6 key leadership skills

Immediately after university, I became a leader. For 7 years I have worked in the restaurant business, event agency, labor protection and now I am engaged in financial consulting. In retrospect, I can see that my job was constantly putting out fires. I didn’t know how to plan, motivate employees, ask for results. I constantly tested some hypotheses, most of which had no effect.

Over the past year and a half, I have rethought my role as a leader. Now I calmly manage a team of 20 people, plan with 90% accuracy and know how much the company will earn by the end of the year. And all this is calm and without nerves.

In this article, I will highlight six key skills of a good leader. Of course, in my opinion.

1. Delegate

A leader does not have to be the best employee in his company and do absolutely everything in it. The main task of the head is to implement the strategy and ensure the net profit.

But the situation is often quite different. Instead of engaging in strategy, the leader gets bogged down in a routine. He calculates salaries, goes to the tax office, fills out reports, makes payments, unloads a gazelle with goods, draws a website, launches advertising … So the day has passed. And then they say: "The owner does not have days off."

I try to ask myself the question as often as possible: "What I am doing now leads me to the result?" If it is possible to automate or delegate a task and instead do more important things, I try to do this, freeing up time for strategic tasks.

It's scary to delegate. For example, I spent a long time keeping track of money at the company's cash desk. I did not dare to entrust this task to an assistant: I thought that he would not be able to categorize payments and would never understand all the nuances.

But nothing. I gathered my thoughts, gave instructions, at first helped a lot - and now I only confirm payments and check the work twice a month. As a result, I saved myself a week in a month.

2. Plan the result

All entrepreneurs think they are planning. At the beginning of the year, they say to themselves: “I want a red Audi A7” - here's the plan. But “want” and “plan” are different things.

“I want” is simply an unfounded desire. How to make money on this "Audi", you do not understand. You only understand what you want. The likelihood that this will actually happen is small. And if it does, it will only be due to a fortunate coincidence.

A "plan" is when you know in detail how to arrive at a result. For example, to make a plan for net income, you need to understand how expenses and income affect it.

Further - to write down all expenses for each month and control them in the process. Then plan income: create a sales funnel, break it down into stages, assign responsible persons - and control it again. This is already a plan, and not just a "Wishlist" - because it has grounds.

3. Motivate employees

Imagine two companies. In the first, employees come to work at 9:00, complete tasks on the list and leave at exactly 18:00. In the second, they approach tasks creatively, offer non-standard solutions and generally do their job with fire in their eyes. The difference is motivation.

A motivated employee is interested in his work. He does it not only for the sake of money, but also because he simply burns with it. To achieve this, I try to use the strengths of employees, give tasks that will help them self-actualize.

It is also important to provide enough resources to accomplish these interesting tasks. For example, a targetologist came to our company. Its strong point is setting up advertising campaigns, searching for audiences, testing hypotheses. He was initially motivated because he liked our project. Seems like an ideal situation.

But our advertising budget at that time was 5 thousand rubles. He would not be interested in working with such. Then we discussed what results the company will get if the budget gets bigger. We set a plan for requests from social networks and gradually began to increase the budget.

As a result, both the company benefits and the employee is interested. Everyone wins.

4. Filter Opportunities

Business trainings, for all their usefulness, often play a cruel joke with entrepreneurs. A charismatic speaker talks about sales, an entrepreneur gets inspired by the topic and runs to pump up sales. A week later, he goes to an automation workshop, and the same thing happens. Then finance, then something else, fifth, tenth. As a result, he does a little of everything - and, consider, does not do at all.

My company is cleaning up business finances. Many people like what we do, and they ask: “Don't you deal with personal finances? Why don't you invest? Why don't you debug business processes?"

And these are all really cool opportunities that we can take advantage of. And with the right approach, they will give results. But now we simply do not have enough resources to bring them to this result. And therefore, it is more efficient to stay in business finance and delve into it.

5. Think from the result

When I plan a net profit, I first answer the question of what I want. "Wishlist" must be real, so I evaluate the company's resources and, on their basis, draw up a plan for how I can come to the desired result.

Then I think about what indicators need to be achieved in sales, marketing, expenses and other areas. And only after that I think about concrete actions that will lead to a result.

To summarize, the way of thinking is: result → indicators → actions.

And often the opposite is true. In the company, everyone is doing something, getting some indicators, which together give an incomprehensible result. In such a regime, people have been testing hypotheses for years and do not achieve anything.

Here's an example. For the company to receive the planned profit, the sales manager must make 1,000,000 rubles a month. This is the result. To do this, he needs to process 200 applications with a conversion of 50% and an average check of 10,000 rubles. These are indicators. To achieve these numbers, he needs to formulate a value proposition, apply different sales techniques, and make funny jokes. These are actions.

And when on the contrary, it turns out like this. The sales manager has a proposal, knowledge of three techniques, and two prepared jokes. Using them, he gives out a conversion of 20% and an average check of 8,900 rubles. As a result - 356,000 rubles at the box office.

6. Choose from options

Imagine: the production director comes to the manager and says: “I have found new machines here. Are we buying? For me, such questions are an indicator that the question has not been sufficiently worked out.

An effective leader will insist on being presented with several options and shown how they will affect the company's bottom line. Otherwise, he limits his horizons regarding his decision and does not fully control the situation.

Until the manager realizes this role, most likely he will make decisions intuitively, listen to beautiful stories about the mythical successes of his employees, and work 27 hours a day. The result is endless trampling in one place.

I have formulated these six skills based on the results of 8 years of experience in management. With them, work has become more efficient, it is no longer limited to patching holes. Now I clearly understand that my role is to provide the company with the planned net profit. This is what I'm working on.

What skills do you consider to be the most important for a leader?