Vincent Spivey

Every CEO dreams to be the leadership material that their employees would want to stick to for the rest of their careers. Great employees are great coworkers, and it is the goal of the CEO to keep them and maintain a healthy and growing relationship with them.

Letting some good people go and seeing them bloom in another company is probably the worst nightmare a leader could have. If you ever wonder why some of your best employees don’t last. Here are a few things about being a leadership material that you need to know.

It’s all about Servant- heartedness

Servant-heartedness doesn’t mean you have to kneel in kowtow or personally serve your employees tea. A servant-hearted CEO is one who actually cares. A good leader is a shepherd and one who shares the woes of their employees.

If you have spare time, you can do a surprise office visit and maybe personally greet your employees; that’d be awesome. If you lead a growing company with fairly enough people that you can still personally recognize by name, you should start practicing this. 

Having a warm culture in the office brings familial love and friendship. These are worth staying for better than the compensation the company offers.

Upskill Them To Your Level

Being unproductive is one of the worst stressors an employee can feel at work. As you can tell, it brings destructive and oppressive frustration that can even lead to depression, in worst case scenarios. Being unable to hit quotas or targets makes employees feel dreadful about themselves, doubt their capabilities and probably quit in the long run.

Retrain and upskill them if possible and give chances for growth. A lot of CEOs who have given up on this kind of employees end up giving them away to another company where they became a significant business asset.

I for one made that mistake once.

Set Achievable and Realistic Goals

In relation to the previous item, unrealistic goals are also one of the common sources of frustration or stress among employees. You have to leverage your goals according to the number of your people and their capabilities.

If you perfect the art of setting achievable goals and challenges, you will find who among your employees are rock stars and those who settle for mediocrity.

Walk The Talk

Set the bar. Be the example, the role model, and the leader. There’s no perfect leader such that there’s not one on earth who is unflawed, but you have to show your employees your work ethics are healthy and thriving at the same time.

Also, there has to be some sense of accountability in the office. There should be someone who would take responsibility for mistakes and lapses.

Be Personal and Honor Their Work

Honoring your employees work is the best thing you could do for them, apart from giving raises of course. If you have an employee who had created a revolutionary device that is sure to be a game changer, give them credit for it.

Allow them to patent the machine, process or plants under their name. It is part of their intellectual property rights and if you want to do the extra mile, get a patent attorney for them yourself. You giving them paycheck doesn’t mean you are winning the lottery. Give them what’s due to them.

Transparency is Key

Contrary to what everyone thinks, transparency doesn’t violate privacy. Transparency is when you educate or inform the right and concerned people about a particular event in the company that would have a direct effect on them.

It doesn’t have to be bad news always. You can assemble them during the good times and send them emails on the bad ones. You can be transparent and private at the same time.

Encourage Diversity

Encouraging diversity is not just about gender or beliefs; it is also about different talents, personality, and styles.

You should encourage individuality in your company. Each works best according to their style, personality, and skills. Mutual respect should be developed, and no one should ever feel like they are prey to high school bullies.

Takeaway

These are only a few of the requirements to becoming a leadership material. Whether you own a multi-billion dollar company or a kicking startup, your goal is not just about your growth; it should be about who makes up most of your company.

We’re not referring to company shares and profit, we’re talking about the people who makes up most of your company, and they are not the executives, they are the employees on the grassroots level.

About the Author

Vincent Spivey is an entrepreneur, blogger and an advocate of  Intellectual Property Rights. He and his team of young innovative marketing experts help other professionals, inventors, and entrepreneurs by educating them about their IP rights. Together with the Livingston and Loeffler Law Firm, they are making this difference happen.