Great team leaders can be hard to come by since many tend to overlook just how important office morale is. One way of boosting morale and ensuring employees have their eyes set on the company's goals is to make them emotionally invested in what the organization is working towards.
Ken and Scott Blanchard of Fast Company have found the best leaders are individuals who encourage employees to become self-motivated. "One big misconception otherwise promising managers have is the self-limiting belief that they have to choose between results and people," they write. "But fully half of great leadership is learning how to engage people emotionally — and it's something that can be learned."
Self-awareness is one important characteristic of successful leaders. Ken and Scott point out that sharing yourself with others in the office, while often scary, can help create an emotional experience in the office, thus opening your employees' hearts and building a network of trust.
"We call this identifying your leadership point of view — taking an inventory of who you are as a leader and how you got there. The goal is to create a leadership story that you can share with other people," they write.
A successful leader is one who is not just invested in the goals of the company they work for, but also in the people they work with. This gives them the ability to be a motivator while still being firm when the time calls for it.
Are you emotionally invested in your company's goals?
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