Category: Leadership

The leadership category on Jay Wren’s website (jaywren.com) focuses on practical insights and strategies for effective leadership, particularly within a corporate or organizational context. It emphasizes the development of “authentic leaders” who prioritize self-awareness, honesty, and humility, fostering trust and success.

Key themes within this category include:

Authentic Leadership: Building trust through self-awareness, honesty, and humility.
Leadership Development: Providing actionable steps for companies to hire, train, and grow leaders, including principles of responsibility, authority, and accountability.
Creating Future Leaders: Highlighting the importance of internal leadership development for long-term growth, morale, loyalty, and engagement.
Measurable Success: Emphasizing that effective leadership is not just a concept but can be measured by results, with a focus on proactive training and mentorship.

In essence, Jay Wren’s leadership category offers guidance for individuals and organizations seeking to cultivate strong, ethical, and effective leaders who contribute to overall success.

Empowering Teams: How Leaders Create Success

Empowering Teams: How Leaders Create Success. When a team performs below the sum of its members’ abilities, has leadership failed?

“The greatest leaders empower the people they lead.” www.jaywren.com

Empowering Teams: Leaders use different methods to create powerful teams and reduce turnover. Here are some simple steps that any leader can use.

Empowering Teams: How Leaders Create Powerful Teams and Reduce Turnover.

Leaders use different methods to create powerful teams and reduce turnover.  Here are some methods that simply work.

Keep an open door with your team members.

It is one thing to ask your team members to respect your time.  It is quite another to block them off just because you can’t be bothered.

Encourage your team members to give you feedback and updates.   Set up a list of things that they must tell you about no matter what.

Give directions that can’t be misunderstood.

Tell the people what you want them to do.  Then ask them to tell you what they understand about what you have told them.

Having your team members do work that does not achieve the goals, only to have to do it again, frustrates them.

Giving them clear direction helps them be more successful and feel engaged and successful.

Text and Email with a Purpose.

Before you send a text or an email, write down the purpose of the message.

Use Critiques to Increase Competence.

Finding fault just discourages your team.  Take a minute to make sure that they understand what you expect them to do.

Criticism creates stress.  Helpful, clear direction creates engagement and increases competence.

Give Progress Updates and Interim Encouragement.

Check the progress your team is making on projects.  Update the team members with changes and corrections as work progresses.  Encourage team members to continue the good work they are doing.

Delegate, but don’t abdicate.

Empower team members to make decisions.  State clearly how much authority that they have and how you expect them to use that authority.

However, don’t just assume that they will do everything the way you expect.  Check in with them often to encourage them and to keep them focused.

Use Emotional Intelligence as a Tool for Success.

Emotional Intelligence is the process of responding with intelligence and giving direction based on the best interest of the business.  It is easy to let your ego take over and run roughshod over your team members.

Sometimes, you must be firm.  However, angry outbursts don’t work effectively with every team member.

Carefully gauge how you respond emotionally based on the conditions and based on the emotional intelligence of the team member.

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Fun: In What Way Can Fun Increase Productivity?

un: What are the things that you can do to reduce stress in the workplace? In what ways can we enjoy our work and can increase our productivity?

Fun: In What Way Can Fun Increase Productivity?

I enjoy my work.  The requirements of the job are simple yet fast paced.  The tools are a lot of fun:  email, Internet, desk phone, and a smartphone.  The clients and applicants are bright and creative, often very successful.  The information in my industry evolves in refreshing ways.

Saying “No” to Distractions

For me, to enjoy my work, I must say “No” to distractions.

Calling friends, surfing the web, playing video games are all distractions.

These things distract from my work. Furthermore, they from the things I enjoy in my work.

Distractions, of course, make me less productive.  They also create tension with the things I enjoy about my work.

By saying no to distractions when I am working, I can focus on the joy of work itself

The Present Moment

When we live in the present moment, we are not ruminating about the past. Nor are we worrying about the future.

In the present moment, we are using a part of our brain where thinking becomes a flow.  Our mind stops analyzing the details of our work.  We can enjoy doing our work.

