Hello everybody. Welcome to Real Talk With Reginald D. 

So glad you stopped by to hang out with me for a minute. We're going to keep talking about being an effective leader. I'll call it part two. You know, a leader is only as good as their people. An effective leader has talented people on their team to help take the assignment to the next level. You do that by creating and attracting great talent. 

Let's look at why effective leadership is so important. Leaders have influence. They have serious influence over the people they are leading. You have to remember that your influence can have a serious impact on your people or your team either in a positive way or negative way. That's critical for you to know as a leader. If you are a reckless leader, then you need to rethink your role before you end up hurting your team. Leaders set the tone for their people. They put them in the best position to be successful. Effective leaders manage the pace of the mission. The reason you manage, and you set the pace is because you are protecting your people or your team from getting burnt out. Because if they get burnt out, then they won't be affective as they should be. And oftentimes that leads to discouragement and eventually people will quit. 

As an effective leader you have to protect your people's heart and their passion. You have to remove unnecessary challenges and pain from your team when trying to achieve a goal. Leaders are result driven; I get that. But you must understand that results with unnecessary pain is not worth celebrating. As a leader. The top golden rule is to keep people inspired. Make people feel good about themselves, make them feel like they can accomplish anything they set out to do. Continue to encourage them and then challenge them. Now it's critical that you give encouragement with the challenge because if you challenge your people without encouragement then it will start to appear as if you are given orders. Now you're looking like a boss instead of a leader. Leaders listen to your people and listen to their ideas. Let them be a voice, be heard and let them be part of something, which makes people feel appreciated and empowered. They need that from you as a leader. Now I remember one day somebody came into my office and they were talking about something that they were passionate about. But to me what he was saying didn't really make any sense. And I cut him off and I said oh, so you want to do ABC and D? Basically, he looked at me and he said whatever man. He walked out. He came back about two minutes later and said that basically I hit him in his gut. I hurt him by not listening to him.  I apologized for it, because that's what we do as leaders. And then I sat down and said Hey, let me hear you all the way. I cut him off and I should never have done that. 

Now I know that a leader and most leaders, they lead differently. But if there's one universal halty that the best leaders share, it's this they lead by example. If you want to create a culture of honesty with your team, then you're going to have to cultivate honesty in yourself. If you want your team to be passionate then as a leader bring passion with you. Every day leaders have a trickledown effect on their people and their team. If you want greatness, then you have to be great. If you're lazy and slack then your people and your team will be lazy and slack because that's all they see is you and your ways, so if you want to inspire your team, start being an example. Remember this, leading by example is how you become a role model. 

Now as an effective leader you have to understand your impact. You have to understand that you are a major inspiration in a person's life both at work and at home. How they are treated and how you treat your people at work is going to affect how they are at work or in their personal life and vice versa. If you are the head of your household, which is a leader, the way you treat your people at home will affect the way they perform at work or school. As a leader you must understand the impact your leadership has on your team and the responsibility that comes with it. Effective leaders don't damage people, they repair people. They take what somebody else did to them and begin to nurture and encourage and build up their team to flourish.  Effective leaders don't damage people, they repair damaged people. Look, there are two ways to build the biggest building. You can build the biggest building, or you can tear down everyone else's building to have the biggest building. 

Become the type of leader that people will follow even if you have no title or a position. Now as a leader you must embrace the truth. You can't be a great leader and a liar at the same time. Dishonesty will breed dishonesty and the vision, and the purpose will suffer because of that. As a leader you can't create a dishonest culture in your team. You can prevent this by being honest yourself from the beginning. You have to make telling the truth non-negotiable.  Never compromise your integrity. Do what you say you are going to do. 

Let's look at it like this. If you tell your team that you all are going to raise some money to buy food for the hungry and then you all ended up going out here raising all of this money and then the leader turns around and sells the food to the people instead of giving it to them. See that's when a leader's integrity and credibility will be tarnished and destroyed. Never underestimate the power of personal integrity. You have to do everything right. 

As an effective leader, you have to fix what you can control and let go of the rest. Being an effective leader is not about making everything perfect. It's about figuring out where you and your team can have the most impact and focus on those things. Do not combine what you can have impact on with what you can't have impact on. It will overload your team lessen than the pressure. By removing the unnecessary and focus on the necessary, this will allow your team to be more focused and more impactful. As leader, you should remember this prayer God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and give me the courage to change the things I can and give me the wisdom to know the difference. 

Remember leaders, focus on where you can have a positive impact and let go of what you can't control and make sure you know the difference. Now cater your leadership style to your team. You got to know this and have to understand this. If you want to elevate your people or your team, you need to be willing and able to adjust your leadership style. You have to remember that some people don't respond well with the hands-on approach. So let them do things their own way and make yourself available if need be. Then you might have another team member that responds well with the hands-on approach but may struggle to get things done and needs more structure and guidance. Now keep in mind they are both valuable. But the most valuable thing is that it forces you to change up your leadership style and not be one dimensional. It will also make your team more successful when they are getting the type of leadership they need. As an effective leader, you always put people first. It's not about you, it's about your people. Effective leaders know how to treat their people. It burns me up to see leaders fail to treat people equally. Now most don't do it on purpose. They are just not in tune like everybody else. But it looks bad as a leader. 

Listen, the person that's the custodian and going around cleaning the bathrooms is just as important as the CEO. The person up front answering the phone calls and getting all the headache calls, is just as important as the CEO. It burns me up to see leaders walk past them. And don't say a simple good morning. Do you know if you speak to them and acknowledge them, how that would make them feel? They already cleaned the bathrooms, and they already had a job that's probably paying less than any other job in the building. The least you can do is speak to them, sit down, have a cup of coffee with them, take them to lunch, learn about them, learn about their families and make sure you remember their name and call them by their name every time you see them. If you haven't seen them in a couple of days, go look for them and just tell them that you're checking on them, that you haven't seen them in a few days. If you're having a luncheon or something like that with your team, invite them in. 

I was at this meeting one time in corporate and we had a new president. I never met the president of the company. And he came up to me and he started talking to me. Well, there was an investor that came up to us and just interrupted our conversation. And I was willing to walk away because I'm pretty sure he had more to talk about with him than what we were going to talk about. But he stopped that investor and he said, I will get back with you in a few minutes. Let me finish talking to him. Do you know what that did to me? To this day, that stuck with me. He was more concerned about my name instead of what the investor was going to talk about. 

Real leaders value people, no matter where they come from or their status. I want you to remember this as leaders. Be mindful how you treat people. They may not look like it, but they very well could be the angel that God is trying to put in your life. Remember that as a leader. 

Thanks for tuning in to Real Talk With Reginald D. Don't forget to subscribe, share like and follow us on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Join us every Tuesday for new episodes on life, spirituality and leadership development. 

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