How to Be a Top-Notch Leader

"Many believe that leaders naturally rise to the top, while others feel they are developed and groomed. In order to optimize your own career as a leader, you must be a visionary, a trailblazer, a strategist, a communicator, a coach, a diplomat and a politician.  The most successful leaders focus on the big picture as well as operational procedures."

• Communicate your goals to your people. Define your strategy and objectives for your staff. If you aren’t clear where you want to get to, you won’t know it when you get there.

• Set values for your staff to follow. These values should reflect the ethical and interpersonal standards with which you expect your people to abide.

• Create a climate of open communication and trust at all levels. Your executives and managers must feel that they can speak honestly to you-without fear of any consequences. There’s a proverb: "If you think you’re leading and no one is following you, then you’re only taking a walk." Your staff won’t follow you wholeheartedly, if they believe they can’t be up-front with you.

• Project the image of a leader. You don’t have to look like a superhero to be a leader, but you should look and sound credible. You have to appear confident, competent and caring-show that you are sure of yourself, that you know what you want your people to do, that you care about your staff and that others can rely on what you say.

• Listen. Listen for factual and emotional content. Sometimes, you can learn more about what’s really happening through noting body language and tone.

• Focus. Sort out your priorities as well as those of your organization. Think about which issues critical to your operation will demand your personal attention. Assign other areas of importance to those who you trust to handle them well.

• Be decisive. Make decisions as you go along. Do not let them accumulate. A backlog of many little decisions can be harder to deal with than a big and complex one. At the same time, avoid snap decisions. Move fast on the reversible ones. Reflect more on the non-reversible ones.

• Communicate confidence, conviction and enthusiasm. Display unsinkable optimism in the ability of your organization and its people to succeed. You want to demonstrate a commitment to your mission and a belief in your people’s capabilities to achieve it. Root out those with limiting expectations. Provide the resources your people need to achieve mutually agreed-on expectations.

• Motivate staff. You can do this by acknowledging outstanding work. You can also do this by modeling excellence yourself. If you’re not performing at a consistently high level, re-examine your standards. You can’t inspire high performance from others if you don’t set a good example.

• Demonstrate initiative. Don’t waste any opportunity you see. As a leader, you should go out and look for a chance to move your organization or team ahead. When you see an opportunity, you need to take it as far as you can. Don’t stop until you have done everything you can to reap the full benefits.

• Be willing to take reasonable risks. President John F. Kennedy said, "There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."

• Look for trouble. That is, don’t ignore problems. Also encourage your people to resolve problems when they encounter them.

PASS

• Inspire your team. Kendra demonstrated the true mark of a leader: being able to inspire with structure under stress. Despite tight deadlines and the complexities associated with managing the event, Kendra's team performed well because of clear guidance and direction. She inspired her team by caring about them. Her genuine appreciation at the end of the task was charming and sincere.
   

• Clarity in roles, goals and expectations. Effective leadership demands clarity. Kendra rose to the challenge by clearly communicating specific roles and task expectations to her team. They responded with little or no apparent infighting about who was supposed to do what by when. In contrast, Tana's team suffered in chaos because she wasn't clear about their roles or her expectations.
   

• Treat the sponsors (and Trump) like gold. Kendra wisely understood that her primary objective in this task was to make her sponsors happy. Despite initial challenges with the venue, she was able to inspire confidence and make the sponsor happy by rising to the challenge with great team performance. She also was wise enough to keep the spotlight on Trump during the event.
   

• Emotional intelligence. When faced with challenging situations during a high-paced task, Kendra responded calmly and did not lose sight of the importance of presenting a professional front to her sponsors and team. She didn't lose control of her emotions and therefore maintained her personal authority with her team.

FAIL

• Failure to inspire and motivate. Effective leaders motivate their teams by drawing on their strengths, respecting them and communicating a clear vision with passion. Tana chose instead to patronize and demean her team. She continually put down her team to anyone who would listen -- Trump adviser Carolyn Kepcher and the sponsors included -- referring to them as "stooges" and "dumb and dumber." People will rise to your positive beliefs about their abilities and will give you what you expect of them. Leaders have the ability to create their own reality with teams. Expect the worst and, guess what, that is typically what you will get.
   

• Delegate to those with commitment and competence. Tana overrelied on a leadership style of delegation. Delegation can be effective in certain situations (with proper structure and boundaries) with employees who have proved they are committed and competent. Tana didn't believe in Kristen, yet she delegated the major responsibility of the printed brochure to her. Tana should have insisted on seeing the final copy (to proof it) before it was sent to the printers. Because she didn't, she faced a potential disaster with a printed brochure that included embarrassing details about some of the athletes.
   

• Event planning requires attention to detail. Successful management requires everyone knowing what they must accomplish by when. Many things can go wrong -- details, priorities and clear role assignments need to be tracked via a checklist and schedule. For example, Tana allowed an Olympic flag processional with U.S. athletes and the governor of New York to take place without a U.S. flag. The purpose of the event was to promote New York as the site for the 2012 Olympic games. It's all about the American flag.
   

• Unprofessional behavior with sponsors. Tana continually was unprofessional with her sponsors -- the most critical people to be impressing at the event. She blew off the governor's aide when he asked her for his schedule. Unbelievably, she told him he would get it when she got it. When he later voiced concern about the governor not knowing what he was supposed to be doing, she actually said, "that's fine" and left the man standing there! She also made several derogatory remarks about her team to the sponsors. She forgot the old adage "praise in public and criticize in private." She told one man in a fit of anger that she wanted to "punch somebody." Now honestly, is this an emotional profile of someone who Trump is going to send off to deal with his high-level corporate colleagues and customers? I don't think so.
   

• Blaming everyone else. Tana failed to take ownership or accountability for her part in anything that went wrong. At every turn, when something went wrong, she blamed her team.  Great leaders look at their teams as a "we" effort and do not cast dispersions on the team when things go awry because of their poor leadership.

The Report Card

MAUREEN MORIARTY
SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER