When working with business owners and leaders, I am constantly being reminded of the stress they are currently enduring in this difficult economy. Most have had to make difficult decisions for the long term health of their company and more importantly the employees of the company.

More often than not the decisions made include the release of good employees, and cutbacks in salaries, wages and benefits. The people remaining are faced with more work than before and often less compensation for their efforts.

Leaders are well aware of the impact this has on morale and productivity. And if they are a business owner, the impact on them is huge. As a business owner, their personal finances are severely impacted by the financial health of the business. They also feel personally responsible for their employees who they have had to let go as well as those who remain.

Recently, I was meeting with a business owner who shared with me a recent conversation he had with some of his employees. Although he had not had to release any employees, business had started to become tight and he had made some cutbacks in overhead expenses. He decided to take some key employees out to lunch as a way of expressing his gratitude for their contributions. During lunch the employees shared their observations of him over the last several months. He was shocked to hear that he had been demonstrating a number of behaviors that lead the employees to believe that he was stressed out.

The good thing was that the employees felt comfortable enough to share their concerns with him. He had obviously created a safe environment for his employees. I then asked him “what was the message he got from this conversation?” His immediate response, I need to be a better leader!

We then explored what being a better leader would look like and how he could start to move towards his ultimate goal. He identified options and resources available to him and committed to some next steps with a specific time line.

This story is just one of many about leaders who are having difficulty handling the stress today. Many don’t realize how they are presenting themselves to their employees and the impact that their transparent emotions and negative behaviors have on their employees.

Here are some reminders to maintain a persona of strength with your employees and team members during these very extremely challenging times:

1. Take care of yourself. Exercise, good nutrition, 7-8 hours of sleep, and time for yourself are important to keep your energy up and emotions in check.

2. Focus on the recovery plan and communicate the details of the plan in a positive and encouraging tone.

3. When communicating bad news, again focus on the plan to turn the situation around.

4. Practice with a trusted advisor before important communications.

5. Encourage others around you to be part of the plan and success; don’t take it all on yourself!

6. Celebrate success! Visibly recognize employees who contributed to the success and this doesn’t have to cost money.

Remember that your employees and team members take their cues from you. The behavior your model will be picked up and replicated. Positive cues and behaviors can be contagious and important to navigate your company through these rough times.

About the Author

Beth Armknecht Miller, of Atlanta, Georgia, is Founder and President of Executive Velocity, a leadership development coaching firm accelerating the leadership success of CEOs and business leaders. She is also Chair to two Vistage groups. She is certified in Myers Briggs and Hogan leadership assessment tools and is a Certified Managerial Coach by Kennesaw State University. Visit http://www.executive-velocity.com or http://executivevelocityblog.com

In case you haven’t got a good leadership definition, leading means:

* Forming a team from individuals and supporting it

* Aligning the team towards justifiable goals and achieving this goals

* Developing the individual team members

* And do all of this in a professional way concerning content, method and social interactions

When one found himself with a team to lead and a goal to be achieved, the very first questions that need to be asked is if the team is the adequate to reach the goal, which means to review the different team profiles and make the necessary decisions. Doing that exercise will mean that we are forming our team. Once we reviewed it we’ll make the changes required, if external circumstances don’t allow us to perform the changes we’ll focus on identifying why our team is not appropriate and start working on modifying what we recognized as not appropriate.

At the finish of this phase we’ll have a team, our team; the second, and not always so easy part, we’ll be to support them. Supporting has two different meanings; it means to remove the barriers that could prevent them to progress toward the goals but it also means to be the visible head when problems arise, and they will arise.

Aligning the team is key, a leader has to keep constant attention on keeping the team focused and make sure the different team members are having the same or a complimentary goal.

Development of team members is often left behind, normally because of the goals have to be reached and time is limited, so spending time on development does not look as a good thing to do. Big mistake, time invested on personal development will always pay off very, very quickly.

Last but not least, a good leader has always to be a role model for his team; they have to recognize on the leader the methods and professionalism that they’ll need to apply to come to the end point: achieving the goal.

Let’s take a look at a different aspect of the challenge: leadership styles. There are different leading styles; the main challenge of any team leader is to recognize which style is the optimal at certain point in time or for certain challenge and apply it accordingly, those leadership styles goes from the authoritarian to the democratic passing by patriarchal, informing, consulting, cooperative and participative:

* Authoritarian: Manager decides and communicates decisions.

* Patriarchal: Manager sells the decision.

* Informing: Manager presents decisions and asks for ideas.

* Consulting: Manger presents problems, respect input for ideas and decides.

* Participative: Manager defines boundaries and asks group for a decision

* Democratic: Manager delegates decision to staff within certain limits.

The decision on which style is the optimal has to be based on the need of leader authority that the situation requires, when the decision and mandate is clear so there are a very clear and established process to follow the authoritarian will be the best, when autonomy of staff is the most important value to reach the goal the democratic model will be indicated.

Knowing the definition of leadership and the basics of the different leading styles is the basis for any good leader, the difference between a bad and a good one is recognizing what is missing on his team and focusing his priorities in filling the gap of what is missing to lead in the appropriate way.

About the Author

Roberto Llera is the founder of advancepod.com, a social network devoted to help people achieve their goals and overcome obstacles.
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