Our purpose is that you always review what you understand by leadership and the way you lead teamwork. So, in addition to posts, every week you can check out here on the blog the inspiring quotes that most impact our thoughts and decisions. But today we did it differently. We searched for the thinker inside every leader among us. The opportunity came when Ian Mitchell asked in the Harvard Business Review Linkedin group: “What is the best leadership tip you were given?”. The best answers you can see below. But don’t think that the discussion ends here. Leave a comment in the post with your name, your role, and – most important! – your tip. The best ones will be published here!
John Mark Williams
Head of Breakthrough Programme
You can fool the people you work for, and you can fool the people you work with – you can’t fool the people who work for you.
Navendu Mahodaya
Sales Coach; Brand Management Advisory
Don’t ask me how to do your work! use your own head!
Kristina Howe
Global Digital Strategy Leader, Industrial Business at 3M
Always work to empower your team so that they eventually don’t need you.
Joseph Gedgaud
Marketing Consultant & Sales Manager
The first thing to convey to the people you are leading is why, than how, and lastly what. The passion that’s created when people know why will be a far better motivator than anything else.
Bill Montgomery
Sales Management Executive
Focus on the goals and the career advancements of those you lead. It is amazing how that comes back 10 fold!
Mark McMillion
Principal
Bloom where you’re 
planted. Stop worrying about THE job, do the one you have in an outstanding manner and success will follow.
Daniel Stoyanov
CEO
Always hire smarter people than yourself.
Michelle O’Donoghue
Innovative Sales and Marketing professional
The best way to achieve more from a team is to let go of things you’re inclined to do yourself in favour of building capability in others. Even if there is a gap between the outcome and your personal expectations in the short term, in the long term the results will be much better, the team more agile and you have created capacity (time) for you to personally work on something else.
Rick Richardson
MCE
This quote from Max DePree is great advice: “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.”
Julian Elliott
Customer & Channel Strategy Director
Create a safe team space where your team can experiement without fear of failure. Its amazing how creative and productive. the team can become if you can provide them a safety net they believe in (which can be invisible to the rest of the organisation)
Ishet Agrawal
MBA Student
As a leader, delegate but take full responsibility, the day you have made your subordinates leaders is the day you have become true leader.
Phil Morrison
Performance Pilgrim
Best advice to me as a young leader in 1990: If/when things go wrong, terribly wrong, for whatever reason, expect (be ready) for the team to look to you (be dependent upon you) for guidance on what coordinated action is required to respond effectively to the crisis. Such an occasion will confirm whether you are, or are not, a leader. Don’t be found wanting.
Andrew Hayward
Business Development Manager
Seek first to understand before you are understood. Stephen Covey.
Pete Branch
Head of Health Safety and Environment
You can’t change the business until you understand the business.
David Noble
CEO
“Don’t be trapped by dogma- which is living with the limitations of other people’s beliefs and prejudices”.
Eugene Grace
Chief Administrative Officer
Discipline to the end. When people approach the finish line, they tend to pull back and move onto something else. Part of the multi-tasking obsession. Or as coach would say, run through the finish line.
To make your leadership more impressive and intelligent, you should follow in real time the status of your company’s projects and know when they will be delivered. You should reduce, for example, the number of meetings and emails. But for this, there’s Runrun.it, the team management software adopted by more than 100,000 companies in 107 countries. Try it for free: http://runrun.it
