Natural leaders inspire those who follow them. They lead by example or by inspiration, and they work to bring people from different backgrounds together to create something truly remarkable. We still study and celebrate some of the best leaders throughout history for that very reason. They have the potential to capture the imaginations and the admiration of people who have never met them and who may be generations beyond them.
However, you don’t need to be an influential, historically relevant leader to be a good leader. You don’t even need to be charismatic. Being born a natural leader helps, of course, but even natural leaders should learn the tips and tricks outlined in this guide to make your management style more effective.
People can be hard to manage, and doing it well is a skill that is vied for by companies around the world. You don’t just need to make sure your team members meet deadlines or get their work done. You need to encourage them to go above and beyond.
A great leader can make an employee love their job and love their workplace. Someone who is passionate about the company they work for will see its success as their success. It’s a lot of responsibility, but you’ll learn how to better manage your team in 2021 and beyond with this guide.
- Make it Easier to Work Collaboratively
The first thing you should do for the sake of your team is to invest in a better, more streamlined workflow. In marketing, you can end up with hundreds of file versions and truly tangled correspondence through email. You need a simple, effective way to check over progress, add comments, annotate, and even see previous versions side-by-side.
This, along with a workflow method known as Agile marketing, are two of the best ways to improve the speed, productivity, and creative output of your marketing team. It may seem like something of a cheat to use an existing system to improve your marketing team management, but that cannot be further from the truth.
You can learn more about how to implement agile marketing into your business with this guide. Most companies experience big results from Agile marketing workflows, both in terms of speed and in creative output that puts customer satisfaction and experience at the forefront of everything you do.
- Make it Natural to Brainstorm
Brainstorming successfully means keeping your team positive, it means making it natural to bad ideas out there as much as good ideas, and it takes a great leader. Poor leaders make their team terrified to put out a half-formed idea, and this is the last thing you want in a creative field like marketing.
Bad ideas can spark good ideas. Sometimes you just need to say a bad idea in order to move past it and start working on something better.
- Make Your Team Diverse
Your team should come from multiple backgrounds. This applies culturally and professionally. Marketing is directly integrated into the human experience, and if you don’t have a diverse team under you, then you are missing large chunks of experience from your team meetings.
Great ideas can come from anywhere, so even consider getting campaigns checked over by people in different departments for a fresh take on things. You could also hire the equivalent of sensitivity readers to check over your campaign to see if there are any errors you have made that would have caused backlash you don’t want to occur.
No one is perfect, but when you increase the number of voices involved, you can create messages that land for your customers.
- Discover Your Leadership Style
Everyone has a leadership style that is natural to them. Discovering your own is the best way to lead your team in a way that feels natural to you. Not every employer is going to like your style, but by staying true and tweaking it so that you get results, you will find a great place to work or even be better able to open your own business if the time comes.
Something that is important to remember when it comes to developing your leadership style is that it is an ongoing process. We always need to work better to lead better. Sometimes this means learning how to listen better. Other times it means learning more about experiences different to you so that you can better support your team members.
There is a delicate balance as a leader. You need to inspire, you need to keep your team on it, and you need to care for them. You need to lead a healthy team and productive team. Sometimes this means playing the bad guy and being tough. Other times it means being understanding.
There are several places where you can work in improving your leadership style and skills.
Talks and Workshops
There are many talks, workshops, and other events designed for business leaders. What you can learn from them will be helpful both for the more human side of your business and the more practical side of your business. Workshops, in particular, can be very helpful as they go through different scenarios so you can work out your best response if those scenarios were to happen within your own team.
Your Team
If you want suggestions that directly apply to you, then ask your team for feedback. This should be a standard part of yearly evaluations. It isn’t just employees that can improve; after all, it’s you. It can be daunting and make things awkward, however, so set up an anonymous system so employees can offer suggestions and make critiques without the fear of backlash. This is how you get honest feedback.
Start improving with the suggestions that come up most often. This way, you can make the biggest changes to your leadership style and see results first-hand, both in how your team responds to you and the results they offer.