag so you can join in on some conversation but also because it would allow for someone else that is searching that hashtag to find you. Hashtags are found among most social media platforms (especially Twitter and Instagram) however hashtags are really not encouraged to be used on Pinterest. It might seem overwhelming but before you give it a try maybe think of a hashtag and keyword on a topic that matters to you or your business and type it in the search bar on Twitter for example and see what you find?

5. Money can be Made for Your Business Using Social Media –

I know it is true because I have done it myself since 2011. I used Facebook primarily to launch my first company ElizabethtownFamily.com to a booming website filled with amazing family-friendly information for a small community near Fort Knox, Kentucky. We’re talking about a town that has 30,000 people in it and a greater surrounding area of maybe 125-50,000 people. It started with a Facebook page and then once I had the website developed I simply had a strategy to make 80% of every single Facebook post I made have a link going back to the website.  Today, 4 years later, I’ve been able to have this as a profitable business since 30 days of the business launching and use content marketing to attract the community and thus monetizing the brand via local businesses and non-profits that want to advertise to that very targeted audience. I’ve also personally, of course, launched Sweet Tea Social Marketing as well where I can help small and medium business owners that want to have help with their social media so they can see great results for their business.  Just via the social media platform of Linkedin alone, I was able to secure a $10,000 client. It is one thing when people use hypothetical ideas to tell you that social media can grow your business. I’m not here to tell you theory. I’m here to tell you via hustle, strategy and pulling up my sleeves and daily being in the trenches of seeing what works and what doesn’t work, social media is a powerful resource in marketing to grow my businesses and it can do the same for you.

 Source: http://bit.ly/1Vd5PrZ

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5 leadership lessons from the Dark Side.

Star Wars is for many of us the ultimate sci-fi fantasy. As the anticipation for Episode 7: The Force Awakens grows, it has also emerged as an unlikely source of leadership wisdom. Forbes magazine has outlined five key leadership pitfalls from the Galactic Empire: Darth Vader has made these mistakes so you don’t have to.

1. They consolidated power. Darth Vader and the Emperor were for all intents and purposes running the entire show. Not only was it probably asking a bit too much of them, but it means that defeating both of them at one time in one place was enough to bring down an entire galactic political system. Had power been shared more among people further down the management line, there would have been someone to keep things going. There is also no indication that a succession plan had been worked out. As Luke Skywalker warned them only hours before their demise: ‘Your overconfidence is your weakness’.

2. Ruling through fear. Vader wasn’t good at compromising. He would alter a deal and if challenged he would simply tell you to ‘pray I don’t alter it any further’. That kind of aggressive behaviour puts people off and leaves them working out of fear rather than motivation. Once people feel like they have no stake in what is going on, they tend to be less productive or, in Vader’s case, flat out rebel.

3. Zero tolerance for failure. Working for Vader must have been stressful. Failing to finish a simple task could get you killed. He would openly criticise employees for being ‘clumsy as they are stupid’. A good manager needs to solicit ideas and engage with their staff, giving them proper feedback. Accidents will happen. Sometimes you come out of hyperspace too close to your target and you need to adjust without losing your cool. If Vader had been more encouraging, commanders would not have been making decisions out of fear of repercussions, and they may have made more productive decisions, like intensifying forward firepower a little sooner, for example.

4. Single-minded obsession. Vader and the Emperor really only focused on crushing the Rebel Alliance, with turning Luke Skywalker to the Dark Side as a potential bonus. You don’t get the impression they were ever on any conference calls. It’s not much wonder that the Rebel Alliance had so many willing to join the cause, with the Empire not focusing on any practical day-to-day matters. The lack of flexibility in the Empire’s methods is also noteworthy. Their Imperial army seemed focused and designed solely for crushing the rebellion. In the end, a one-size-fits-all approach lead to an oversight in other threats, and their goals were dismantled by a tribe of Ewoks.