How to Be Serious

People associate work with toil, stress, and pressure.  And, work can be filled with toil, stress, and pressure.

However, people who think this way are the people who choke when facing a challenge.  They are the place kicker who misses the extra point.  In basketball, they are the player who misses the winning layout.  They are the closer in baseball who walks in the winning run.

People who see challenges as fun still take their work seriously.  However, these people focus on their work and trust that the results will take care of themselves.

Cold Calls: How Do You Take the Chill Out of Cold Calls?

Cold calls: do you fear calling people you don’t know?  How do successful people open doors to opportunity through a simple phone call?

Cold Calls: How Do You Take the Chill Out of Cold Calls?

Cold calls: do you fear calling people you don’t know?  How do successful people open doors to opportunity through a simple phone call?

Here are some tips that will help you with cold calls.

Be Okay with Rejection

One of the things that make cold calling scary for many people is their fear of rejection.

Allow yourself to be okay with people telling you “No.”  Be okay with people being rude.  Even be okay with people hanging up on you.

None of this rejection is personal.  That is, the rejection is not about you.  The person who is being rude doesn’t even know you.

Have a Script.

Know what you want to say.  Rehearse your script.

Furthermore, develop a level comfort in giving your presentation that you can deviate from your script and return to it with ease.

Be Friendly and Flexible.

When you are making a cold call, you are asking people to give you their time and attention.  Be friendly.  Thank the buyers for their time.  Be flexible to deviate from your script when it stops working for you.

Listen and Allow Questions

Your buyer may be very interested in your offer.  However, they may need to ask questions to understand the purpose of your call.

If you can listen and allow questions, you can develop a skill for knowing when you are wasting your time.  When buyers have questions, they are giving you their attention.  Furthermore, they are giving you two pieces of information.  On one hand, your buyer needs more information.  However, on the other hand, your buyer may be showing you that your product will never fit the buyer’s needs.

Your Call is a Service to the Buyer.

When you understand that you are giving your buyer information your buyer needs to decide how your product fits their need, your attitude changes.  You release the pressure to sell.  You assume the of a person there to help the buyer.

Learning more about negotiation as a service will help you become more confident in making cold calls.

It’s Okay for Your Buyer to Raise Objections.

Your product might not fit your buyer needs.  Therefore, it is okay for your buyer to object or even say no.  You can say “thank you” and move on to the next call.

Allowing your buyer an opportunity to object to your presentation relieves the buyer from the pressure of feeling stuffed.

Furthermore, it takes the pressure for you to insist having to close the sale.  You will think more clearly.

Moreover, you will take the chill out of making cold calls.

Business Meetings: Bringing the Right Tools

Business Meetings: job interviews, sales calls, client service meetings, meetings within your own company.  What tools can add power to your presence?

Business Meetings: Bringing the Right Tools

What you bring to a business meeting is as important as the things you say or do in a business meeting.  Getting to a business meeting to discover that you do not have the things you need is not only embarrassing, it is often a business-meeting killer.  I recommend that you buy a portfolio case or a briefcase that you use just for meetings.  Keep the case stocked with the materials that you will take to every meeting.

When organizing your meeting case, make sure you bring the following items.

Bring several copies of presentations.

You should have a copy for your own use and a copy for each person on the meeting schedule.  Take extra copies for people who are not on the schedule but who might come into the meeting unannounced.  Sometimes having unexpected people join the meeting is a sign that the people are interested in what you must say or show.

Bring a list of the attendees.

Having this list will help you organize your notes about questions people have.  The list can also help you remember people’s names and the role of the people in the meeting.

Bring a list of recommendations.

For sales presentations and interviews, having a list of recommendations adds power to your professional credibility and creates excitement about the quality of your work.

Bring a brag book or portfolio.

A brag book contains samples of your work so that people can see the range of your success.  Furthermore, a brag book can help people visualize what you have accomplished.

Bring your laptop.

