A boss who micromanages is like a coach who wants to get in the game. Leaders guide and support...then sit back and cheer from the sidelines.

What does it take to have the focus required to be a truly effective leader? The keys are priorities and concentration. To focus your time and energy use these guidelines to help you:

Focus 70 percent on developing strengths: Effective leaders who reach their potential spend more time focusing on what they do well than on what they do wrong.

Focus 25 percent on new things: If you want to get better, you have to keep changing and improving. That means stepping out into new areas. If you dedicate time to new things related to your strength areas, then you'll grow as a leader.

Focus 5 percent on areas of weakness: Nobody can entirely avoid working in areas of weakness. The key is to minimize it as much as possible, and leaders can do it by delegating.

In a culture that sings the praises of individual gold medals and where a person fights for rights instead of focusing on responsibility, people tend to lose sight of the big picture. In fact, some people seem to believe that they are the entire picture: Everything revolves around their own needs, goals, and desires. I once saw this message on a T-shirt that expresses the attitude well: "My idea of a team is a whole lot of people doing what I tell them to do."

A team isn't supposed to be a bunch of people being used as a tool by one individual for their own selfish gain. Members of a team must have mutually beneficial shared goals. They must be motivated to work together, not manipulated by someone for individual glory. Anyone who is accustomed to pulling together people and using them to benefit only himself/herself isn't a team builder; they are a dictator, they boss people about.

Okay, maybe not news to you, and certainly not news to me either. But how many actually admit they make mistakes? My experience has shown that some leaders admit it; some don't. When leaders make mistakes they have everything to gain by admitting them. When they don't, they have plenty to lose

But that is difficult for some, why? It's kind of a "human thing" to appear better than what you really are. However, that can be a big mistake. Here are three reasons to start admitting your mistakes the next opportunity you have.

1. You build trust. Leaders who admit mistakes build trust. In fact it is a real quick way to build trust. Admitting your mistakes demonstrates that you are human and endears people to you.

2. You gain respect. Leaders that admit mistakes show that they take accountability for their actions. In a world of leaders that make excuses, try to point the finger at someone else or lie, it is a breath of fresh air to have one that does none of that.

3. You learn. If a leader doesn't believe he or she ever makes mistakes, how can he or she learn from them. Leaders ought to embrace mistakes and learn from them.

I have never known a perfect team that consisted of perfect people. Perfect teams are diverse teams and each comes with people who are weak in some areas and strong in others.

Below are tips from Executive recruiters:

"Highlight RESULTS. The bottom line is simply answering what in your history shows that you are the one who will make that recruiter look like a hero by finding the one person who will make the decision-maker's life easier."

"Your opening statement should directly imply or state what opportunity you are looking for. If you are a jack-of-all-trades don't expect a recruiter to figure out your career objective. Say it!"

"Today's effective résumés are different than five or even 10 years ago. They're personal marketing documents that brand, package and pre-sell you. At the same time, they are telling a compelling story, are reader-friendly, skimable (written in bullets not paragraphs), focused on accomplishments with metrics and use 'keywords' so you're easily found by recruiters."

"Provide a good chronology of employment. Trying to hide gaps in employment only brings attention to them. Instead, accept reality and have a good explanation. Your honesty and forthrightness will be appreciated."

"You have less than five minutes to catch a recruiter's attention. Quantify your experience wherever possible. Cite numerical figures, such as monetary budgets/funds saved, time periods/efficiency improved, lines of code written/debugged, numbers of machines administered/fixed, etc. which demonstrate progress or accomplishments due directly to your work."

"Although many people are totally capable of writing their own résumé, I would definitely recommend talking to a professional résumé writer to find out what companies are looking for today in your résumé."

Employees who feel appreciated personally will take creative risks that result in innovative ideas and products. Organizations that want to survive in today’s climate have to nurture and capture all the good ideas they can.

Imagine that you met a remarkable person who could look at the sun or the stars and, amazingly, state the exact time and date. Wouldn’t it be even more amazing still if, instead of telling the time, that person built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she were dead and gone?

Do you have time tellers or clock builders in your organization?

Do your people openly and freely share ideas and learning’s or do they keep it to them selves and stay as time tellers holding what they perceive as “power”. Time tellers are regarded by many as wonderfully knowledgeable but if you where to loose one of these time tellers would it leave your business with a gap. If that’s the case, they are not wonderful, they are very selfish.

Encourage your time tells to build clocks and show people how to tell the time, rather than relying on coming to them for information.

Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is “time telling;” building a company and people that can prosper far beyond the tenure of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is “clock building.”

Their primary accomplishment is not the implementation of a great idea, the expression of a charismatic personality, or the accumulation of wealth. It is the company itself and what it stands for.

Achieving that transformation requires turning the world upside down and inside out, seeing products and market opportunities as vehicles for building a great company, not the other way around.

