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Ask to be judged

Finding out what others think of your leadership skills can really help you change for the better. Sometimes leaders can be so wrapped up in appraising others, that they do not seek appraisal from below, only from their own superiors. Your team is the best source of feedback, because they are on the receiving end of your “skills” every day. Honesty should be encouraged, but bear in mind that it may only be anonymous feedback that holds the truth if your team believes you are going to use it against them, or become defensive about what they say. If you have created a trusting and open environment, this should not be a problem.

Don’t abuse your power

If people are questioning why certain things are done, or the logic of decisions, never pull rank in response. Your team should feel empowered, if only by you taking the time to explain the rationale for any decisions that have been made. Your team must be on your side. This will not happen by you telling them that the decision is the right one because you are the boss. Your team may not agree, but they should know why a situation is how it is.

Your team is intelligent and can be trusted

Your team should be allowed to take actions and make decisions. Trust is a vital component of leadership skills. If you can’t trust people to do their jobs, then you have the wrong people, or you’re not managing them properly. Let them do what they are there to do without peering over their shoulders every fifteen minutes, asking what they are doing with their time.

Listen

Truly listening to your team is one of the greatest leadership skills. Good listeners come across as genuinely interested, empathetic, and concerned to find out what’s going on. All great leaders have great communication skills. Unhappy team members can only exist where their problems have not been aired. Create an environment where problems can be discussed so that solutions can be found.

Stop being an expert on everything

Leaders often achieve their positions by being proficient in a certain area, and thus will have an opinion on how to fix problems. They believe it’s better to tell someone what to do, or even to do it themselves, than give their team the opportunity to develop their own solutions, and therefore exercise their creativity.

Be constructive

Negativity breeds negativity. How you communicate has a profound effect on your team, as a whole and individually. Criticisms will always need to be made by leaders, but try to make them constructive, and deliver them without emotional attachment.

Judge your success by your team’s

The true success of a leader can be measured by the success of the people who work for them. You cannot be a successful leader of a failing team, just as you cannot be a successful general of a defeated army. Your focus should always be on building your team’s skills and removing obstacles in their way.

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Over eagerness to get the job done. We would understand that you may want to always put your best foot forward every single time - for your boss to notice that you are willing to do anything and everything to promote your business online. However, if you keep taking task after task without accomplishing anything, this move can prove detrimental to your work and business. Do not get too eager to show off, because this attitude will only distract you from completing your assigned task.

Fear can also be considered a distraction and the cause for you to lose your focus on your work. It is normal to feel scared, but letting the fear take over your work is a big “no, no” in any type of work environment.

Inability to manage your time properly. This will completely distract you from meeting your deadline. Proper time management is perfect to set your plans in motion.

Moving on to managing your work day activities: even constantly checking your email can distract you from your work. Even checking your favorite social networking media sites are also a distraction.

People in your workplace or at home can deter you from completing your tasks on time. Chit chats in between tasks, although can get your mind off the stress and pressure of work, can and will take a lot of your time, especially when the topic of conversation gets a bit juicy.

Digital devices such as your multi-media players, tablets, mobile phones, laptops and other gadgets can sometimes or often times the cause of delay. You wouldn’t want to hear an excuse that your employee was kept busy by a 30 minute phone call as the reason why he or she was not able to turn in her report on time, would you?

Thinking too much. Come on, if you keep thinking way too much and wandering off into lala land, day dreaming or coming up with ideas irrelevant to your tasks, you will not get anything done, that's for sure.

Anxiety and the pressure of handling too much tasks are two of the major culprits when it comes to working on projects and campaigns. If the pressure of then work at hand distracts you, then it would be safe to say that you can kiss work completion good bye.

Who wants to take in more work in the first place? Well, aside from the control freaks and the over eager employees, no one wants to be swamped with tasks that they know they can handle. But if you keep avoiding being given any task at all, then that would be a huge problem for you, your stay in the office and of course your business.

Lack of a sense of direction. Even if you are working on a single task or taking 10 tasks at the same time, you would need some sort of direction or the right mindset to make things work.