5. Failure to learn from mistakes. The Death Star is the kind of project that in the planning phases everyone must have applauded. The wireframes must have been incredibly impressive. In the end though, it only took one shot fired into a thermal exhaust port only two meters wide. Strangely, the Emperor decided not only to build the Death Star a second time, but to allow a design which included a new weak spot big enough to fly entire X-Wings through. Failure to learn from your mistakes can be extremely costly. Sometimes it is better to accept your idea wasn’t so brilliant and move on.

Source : http://bit.ly/1RibBnc

3 ways marketers can raise their social media maturity

1°/As a marketing discipline, social media has reached its challenging teenage years.

In terms of strategy, it’s not so young that anything goes. Though there are new channels popping up constantly and experimentation is always encouraged, there are established best practices for brand managers.

At the same time, it isn’t as seasoned by time as a discipline like traditional public relations. For most marketers, there are well-respected guidelines about how, where, when and why PR should be brought into the mix.

When it comes to social media as a marketing tool, many brand managers have worked through the awkward junior high years of defining their social identities. The majority (92 percent) of marketers reported in a Social Media Examiner survey that social media is important to their businesses, but many are still trying to grow their online practices into sophisticated, functioning resources of their organizations.

Recently, Meltwater and Forrester webinar presenter Samantha Nao advocated for investing time and resources into gleaning actionable nuggets from social data.

A brand’s entry in the social media world begins when its presence is established on strategically chosen channels and a strategy for activity is defined. But following birth, there is a maturation process from, “Hi! This is our first tweet!” to gathering insights and turning them into business recommendations that can impact operations, customer service and sales.

Likening the scale to achievements in mobility, Forrester proposed that marketers move along a social-intelligence maturity scale, from crawling like a baby to soaring like Superman.

2°/ Here’s how to assess where you’d fit in:

1. Crawl Stage : The crawl stage is where it all begins.

In this phase, marketers are active on their own social media channels and are monitoring topics related to their businesses. They listen to social media conversations with them as well as about them, competitors and their industries. They don’t go beyond that; it’s an awareness phase.

2. Walk Stage : In the walk phase, marketers take customer insights and validate them through social data. This includes taking a hypothesis from the sales team about the most important factor in a purchasing decision and using social data to prove or disprove that. The walk phase is similar tomarket research.

3. Run Stage : When marketers are ready to run, they start combining social and traditional customer data through dashboards, scorecards or custom metrics.

4. Fly Stage : The business value of social media intelligence really takes flight when an organization has advanced to the point of integration.

The flying stage includes integrating social and traditional customer data in the customer database through social listening, appending existing records or collecting social information through opt-in opportunities.

Forrester found that most marketers fall into the crawl or walking phases; only 6 percent have matured to superhero status. Though everyone starts out on the floor (just like as in life), there are things you can do to get the most value from social data.

3°/ Here are three tips to develop your social marketing maturity:

1. Bring other groups outside of marketing in to join the analysis process of social insights.

Collaboration between social marketing, customer service and sales teams can be particularly fruitful for business-to-business brand managers.

If your organization is a data-center service provider that receives the most engagement on content about the financial industry, that could serve as a clue for the sales team to pursue financial leads more aggressively or even elevate that effective content to them through a more personal channel such as email.

2. Feed recommendations from social insights into organizational changes.

A national home-auction provider might have long-established geographic markets flagged as its target.

A high amount of interest from users in a previously dormant geographic area on social media can help the provider reconsider the way properties in that area are organized. Changing and presenting online could result in a thriving new market and higher number of bids.

3. Match social media user names across multiple platforms with the best corresponding record in your customer database.

Only 6 percent of marketers are currently doing this. From here, you can really begin to document your customer’s pain points and know what is relevant to them.

Source : http://bit.ly/1ZFzb32

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Five details you shouldn't give Facebook

The whole point of Facebook is to share your life with other people. You probably have more than a few friends who fall into the over-sharing category. Before you snicker, you may be one too and not even know it.

