We all know being a bookkeeping business owner is challenging.
If you have staff, it can be even more difficult managing the different personalities in your office.
No one said being the boss would be easy.
But, it can be improved if you decide to make some tweaks to your leadership style.
INC.com’s, Jeff Haden has discovered 9 distinct qualities phenomenal bosses have that can help you become a better leader and make life more enjoyable and productive at the office:
1. You forgive... and more importantly, you forget
When an employee makes a mistake -- especially a major mistake -- it's easy to forever view that employee through the perspective of that mistake.
I know. I've done it.
But one mistake, or one weakness, is just one part of the whole person.
Great bosses are able to step back, set aside a mistake, and think about the whole employee.
If you're a phenomenal boss, you are also
able to forget that mistake because you know viewing any employee through the lens of one incident may forever impact how you treat that employee. (And you know the employee will be able to tell.)
To forgive may be divine, but to forget can be even more divine.
2. You transform company goals into your employees' personal goals
Great bosses inspire their employees to achieve company goals.
The best bosses make their employees feel what they do will benefit them as much as it does the company. After all, for whom will you work harder: a company or yourself?
Whether they get professional development, an opportunity to grow, a chance to shine, or a chance to flex their favourite business muscles, employees who feel a sense of personal purpose almost always outperform employees who feel a sense of company purpose.
And they have a lot more fun doing it.
If you're a phenomenal boss, you know your employees well enough to tap the personal, not just the professional.
3. You look past the action to understand the motivation
Sometimes employees make mistakes or simply do the wrong thing. Sometimes they take over projects or roles without approval or justification. Sometimes they jockey for position, play political games, or ignore company objectives in pursuit of personal goals.
When that happens, it's easy to assume they don't listen or don't care. But almost always there's a deeper reason: They feel stifled, they feel they have no control, they feel marginalized or frustrated -- or maybe they are just trying to find a sense of meaning in their work that pay rates and titles can never provide.
Effective bosses deal with actions. A truly great boss searches for the underlying issues that, when overcome, lead to a much bigger change for the better.
4. You support without seeking credit
A customer is upset. A vendor feels shortchanged. A co-worker is frustrated. Whatever the issue, good bosses support their employees. They know that to do otherwise undermines the employee's credibility and possibly authority.
Afterword, most bosses will say to the employee, "Listen, I took up for you, but..."
If you're a phenomenal boss you don't say anything. You feel supporting your employees -- even if that shines a negative spotlight on you -- is simply the right thing to do and is therefore unexceptional.
Even though we all know it isn't.
5. You make fewer public decisions
When a decision needs to be made, most of the time the best person to make that decision isn't the boss. Most of the time the best person is the employee closest to the issue.
Decisiveness is a quality of a good boss.
The best bosses are decisive too, but often in a different way: They decide they aren't the right person to make a decision and
then decide who is the right person.
You do it not because you don't want to avoid making certain decisions, but because you know you shouldn't make certain decisions.
6. You don't see control as a reward
Many people desperately want to be the boss so they can finally call the shots.
As a phenomenal boss, you don't care about control. So people don't see you as someone who exercises control.
And that's great, because you want only to be seen as a person who helps.
7. You allow employees to learn their own lessons
It's easy for a boss to debrief an employee and, like a parent talking to her child, turn a teachable moment into a lesson learned.
It's a lot harder to let people learn their own lessons, even though the lessons we learn on our own are the lessons we remember forever.
Phenomenal bosses don't scold or dictate; they work together with an employee to figure out what happened and what to do to correct the mistake. They help find a better way, not a disciplinary way.
After all, great employees don't need to be scolded or reprimanded. They know what they did wrong. That's why you know that sometimes staying silent is the best way to ensure they remember.
8. You let your employees have the ideas
Years ago I worked in manufacturing and my boss sent me to help move the production control offices. It was basically manual labour, but for two days it put me in a position to watch and hear and learn a lot about how the plant's production flow was controlled.
I found it fascinating, and later I asked my boss if I could be trained to fill in as a production clerk. Those two days sparked a lifelong interest in productivity and process improvement.
Later he admitted he had a larger motive. "I knew you'd go in there with your eyes wide open," he said, "and once you got a little taste, I knew you'd love it."
If you're a phenomenal boss, you see the potential in your employees and find ways to let them have the ideas, even though the outcome was what you hoped for all along.
9. You always go home feeling you could have done better
Leadership is like a smorgasbord of insecurity. Bosses worry about employees and customers and results. You name it, they worry about it.
That's why the best leaders go home every day feeling they could have done things a little better or smarter. They wish they had treated employees with a little more sensitivity or empathy.
Most important, they always go home feeling they could have done more to fulfill the trust their employees place in them.
And that's why, although other people can't see it, when you walk in the door every day you make a silent commitment to do your job even better than you did yesterday.
Great points from Jeff.
Which of the above will you implement?
Don’t procrastinate.
Be an Amazing boss today.
Your employees and business will forever appreciate it.
To your success,
Michael