A key part of managing your business is being a strong leader who your customers and employees believe in. You have to seem confident in yourself and all of your decisions so that everyone thinks you’re worthy of your position.
However, you don’t get to sit on top of the throne without having the right attitude. How you present yourself actually plays a massive part in informing people’s opinions about you, which means you have to be careful about what you do and say on a regular basis.
Even the slightest action can negatively impact your standing with your staff and clients. You have to be aware of how you conduct yourself when managing your business to ensure that everyone respects you as the unquestioned leader of the organization.
If you want to make sure all of your coworkers and customers have a positive opinion of you, avoid the following behaviors.
You’re always asking a question?
That question mark may look out of place, but people keep putting it at the end of their sentences when they’re talking out loud. Think about some of your most recent conversations and you’ll realize that at least one person ended a statement with an upward inflection, making it seem like a question.
Entrepreneur Magazine points out that this is known as “uptalk” and that’s it quite common among young professionals. This style of speaking isn’t anything new, but its increasingly prevalent presence in the workplace is troubling.
From a leadership perspective, it makes you look weak. When you’re bossing someone around and end a statement with an upward inflection, it seems like you’re asking a question and aren’t commanding that person’s attention.
You need to be mindful about how you’re finishing sentences. To achieve this, the news source recommends recording yourself and listening to your speech patterns. This approach can be beneficial because you’ll hear exactly how often you use the upward inflection when you don’t actually mean to.
Additionally, you’re going to have to think harder about what you say. It can be easy just to talk without putting any thought into it, but you should stop and be careful about your speech. If that means slowing down and taking a minute to go over every sound before you make it, then you should take that time.
Uptalk undermines everything you’re saying. Only use that inflection when you need an answer from an employee, not when you want them to get to work and follow instructions.
You aren’t confident in yourself
No one’s going to buy you as the leader if you don’t actually believe it yourself. Confidence is like yawn – it’s contagious. Your opinion of yourself will influence your partners, employees and customers so it’s important that you have high self esteem.
According to Forbes, you have to maintain your confidence no matter how dire a situation seems. Whether your viral marketing campaign is floundering or branding your business turned out to be more difficult than you expected, you have to know that you’re a great leader and project that attitude.
The key is to have a sense of calm at all times. It doesn’t matter if everything is going well or the ship has sprung a leak, you should have a consistent belief in yourself. Even when you aren’t entirely sure of yourself, you need to project that aura. If worst comes to worst, just fake it until you make it.
Constant over-praising
Many leaders have a tendency to glorify everything. The thinking is that if employees are praised regularly, they’ll feel appreciated and improve their performance.
That said, you can’t start throwing compliments around so your staff will feel good about themselves. Inc. Magazine recently explained that superlatives lose their meaning when they’re over used.
Think about the word “incredible.” It’s supposed to mean something is difficult to comprehend because it’s so extraordinary, which is why it’s the Incredible Hulk, not the Believable Hulk. But when you start saying basic work is incredible, it dulls the impact of it. If an employee filled out a report or made a sale, they didn’t do something incredible – they did their job.
Reserve praise for situations that call for it. Did a worker go above and beyond the call of duty? Has one contributor regularly exceeded all of your wildest expectations? If so, you can start using superlatives to describe employees and their actions.
By limiting your use of these words, you’re ensuring that they’ll have special meaning whenever you do break them out. Staff members will realize that they have to work hard in order to receive compliments from you. As a result, productivity will likely increase as everyone will be trying to earn your approval.
You let employees undermine you
Some employees will do everything they can to undermine you. In many instances, this is intentional, but there isn’t a universal motivation for it. One worker might feel slighted because you don’t give out a lot of praise and another may be gunning for your job so they want to make you look incompetent as a leader.
You have to stop this problem in its tracks if you want to be successful as a business leader. Workers can’t be allowed to continually disrespect you and make their associates lose respect for you.
Fortunately, this issue is easy to deal with, but you have to be firm in your actions. Whenever someone questions your decisions or criticizes your strategies without sound supporting logic, reprimand them and exert your authority. If an employee says they won’t meet a deadline, explain the fallout of that situation.
When managing a remote workforce, this becomes a bit trickier. The easiest solution is to take away an employee’s ability to work from home and require them to come into the office until there’s a noticeable change in attitude. It may seem harsh, but it’s better than letting someone call your leadership in question.
What do you do to make yourself look like a strong leader?
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