Here are five personal tidbits Facebook asks you to share that you’re much better off keeping to yourself.

1. Your phone number
It's a really bad idea to add your home or cellphone number to your Facebook page. Prank callers, stalkers, scammers and identity thieves would love to use this information against you.

Not only that, but there’s a Facebook trick that works pretty much most of the time. Anyone can use your phone number to search and find your Facebook page.

One security researcher, Reza Moaiandin, took it a step further and found he didn't even need to know a specific phone number. He wrote a program to generate every possible number in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. Then he submitted the numbers to Facebook and got back information from millions of profiles that had poor privacy settings. If he had wanted to, he could have turned around and sold the information on the black market to hackers who build and sell "fullz" or packages of identity information.

If you do give your phone number to Facebook, be sure to hide it in your profile.

Go to Facebook and click on your name at the top of the page. When your profile page loads, click the "Update Info" button in the lower-right corner of your cover image.  Go to "Contact and Basic Info" in the left column and next to your phone number click the "Edit" link.

Click the "audience selector" icon, which will either be a globe or a silhouette of two people and change it to "Only me." Now no one can see your phone number, and it won't show up in searches.

2. Your home address
Post a picture of your recent vacation or major new purchase and this puts you at risk. Think for a moment of all the terrible things that might happen if some nefarious person knew your home address. Remove it from your Facebook profile.

Follow the directions in the last section to get into the "Contact and Basic Info" section of your profile information. Look for "Neighborhood," and if there's an address there click the "Edit" link next to it and wipe out the information. Then click "Save Changes."

One other place you might not think about your address being is under events. If you create an event, it will likely have your address so people know where to go. If that accidentally gets set to Public, then anyone can see it.

Either delete the event right after it happens, or tell people attending to message you for the address. Be sure to check back through your history to get rid of any old events or posts that have your address in them. Click here to learn how to use Facebook's built-in tools to make it easier.

3. Anything work-related
Try not to leave any information on your Facebook that reveals where you work. If someone from your workplace tries to search for employees on Facebook, they might find a post or photo that they don't like.

Similarly, if a hacker wanted to figure out whom to target if they wanted to break into your workplace's computers, social media would be their first stop. Of course, they're more likely to hit LinkedIn first.

Bonus tip: If you're worried about coworkers or employers creeping on your Facebook profile, then change these three basic features.

Again, you can use Facebook's timeline tools to do a scan of your past posts. Remove any information about your current job, especially if it's of a complaining nature. If you have posts about previous jobs, you might want to remove those as well. A current coworker or supervisor you decide to friend might see them and it could color their opinion of you.

4. Your relationship status
Including your relationship status on your Facebook page just invites awkwardness. The number of "likes" that you might get from people after you change your status from "married" to "it's complicated" will creep you out.

Bonus tip: Have some pictures you want to keep in the family? Here's a tip that will teach you how to make sure that some of your friends don't see all of your photos.

Certain relationship statuses are also a draw for cyberstalkers. At one point, there was even a Facebook app that would notify you if friends you flagged changed their relationship status to "single."

Don't forget the scammers out there who specialize in sweetheart scams. They use social media, email and dating sites to create a romantic connection with you and then swindle you out of money. You don't want them to see that you're single on Facebook and get ideas. It's easier to just remove your relationship status entirely.

5. Your payment information
Facebook is free, but it still wants your credit card number. Adding your financial information lets you buy gift cards and other products straight through the website. How convenient!

Of course, one of the best ways to accidentally get your credit card charged for something could be to leave your Facebook profile open on your home computer. A small family member or "joking" friend at your home could use it to spend money on something straight through Facebook. You don't want that to happen, do you?

Open your Facebook, click the upside-down triangle in the top right corner and choose "Settings." In the left column select "Payments," and then on the right go the "Account Settings" tab. You can see if you have any saved payment information and remove it.

Source : http://kng5.tv/1KSxKIm