3 Easy Tips to Become a Better Leader

After 2+ years of being a team leader at 3 different teams of 2 different organizations, I can proudly say that, and I could find at least 5 people who would confirm this, I'm a pretty good leader. Behind any consistent success, there must be a pattern. So I sat down and try to figure out what I did right. The answers are quite simple.

Before you click away thinking it's just another vague Internet shit, I wrote this article with a clear "4 Nope criteria" in mind: no obvious tips, no unactionable advice, no practice-dependent techniques and no characteristic-alteration requirements. Simply put, once you notice and adapt these tips, you will become a better leader IMMEDIATELY.

My young and strong team that I'm lucky to work with for more than a year.

I/ Listen more, speak less

Communication is crucial in business setting. But just like everything else in life, communication isn't fair. Whatever kind of a relationship you have with your team, your word always has extra weight. Your word could be the unintentional ninja silently killing others ideas and motivations. But you know what's stronger than words? Action! Listening, when employed perfectly, will not only boost the team moral but also allow you time to build up your executives' ideas. If feedback isn't your strong forte, here's how you can exploit this tactic:

• Be a talk show moderator: If you're in a meeting, especially a brainstorm section, quickly go over the purpose of said meeting, then give the spotlight to your team. Keep the meeting orderly, encourage the shy guys and spread the positive energy is your job. Once everyone is done, only then, it's your turn.

• Don't say the answer: If your executive come to you asking for help, ask them to give you a debrief and their opinions of the situation. Sometime, your executives already have a solution but not quite sure. Sometime, people will naturally come up with solutions while they were going over the problems out loud. Whichever it is, let them finish their thoughts before jumping in. If their way is right and match your way, they will feel more empowering. If their way is wrong, you get to see their thinking pattern and the root of the mistake, which you can then fix more effectively.

• Be brief: When it's your time to speak, try to get through all your talking points in the shortest amount of time possible. If words or public speaking isn't your strength, AT LEAST avoid repeating or paraphrasing yourself.

This tip shares some similarity to that of Simon Sinek and the great Nelson Mandela.

II/ Spend more time thinking about what your team isn't doing

A man (or woman) is defined by their action. When the word leader or boss or manager comes to your mind, what are the adjectives that you want to use? Strong. Reliable. Confident. Visionary. Assertive. Inspiring. Now, does any of that anywhere related with the word "micro-management"? Micro-management is a lose-lose situation no matter how you slice it. You lost both money for that employee and your time to sit next to them. They lost their chance of learning and grow more dependent on you. Instead of spoon feeding them omelette , just give them a few notes of how to crack some eggs. With the new time that you gained from not being a control-freak, you can now do these things:

If someone in your team has to be micro-managed, let the other teammate do it instead.

• Find a pattern: look through your employees past works to find repeated mistakes. From there, try to find a way to fix it.

• Learn about your employees' hobbies: stalk their social pages (or talk to them on break like a non-psycho person) so you could reward them or form effective team bonding strategy.

• Identify obstacles in your employees' work and attempt to remove or pre-emptively block it. It could be anything from bad infrastructure, out-dated technology to lack of a framework or old policies that do more harm than good.

But Quanny, none of these are easy to follow. Well, that's the point. Instead of doing the familiar, easy task of an executive, this is what the leader should be involve with. Success or failure regarding these tasks are not as important as the fact that you care. And believe me, they will know that you care.

III/ Be consistent

Consistency is the most important virtue of best of the best of anything in any kind of situation. When you buy a phone, you don't want it to work only 50% of the time. When you hire your employee, you don't want a guy who is only smart if the sunshine 30 degree through his window. We human just really like to know FOR SURE what deal we are getting ourselves into (just like you wanna know for sure if your time spent reading this would be worth it). In that spirit, a great leader, despite all the unknown variables of the job or the constant changes in the industry, has to stay consistent. But consistent at what and how EXACTLY?

• Have 1 clear priority throughout: The line between good and bad work is sometimes blurry, especially in marketing. It's hard to accurately predict the success of a campaign during the planning stage when nobody has done anything similar. It's almost impossible to convince your client that design A is "better" than design B. My priority for big projects is customer satisfaction. For the small ones, I'm more concern about cost-efficiency. So whenever my team got into an obstacle, they will know what kind of solutions to suggest. In the long run, as their problem solving skill evolved, they feel more valuable as an employee and I have more time as a manager.

• Always say what you meant: Either you are a tough love macho man or a motivational cheerleader, just say what you mean. You don't want to be that type of leader where people question you why your statements from day 1 and day 2 don't match. I get the incentive of sugar coating your feedback or trying to dodge responsibilities, but don't let that short term gains tempted you. So if you don't meant it, just don't say it.

• Having catch phrases: Catch phrases are awesome. For example, "Hit it" is my catch phrase for "I think we should go for this great idea that I'm 90% sure will work well after everything we have discussed". Or whenever I'm pleasantly surprise at the quality of work my team was able to put out, I will say something in Japanese. Having these catch phrases being used repeatedly through similar contexts create an almost code-like commands/compliments that is super efficient while also demonstrate my appreciation to my employees without having to pat their head or saying something vanilla like "good job". Your catch phrases can be anything but make sure to use it in positive situations REPEATEDLY.

Me trying to explain the importance of consistency in communication using my inconsistent writing skill.

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These tips may seems a bit sketchy and silly at time, trust me, small things like this make a world of difference. But none of these would work if you are a horrible human being with selfish attitude and a greedy mindset. The only thing that can fix that shattered thing you called team dynamic is probably your resignation.

Quanny Nguyen