ATLANTA, GA / ACCESSWIRE / August 18, 2020 / To rise to a leadership role, you must be able to shed the weight of tactical operations and responsibilities that can keep you from reaching your potential for success. Leaders who find themselves mired in every detail and decision can quickly find that they are underestimating the true responsibility and opportunities inherent in leadership. Instead of moving the business and team forward, they are stagnated by a myriad of tasks not critical to the progression of the enterprise.
"As an entrepreneur, I owe so much of my success to having capable, supportive teams of employees," says Deepak "Dee" Agarwal, a retail industry C-suite executive. "It's a common mistake for entrepreneurs to try to manage every aspect of the business on their own, but when you do more, you get less done."
When your career is the culmination of thousands of hours of investing your personal time and energy, trusting other people to treat your work with the same weight and magnitude can feel counterintuitive.
"It's difficult, because you know if you do it yourself, you will do it right the first time," says Deepak Agarwal. "But there is only so much one person can do. When you have the right people in place and have empowered them to take ownership of their workstreams, together you can go so much further."
The following are six tips that enabled Deepak Agarwal to best empower his teams to allow him to focus on the critical tasks of leadership.
1. Know your team and play to their strengths
A major component of strong leadership involves identifying the unique talents and capabilities of your team and placing people in positions that allow them to optimize their skills. Playing to those strengths can help you realize efficiencies in your process. Get to know your team and their interests. Work towards placing them in roles that they are interested in so that they can flourish and thrive. A happy team is more likely to be motivated and successful.
2. Communicate expectations
Effective communication is a hallmark of almost all successful leaders. To be able to confidently delegate tasks and responsibilities, you must be able to clearly communicate your expectations to ensure the desired outcome. Ensuring your team understands your needs and standards prevents misunderstandings that can derail progress or demoralize a team over time.
3. Challenge your team and provide opportunities for growth
When allowing members of your team to take the lead, avoid letting progress become stagnant. Encourage them to stretch beyond their comfort zone to expand their skills and contributions to the team. As a leader, you have a responsibility to look beyond what is front and center and anticipate new challenges and opportunities. Spend time with your team to help them understand how to think more strategically about their work. These investments will pay off in dividends as team members will feel better equipped to advance their work and manage the unexpected.
4. Be flexible
Understand that managing people is a dynamic process that requires coordination and work. Not all members of your team will excel at the same tasks in the same amount of time. Be mindful of your team relationships throughout the process, check-in periodically, and make yourself available.
"The importance of having an open-door policy cannot be overstated. Make it known that you are there to support your employees so that there are no surprises," noted Deepak Agarwal.
5. Recognize and reward successes
Show your team that you are attentive to their progress and appreciative of their hard work. Recognizing employees for their contributions to the company is proven to raise employee morale and motivate employees to work harder. Remember to celebrate the small as well as big wins, as the big wins are often the result of small steps of progress. Complimenting a team member on a meeting well managed or acknowledging their strategic thinking may seem like a small action, but over time can help create a culture of confidence and innovation amongst your team.
6. Resist the urge to micromanage
Although it can be difficult to relinquish complete control over a project, resist the temptation to hover. It is important that leaders give their teams the opportunity to make decisions on their own without oversight and accept that mistakes may happen. Allowing employees the opportunity to work through problems is an invaluable learning experience that will help them become better at their jobs.
"Give your team the tools they need to do their job, remove obstacles in their path, encourage and motivate them," says Deepak Agarwal. "And then get out of their way. Trust that your team is capable and that you have implemented the proper structure for them to be able to take the wheel on the task at hand."
For more expert business guidance from business executive Deepak Agarwal, read Top 5 Tips from Deepak Agarwal to Master Social Media in Online Retail.
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SOURCE: Deepak Agarwal
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