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I need a hero!

Written by: Kirsten Hemingway

Article Overview: Flexible working needs great leaders, this article looks at what a great leader should be.

I need a hero!

‘Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods,

Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?'

(Jim Steinman, 1984)

There is nothing as empowering (or sexy) as having a great leader as a boss - someone who encourages and motivates, always directing without judging. It's comforting to know that the organisation is in safe hands and someone with their eye on the horizon is at the tiller.

So where are they then? - these ‘gods', who are the people with the safe hands and the twinkly eyes.

Modern leaders are under more pressure than ever to perform. We criticise rather than trust them. Or are we more cynical? ? Do we not believe? Or do we want to take over as the leader, so we challenge them to make us feel good about our skills? Do leaders trust us - or do they want to control us? Belief in human nature is empowering - though people can get it wrong sometimes and managing the fallout is also a skill of great leadership.

Former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Sam Rayburn said, "You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too."

Leaders are often flawed. There are stories about the colourful private lives of the leaders, such as Napoleon, John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill, to name but a few. And look at our modern day leaders - what about poor old Sven? It can't have been easy trying to run a football team with all that attention on your private life.

We remember the tough leaders who are dismissive of others. You only have to watch Dragons' Den to see how the ‘Dragons' - our business leaders - dispense cruel wisdom to peoples' ideas and dreams. It makes great television, but surely this is not what great leadership is about?

We see great leaders taking hard decisions, but are they? Maggie Thatcher was a great political leader (we are probably only just realising how good she was). She went against the popular opinion - and her credibility vanished.

Leadership is about trust. Sam Rayburn is right - we need to follow and trust all the people we lead. The transaction is mutual - sometimes we encourage them; sometimes they encourage us. As leaders, our job is to steer, not to control.

So what makes great leaders great? Great leaders communicate. They listen first and make sure they understand what is said before making the final decision. They check that decision, they worry about it, they continue to ask and find evidence to support it - they are the holders of collective thought. They can see the consequence of actions and take in to account everybody's view. They know that without people who climb the masts to trim the sails in all weathers very little would be achieved. They know that it is these people who are the real ‘heroes'.

All this is difficult enough when we work in close proximity with our people and teams and we see them every day. So how do we go about doing that, when the people we lead are not next to us every day? Leading and managing remote teams needs the same level of contact as managing a team that you ‘sit' with, but with ‘knobs' on.

Leaders of remote workers and virtual teams need to make even more sure that the people they lead are convinced that the hand on the tiller is a steady one and that the direction in which they are going is the right one. Leaders also need to be confident that their people will turn out and make that extra effort when the going gets tough.

So along with the conventional key leadership skills, in order to get the best from their ‘heroes', leaders of virtual teams need to have a few more strings to their bow. In particular, they need to focus on being an interactive leader. The medium is very much the message and communication needs to be encouraged by using the right medium - the one that they use. Specifically, this means:

• Using consistent language. Make sure that you speak to the press or contribute to magazines in the same way as you do with your team - that way they will recognise you
• Making time for people. Set up a ‘communications' plan around each other's day - and stick to it. This will give people comfort and reassurance to know that you are setting aside time for everyone.
• Being available. Always be willing to answer the phone and call people regularly.
• Keeping in contact. Get together - whenever you can.
• Giving constructive feedback. Comment in detail precisely and accurately on what they are achieving.
• Appreciating appreciation. Enjoy it when they say how well you have done and tell them that you appreciate it too.

Remote working is the way of the future. More and more people need space to live their lives, rather than just doing work. And being able to steer these self-motivated and courageous champions through the choppy waters of business now comes as an essential part of the leadership territory.

Heroes? Heroes are who we aspire to be - great leaders are the ones who make us heroes.

Related Articles
  Who's Your Hero and What Would They Do?
  Help Your Clients Be Heroes
  Courage
  Create Hero’s Everywhere
  The Heroes Control Their Business

Article Tags: business leaders, dragons den, fallout, football team, great leaders, human nature, jim steinman, john f kennedy, maggie thatcher, political leader, private life, private lives, safe hands, sam rayburn, speaker of the united states house of representatives, streetwise, tiller, twinkly eyes, united states house of representatives, winston churchill



Related Forum Posts
Re: Are you a Support Hero Or a Support Zero - Most of my sites aren't the type that require much support. But I have always been one to answer questions I do get in a timely manner and try to help as much as I can. So, I guess I am a support hero!
Are you a Support Hero Or a Support Zero - Are you a support Hero or a support Zero ?? Many websites fail not because they have bad products or their prices are to high but simply because they forgot to have a decent support system for their visitors. Support needs to be high on the agenda if your business venture is to survive in this day and age and I'm not just talking about setting up an FAQ page and hoping for the best as a lot of sites do, I am talking having people on hand to answer questions and provide the old fashioned form of support that says so much about a company. We have all tried to contact a certain company on the telephone only to find ourselves running around in circles listening to extensive menus and robotic voices telling us to push button 1 or to hash 4 only to find yet another menu and another bot telling us to choose yet another number, finally doing a full circle and listening to the first menu all over again. Or we have managed to successfully navigate through the menus only to find we are on hold for ages before we finally get to a real person who invariably hangs up on us, requiring that we suffer through the whole painful process yet again. Your website is no different if visitors cannot find their way around and they decide to hit the contact us link and leave an email requesting assistance you can be sure they don't expect to wait days or weeks for an answer and nor should they, it is in your own best interests to deal with their inquiry as quickly as possible the most they should have to wait is 24 hours before an answer is sent to them. There are a few sites i could name that provide the worst level of support i have ever seen one of them a forum where the support is so bad that the boards regularly get spammed with porn or pirated designer wear or illegal drugs for sale, these posts can remain there for weeks before a moderator or admin decide to remove them, customers there fair no better they pay a premium to have their articles submitted but scanning the forum it is filled with angry complaints from people that have paid good money months before yet their articles remain pending approval, this sort of laziness on the part of the site owners and operators is criminal, they are taking money under false pretenses their advertising states rapid inclusion and distribution yet by the time they finally approve the poor authors article the information it contains is months out of date. The bottom line is that the better you support your visitors the more sales you will make and you will be referred to other people your clients know, you and your site are rated and classified by the level of support you are willing to provide so it's important you aim to be a support hero otherwise one day you'll find your sales drop to zero.


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