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
~ Winston Churchill

This insight is exactly opposite of most people's thoughts concerning leadership. In a world of perks and privileges that accompany the climb to success, little thought is given to the responsibilities of the upward journey. Leaders can give up anything except responsibility, either for themselves or their organizations. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., said, "I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty."

Too many people are ready to assert their rights, but not to assume their responsibilities. Richard L. Evans, in his book An Open Road, said, "It is priceless to find a person who will take responsibility . . . to know when someone has accepted an assignment that it will be effectively, conscientiously completed. But when half-finished assignments keep coming back-to check on, to verify, to edit, to interrupt thought, and to take repeated attention-obviously someone has failed to follow the doctrine of completed work."

Give people what they want and they will like you for now. Give them what they need and try will value you forever.

One of the best ways to inspire others and make them feel good about themselves is to show them who they could be.

Leaders are often very busy people. And they can easily get caught up in the activity of their obligations. If you're a leader, that's why it's important to set aside times to quiet yourself and listen to your heart.

One thing I really love to do is to encourage my staff (and myself!) to learn new skills. This keeps them excited about learning, and the new skills that they learn enhance the overall business. However, with everything going on, sometimes it is difficult to remember what it is that everyone wants to work on.

At our monthly meeting as part of your one on one's, I would asked them to come up with a goal for learning a new skill for this month. We wrote them in my note book for each consultant.

We’ll review our progress during next month’s meeting, share what we’ve learned, and set goals for the following month. This gives me a chance to congratulate them for their accomplishment and encourage them to keep learning even more.

Whether you are watching The Masters, the Super Bowl or your children competing in a soccer game, you may think you know something about how to go about 'winning’. Whether it’s a team or an individual competing, for one party to win another has to lose on game day.

In business, everyday is game day. Whether you're competing for new clients, customers, contracts, talent or financing. In order to regularly be better than your competition, you have to recognize success comes as the result of best practices and processes applied to a given path.

Your employees play a vital role in achieving your business goals. Consider the following principles and best practices to ensure they are contributing to the goals of your business to the best of their abilities.

Vision: The mission statement of your organization must tap into the value system of your customers and employees. Once you have an established value proposition you can train, align and win the engagement of your employees to fulfill your business’ goals.

Understanding: Not all employees are the same, which can lead to competing interests within your business. There are a number of important questions you should ask yourself, to ensure you’re keeping their interests in mind. Are you a visible leader? Do you care when someone in your workforce has cause to vent their frustrations and ideas? Do you listen well? We are trained to listen to our customers, but don't forget to listen to your employees in order to ensure they stay engaged and motivated.

Focus: Keeping your “eye on the prize” can also be referred to as end point visualization. As in sports leadership, it means getting your employees to visualize their success, know why they are there, and recognize the reward of being part of your business. What motivates your staff? Is it the bonus at the end of the year or is it the “buzz” they get when a customer’s needs are satisfied? One successful sale usually leads to more, so focus on repeating what worked well in the winning situation. Focus, practice and duplication of results are the keys.

Progress & Encouragement: Small wins lead to bigger ones and more importantly, confidence. Management must articulate to their employees that progress is essential to their growth. In a retail shop, consider that your employees may be students; their age and their resilience work well for them. They may not stay in your world forever, so help them see the big picture. Think of yourself as their teacher in the business world. You will get more respect and productivity while they are with you.

A goal will never be achieved if an action plan is not put into place, whether it is created by management or with the help of employees. Without a plan, even the most effective of goals quickly turns into wishful thinking. For example, a goal to raise sales by 25% over the next 12 months will not be achieved simply by telling salespeople to ‘sell more’ without any additional support or planning.

When set well, goals can be an invaluable tool to motivate higher staff performance and productivity. Goals provide employees with a challenge to work towards whilst focusing their efforts on what matters. On the other side, goals help employers manage performance, set expectations and reward staff for contributing where it’s needed most.
When setting goals, leaders must carefully consider how to ensure they are achievable, well-planned and supported, to avoid damaging staff morale and performance.

Great communicators don't just hear the words. They hear the meaning behind the words.

Ego drives many managers. They all desperately lack character. Many managers lack of character provides many examples of what not to do as a leader:

1. Mistreated their own people
2. Make decisions based on popularity.
3. Act irrationally in difficult times.
4. Harbored anger toward others.
5. Sought power out of insecurity.
6. Project an infallible image.
7. Blinded by his ego.

To improve your character and build a solid foundation of your own leadership,
you must:

1. Identify where you're weak or have taken shortcuts.
2. Look for patterns.
3. Apologize to those you've wronged.
4. Stay teachable and rebuild.

It doesn't matter when we start, it doesn't matter where we start, all that matters is that we start.

All products, services and great idea's, no matter how visionary, eventually become obsolete. But a visionary company does not necessarily become obsolete, not if it has the organizational ability to continually change and evolve beyond existing product life cycles. Built To Last Jim collins