Ten Relationship Traits And Skills For Good Leadership
As a leader how well do you relate to your people? Relationship is an important factor in having a motivated team that works together to achieve outstanding results.
An important aspect of good leadership is the ability to work and relate with others. When creating and building your unique leadership style consistently developing relational skills is a priority. There are ten qualities that characterize successful leadership in the area of relating and communicating with other people.
1.Availability
A good leader is available and in touch with people. An important leadership skill is the ability to recognize needs and be able to respond to them quickly and in the moment.
2.Facilitating Harmonious Relationships
A good leader realizes the importance of harmonious relationships and is proactive in creating a harmonious atmosphere. Successful results are born out of harmony rather than conflict. Good leadership will prioritize keeping conflict and disharmony to the minimum.
3.Approachability
A good leader is approachable and has an open door policy. Good leadership creates an environment where openness and honesty can occur in an atmosphere of fairness rather than judgment.
4.Appropriate use of authority
Sensitivity to the proper use and conversely the misuse of their authority is the whole mark of good leadership. A good leader will not use their position of authority for self gratification and promotion or in a controlling and domineering manner. Successful leaders use their positional power with wisdom and sensitivity to the appropriateness of the circumstances.
5.Confidentiality
Good leaders conduct conferences and meetings in an atmosphere of trust. They display appropriate confidentiality and respect towards others and about others.
6.Self Motivation and Development
Good leaders set and use goals to motivate themselves and others. They understand the importance of personal and professional development. Successful leaders do what is necessary to upgrade their knowledge and skills and be on the cutting edge in their field. Successful leaders not only motivate themselves in personal development but also motivate those around them.
7.Supportive
Good leaders are able to provide emotional support for those for whom they are responsible. They recognize the importance of encouragement and inspiring confidence and also give recognition of a job well done.
8.Maintaining Motivation and Team Spirit
A good leader provides incentives and motivators to improve the performance of their employees to challenge them to maintain quality results.
9.Clear Communication
A good leader is an excellent communicator. Their leadership involves communicating clearly the objectives and procedures required of a task. They set clear attainable and measurable goals.
10 An Understanding of Group Dynamics
A good leader understands the dynamics of group relationships. Successful leaders have the ability to lead groups without aggravating conflict and minimizing disharmony. They are inclusive and skilled in creating a sense of team unity. They are adept at balancing the strengths and weaknesses of the group for best results.
It is of prime importance to develop good relational skills as a leader. The way a leader connects and communicates with people will determine the level of success in achieving the desired results.
A good leader is able to create in his team a desire to follow his leadership wholeheartedly.
Take these ten characteristics as a checklist to determine the strengths and weaknesses in your leadership style. Celebrate your strengths focus on your weaker areas and start to work on them. In this way a good leader can develop into a GREAT leader.
About the writer:
Barbara White President of Beyond Better Development has over twenty years experience innbsp; leadership. Beyond Better Development works with organizations who wantnbsp; their leaders to develop towards their potential and stay on the cutting edge. More about Leadership Development at http://www.livingbeyondbetter.com
10 Principles For The Common Sense Investor
1. Put Your Money To Work
Investing is about putting money to work in effective ways to make more money. The most effective way to put your money to work over the long term is in wellrun profitable companies. Companies that are good stewards of your money will help you create a level of wealth that you couldnt generate by merely saving your money.
2. Investing is not a Game
Many people mistakenly think of investing in the same way they think of sports or gambling: as a game. Watch CNBC for a day and youll see what we mean. The ups the downs the highs the lows. The stock market over the shortterm can provide entertainment value and adrenaline rush.
But investing is not a game. Your goal is to make more money and it turns out that over the longterm there are intelligent and rational strategies for growing your money. The reason you make money should actually make sense!
Remember: dont treat investing as a game of chance. Understanding why your investment makes you money is the key to being a common sense investor.
3. Risk is relative
It is not uncommon for financial advisers to give very bad advice. One of the most common pieces of bad advice is the view that saving your money in something like a CD is less risky than investing it in stock equities. Why is this not true (most of the time)? Because history tells us that risk is relative. Over a 15 year period of time it is clearly more risky to leave money in a CD than in good stock. While your balance wont erode the purchasing power of your money could due to inflation and taxes.
Over periods of time that are greater than three years the common sense investor understands that ceteris paribus the best place for money is in stocks.
4. Invest in Good Companies Avoid Bad Companies
The common sense investor entrusts his money in companies that put money to good use. Good companies will use money in effective ways to produce more wealth. One of the best ways to identify good companies is to look at their Return on Equity which is essentially a measure of how well they create profits using shareholder investments.
5. Dont Pay Too Much For a Good Thing
Even if youve found a good company dont invest in the company unless its being sold at a reasonable price. Ideally try to find good companies that are selling at a discount. Often times you will have to go against the flow and buy into companies that are out of favor for one reason or another (often irrational) with investing professionals. Normally a company is priced too high if its Price To Earnings ratio is higher than its Return on Equity.
6. Fear the Following of Fads
Following the crowd can be disastrous for the common sense investor. More often than not it results in paying way more than a company is worth. If the price of a company is dictated by shortterm exuberance rather than longterm rationality it should be avoided.
In fact the common sense investor can take advantage of the fact that in the short term stock market exuberance is often irrational. If the boys on Wall Street are too extreme in a selloff for a good company you should be ready to buy.
7. Time is on Your Side: the power of compounding interest
Give your money as much time to grow as possible. If your money doubled every five years then five thousand dollars would turn into 320000 in thirty years. Over 10 years it would only turn into 20000. Big difference.
It seems like magic but its not. The earlier you put your money to work the longer it works for you and the more wealth you generate. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Wealth is generated via production. The longer your money works in good companies the more time it has to produce further profit; profit which you get to share. The cool thing is that you can put all of your profit back to work and effectively have more money generating more profit. This process can keep iterating so long as you dont withdraw your money.
8. Some Debt is Good Debt But Most Debt is Bad
Why pay off a debt that is accruing a 5 taxdeductible interest when you could be generating 12 interest by investing your money instead? Many people make the mistake of trying to pay down their home mortgage early but this is often unadvisable for several reasons. First of all the money you pay towards your mortgage is not liquid and gets tied up in your home until you sell. Second mortgage is often taxdeductible. You cant take advantage of this tax break if you avoid the interest.
Having said that most debt should be avoided. Never sustain credit card debt and try to avoid all debt that will be used to purchase items that depreciate (e.g. cars clothes toys). Debt can be emotionally and psychologically difficult to sustain so only carry good debt if it doesnt affect you aversely.
9. Keep It Simple
Always always always understand your investments. Understand the companys business model: how they make money. If the business model seems odd (read: Enron) or complicated or unfocused avoid the company even if it means that you have to avoid the temptation of following the crowd.
Companies make money by producing products and services that people or businesses want and need. Make sure you understand what products and services your company are producing and developing for profit.
10. Employ Disciplined Principles
Invest regularly and intentionally. Force yourself to put your money to work but dont just throw your money at any investment. Choose your investments wisely. Dont chase after fads. Fight your emotions. If you feel like selling (the market is doing badly) you should probably consider buying and if you feel like buying (the market is doing well) you should probably consider selling.
Copyright 2006 Quentin James
About the writer:
Quentin James writes personal finance articles for The Common Sense Investor. To see more personal finance tips from Quentin go to: http://www.csinvestor.com.
Supply Chain Management 101
Answering the question of what Supply Chain Management is is as simple as breaking down the phrase into its component parts. Supplies are those inputs that a company relies upon to produce the product that will ultimately reach its customers. The chain is the group of suppliers that bring those inputs to a company and the process whereby those inputs are integrated into the company. And finally management is the coordination and organization of all these inputs and their implementation. So put it all together and Supply Chain Management is the science and art of improving the processes that bring suppliers of raw materials together and move those materials through the company until they reach the endpoint the customer.
What SCM Involves
If defining the term takes a full paragraph to cover even in its most basic sense you can imagine how complex the industry surrounding Supply Chain Management truly is. It involves managers who map out the entire process and look for inefficiencies and others who develop and maintain relationships with suppliers to ensure a steady supply of inputs. It involves the actual process of manufacturing or value add in which those inputs become the products that will be sold as well as “logistics” or the process of getting those value added products to customers. And finally it involves dealing with and compensating for supply chain returns such as defective products. Supply Chain Management covers every aspect of the business from input to output and as such requires an extensive array of tools and strategies to help managers to coordinate and organize a company.
The Dilemma of SCM Software
One of the most innovative and revolutionary tools in use by managers involved in the supply chain is Supply Chain Management Software. While I have outlined five general sections that make up Supply Chain Management each of these sections is unique to a particular business. As such no single product has been developed to handle the software needs of a company from start to finish. As a result when industry insiders talk about Supply Chain Software they are really talking about a combination of many different programs that when applied together help manage the supply chain. While literally thousands of different products are on the market today they all fall into one of two broad categories Supply Chain Planning (SCP) or Supply Chain Execution (SCE) software. Supply Chain Planning software covers those programs which use advanced mathematical algorithms to map out the flow of products through a company and to identify any inefficiencies. The ultimate goal of this type of software is to help reduce faulty products to speed up the time to market and to reduce inventory. Supply Chain Execution software is designed to automate different components of the supply chain. For example Supply Chain Execution Software might update inventory listings in a central directory as soon as inputs are brought in from a supplier or are sold off to the customer. In this way SCE software eliminates the costly and time consuming task of tabulating the total current supply so as to know when to place the next order.
The Goals of Supply Chain Management
Ultimately the goal of Supply Chain Management is to bring greater efficiency to a company by reducing errors maintaining steady inputs and reducing excess inventories. With the growth of the internet however it is transitioning into a means of collaboration between companies. By concentrating their efforts on better communication with suppliers and customers inefficiencies are ironed out not only within the company but in those surrounding it as well. The internet has made the communication between firms necessary for this to take place possible. Consequently the hope for Supply Chain Management in the future is not only to create a more efficient and profitable business but to contribute to a more efficient and profitable global marketplace as well.
About the writer:
Dan Johnson enjoys writing about supply chain management. Visit http://www.scmlowdown.com/ to learn more.