How Executives Can Use NOW Power

Having "NOW Power" means being able to look at any situation without judgement while taking the essential steps to correct the course to offset a deficiency.

Lila sat down at her desk and sighed. Since being promoted to president of a marketing company, she had already made significant strides in streamlining operations and accruing the number of A-level clients. The problem was having her people work together. When she took over the company, there had been a culture of competitiveness among the staff. Lila wanted to shift that feeling of competition toward their competing firms. She needed her people to learn to work in close collaboration with each other so that they could meet the new demands that increasing business brought to the firm.

Promoting Teamwork

Lila’s issue is a common challenge today. A CEO, senior leader or manager faces the task of maintaining value-driven leadership in the face of constant pressure, changing trends and technology and shifting customer preferences. When a company faces rapid growth, it encounters greater challenges and heightened stress levels due to a bigger workload, doing more with less, rapid hiring, ensuring the well-being of team members and maintaining operational processes and business goals.

The solution is to encourage a company culture where all employees from top to bottom know they are in it together. After all, you succeed when others succeed. The collaboration culture requires a conscious effort on everyone’s part. Management understands that people are their biggest asset. Developing excellent relationship skills between you and your people and promoting teamwork will go a long way toward meeting your company or department goals. All organizations work within teams, whether they consist of the entire staff or selected groups of employees established to deal with particular issues.

It Starts At The Top

Attitudes impact organizations. A negative attitude can create a downward spiral within the team; a positive attitude can uplift the team even in the hardest times. When team members are steering the boat in different directions, it lowers morale and performance. The team’s discord affects individual members. As a result, it hampers innovation, productivity and the profitability of the organization. Attitude leads to success or failure.

Teams excel when humanistic values focus on purpose, encouragement, real-time feedback and reinforcing structures. Motivated team members play a significant role in each other’s personal, professional and financial success because they achieve the company’s goals as a cohesive unit. When you work as a team, everybody is involved in some way in the planning, designing, developing and implementing of the vision and mission. When the team sees positive results, everyone cheers and celebrates.

Use "NOW Power" To Aid Team Development

Having "NOW Power" means being able to look at any situation without judgement while taking the essential steps to correct the course to offset a deficiency. This skill of objective perception of circumstances will help a leader establish that sense of team unity needed in an organization for both overall success and the triumph of a specific team.

Another crucial component is understanding an employee’s contributions to the company. Again, this applies to everyone from the CEO down to an entry-level staffer. A person’s individual and personal goals matter. I have seen managers push the company’s goals so much that they run over an individual’s needs. As a CEO or manager, you have your own personal and professional goals — and so do your teams. Being mindful of that allows each person to feel respected, so they can successfully come together to work with others.

Assess your leadership by examining if:

• Your decisions are congruent with your values and actions
• You value and acknowledge people’s contributions
• Your words and actions show that you have your employees’ backs
• You encourage your employees to be true to themselves
• You foster a culture where team members have each other’s best interests at heart
• You encourage employees to make their own decisions
• You demonstrate that you can accept and learn from failures

Any job goes better when approached from this vantage point. When a team experiences leadership in action and respect, warmth and dignity in the workplace, each member will excel with right guidance and direction.

Three Essential Skills For Positive Leadership

Whether you are in charge of a small team or the entire company, you set the standard of leading effectively. My leadership philosophy boils down to mastery of three essential skills:

1. Acknowledging situations: Whether on a macro or micro scale, having a clear understanding of what you face is imperative. People's talents, time and money are wasted if there is no clear comprehension of the challenge at hand or the goal to solve it.

2. Listen: The saying goes, "We have two ears and one mouth because we should listen twice as much as we talk." When you listen to your team, that affirmation of their importance does wonders for morale and performance. You also gain valuable insight to the situation and the ability to coach accordingly.

3. Define the team: While you certainly need to look at your entire company or department as a team, you are going to have many sub-teams established, either on a permanent or ad-hoc basis. Teams prosper when they are defined with mission, goals and support.

You may at times make unpopular decisions, disappoint your employees or make mistakes. But at the end of the day, you will thrive if you are creating a culture where your employees and team members can be true to themselves as well. These are the basic concepts to learn, understand and implement for a cohesive team. When you master the concepts of positive leadership, the sky is the limit.

Article originally published in Forbes.