If you have powerhouse presentations that you can show more examples of your work, you can use your laptop as a dynamic tool.

Bring business cards.

Some people see business cards to verify your employment and verify your job title.  They show people that you are who you say you are.

Bring a notepad.

You need to keep track of contact and company information that you learn during your meetings.  A notepad is an effective way to make notes without distracting people the way using a smartphone or laptop might distract people when you are taking notes.

Bring three or four pens.

The extra pens help you relax that you have a pen that works.  In addition, it is wise to make sure you can help an attendee who does not have a pen for taking notes.

Leadership Traits: What are Four Traits Leaders Must Have?

Leadership Traits: Some teams have a manager but still suffer from a lack of leadership.  What traits help leaders raise the team standards and increase team success?

Leadership Traits: What are Four Traits Leaders Must Have?

Leaders have many traits.  Some of these traits are good traits that not all leaders have.  For example, a leader with charisma easily draws people to them.  Leaders who are more intelligent help the team make better decisions.  But what are some traits that you can develop and every leader must have?

Here are my ideas.

Self-honesty

Yes, not just honesty, but self-honesty.

Self-honesty is about you recognizing and correcting your mistakes.  It’s the honesty to recognize your weaknesses.

It is burying your ego so that you can accept the truths that stand between you and success.

To be successful takes more than overcoming lying, cheating, and stealing.  For that matter, there are successful liars, cheaters, and thieves.

But even successful thieves must be honest about their mistakes and their weaknesses.  Otherwise, they will never become more effective, successful thieves.

Furthermore, self-honesty might be the most overlooked of all leadership traits

Open-mindedness

A closed mind is the wall between ignorance and learning.  It is also a wall between the shared intelligence of the team and the mind of a boss.

Of all the leadership traits, open-mindedness might be the most important trait for creative, responsive teams.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (sometimes abbreviated “EI” or referred to as Emotional Quotient “EQ”) is the ability to identify your emotions and the emotions of other people. When leaders can manage their emotions to increase their performance, emotional intelligence becomes a skill.

Furthermore, the skill become the greatest when leaders can manage their emotions and the skills of their team to become more productive and successful teams.

People who have emotional intelligence know how to read people.  They have an intuitive sense of why people do things and how to motivate people to do things.

Ability to Grow

Leaders who continue to grow become a source of continuous growth of the team.  A team that continues to grow become more effective the longer the team stays together.

Teams that grow make the leap from short-term survival to long-term success.

Team Culture: Creating Success That Endures

Team Culture: Why do some teams pull together, even in the face of adversity? On the other hand, why do winning teams break down and go separate ways?

Team Culture: Creating Success That Endures

There are many things that characterize team culture.  One of those things is that they share common goals.  Second, team members share common interests.  Third, team members can find a pathway to interact towards the goal.

Defining the Goal

Teams come together over a common goal.  For example, Company A creates a team to increase customer satisfaction.

Common Interests

In putting a team together to increase customer satisfaction, a company picks people from different departments of a company to get a holistic view of the problem.  However, the team members must share a common interest in increasing customer satisfaction.

Common Pathway

If everyone on the team will work together to layout a common pathway to accomplishing the goal, the team can move into action.  On the other hand, teams without a common pathway will stumble over their differences.  For example, some team members may want to begin by brainstorming the problem.  One the other hand, other team members want to take a more formal, organized approach.  These team members may want to identify roles and create a schedule of tasks.

Before teams can become successful, team members must find a common pathway.

The Breakdown

Second, if some team members have no interests in the goal, they will likely contribute little and may even distract from the process.

Third, until the team can decide in which order they are going to work, little work will get done.  The team culture will become adversarial.  Brainstormers versus the Organizers.  In other words, they won’t be one team.  The team culture breaks down and the team becomes just a group of people who stumble with little or no progress toward the goal.

The Solution

The solution is to consider all three points when putting the team together.  Define the goal.  Select people who will commit to the goal.  Pick team members who have common ways for solving problems.

By following these three principles, you will create a team culture with a framework for success.

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