I love when we see something unique on our morning beach walks. This castle was built by layering of wet sand often dripped onto the rock and it was left for us to enjoy.
What do you leave in your path for others to find?
Every leader should take their responsibilities seriously and treat their position as one of great importance. Whether you manage one employee or a thousand, your actions and attitude will determine the success or failure of those who work below you. Even the best employee will fall to pieces in the face of a bad leader, and even the worst employee can rise to the expectations of a great motivator.
That being said, one position of leadership requires an extra level of care and vigilance when it comes to cultivating the right culture and producing the highest possible level of motivation and productivity within their employees. That position is the leader of a small business. Due to the small, intimate and hands-on nature of the position, the leader of a small business holds a truly disproportionate sway over their employees and their organization.
To successfully lead a small business you need to take great care of your own time and energy. All leaders lead by example, and need to appear to be someone worth following. Leaders of larger, more impersonal firms may be able to fake these qualities, but leaders of small businesses work so closely with their employees that few secrets can exist between them.
If you constantly run into problems of low energy, flagging motivation, lack of time, an inability to prioritize your work, and a near-constant disconnection with the larger picture of what your organization hopes to achieve, then you better believe your employees will notice your malaise, and eventually mirror it themselves. Any attempts to direct your employees when you are clearly incapable of taking care of yourself will be met with skepticism at best, and resentment-filled-refusal at worst.
As the leader of a small business you need to personally embody everything your organization stands for and you need to clearly demonstrate everything you expect from your employees.
Simply demonstrating a rock-solid command of your personal resources isnât enough. If you are the leader of a small business, you need to remain personally connected with your employees at all times.
The internal culture of a small business is incredibly intimate but itâs also often very stressful, centered on everyone constantly firing on all cylinders. If, in your work-oriented myopia, you lose sight of who your employees are as people, you will lose your ability to connect with them in a meaningful way. If you stop connecting with each of your employees on a one-on-one basis, then you will lose their trust and respect.
When you lose your employeeâs trust and respect you will lose the ability to speak with them candidly, to learn where they are feeling overwhelmed and where they feel they can contribute more to your shared goal. A small business quickly becomes something of a family with you at the head, and if you choose to embody the âdistant parentâ archetype your employees will return the favor and play the âsurly teenagerâ role, doing just enough to get by but never feeling understood or appreciated.
It isnât enough to embody incredible qualities while keeping your employees at a remove, just as it isnât enough to connect constantly with your employees but to fail to inspire them with your personal conduct. Yet by combining the two, you will become the sort of leader that every small business employee dreams of working for.
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Author’s Bio:
The post is written by Wilson Campbell. He is a HR professional, with an exceptional skills to understand knowledge and behavior of employees. He not only has subject matter expertise, but he is also adept in team building and team building activities.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
Blogging is a great way to make extra income or to work from home. You get to set your own hours, write about what interests you, and control your earnings potential. However, this type of work does not make you immune from tax responsibility. No matter how much you make blogging, and no matter if blogging is your primary job or just something you do on the side, you will have to report your earnings and pay taxes on them.
Before you get out your tax forms and start filing yourself, consider these reasons why you should hire an accountant to help you instead:
There are many overlooked benefits to working for someone else — namely, that a corporate employer pays payroll and social-security taxes on your behalf. If you earn more than $400 a year from your blogging work, you are considered “self-employed,” and you will have to pay your own payroll taxes and a self-employment tax. Depending on the type of work you do and how much you earn, you may have other tax obligations. An accountant can help you understand all of your responsibilities and ensure that you are being compliant with the law.
You know how so many large companies and the millionaires who run them are able to minimize the amount of taxes they pay? They hire accountants to help them find deductions. You can do the same.
Working for yourself entitles you to a number of deductions, which may include your cell phone bill, Internet service, computers and other equipment, part of your rent, items to give away on your blog, and more. An accountant can educate you about all the deductions to which you are entitled and help you minimize your tax obligation, helping you to keep more of your earnings.
Accountants have expertise in the tax code and can offer guidance about the intricate laws that govern small businesses. If you hire an accountant, you can get advice about best business practices as you grow. For example, you may learn that you need to improve your record-keeping practices, or maybe you’ll learn that buying a computer with energy-saving technology can entitle you to credits. Not only will an accountant help you shape the best tax situation in the current year, but he or she can also help you ensure the best financial health of your business going forward.
Did you overlook reporting earnings one year? Or did you incorrectly report some deductions? If previous reporting errors have resulted in an audit, an accountant can offer you advice on dealing with the IRS and on what your rights and responsibilities are. An audit can result in serious fines and other legal trouble. Hiring an accountant can ensure that you have someone working with you to fight for your interests and minimize the repercussions. If you hire an accountant to help you file your taxes, you are usually entitled to free assistance if an audit of that tax year is conducted.
No matter how much money you make blogging, you are required to report your earnings to the IRS and to pay the appropriate taxes. An accountant can offer you guidance and expertise to minimize your tax responsibility while still ensuring that you are in compliance with all the rules and regulations regarding your business.
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Author’s Bio:
Heather Green is a freelance writer for several regional magazines in North Carolina as well as a resident blogger for onlinenursingdegrees.org. Her writing experience includes fashion, business, health, agriculture and a wide range of other topics. Heather has just completed research on health care admin degrees and online physical therapy aide degrees
Thank you, Heather!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
One of my favorite contemporary artists is Chuck Close. He is famous for photo-realist portraits that will blow your mind. When youâre standing at the right distance, youâd swear it was a photograph, but if you come closer, you can see that the pixels are all made up of tiny blobs with a dot in the center.Your business must be accessible and recognizable from a distance and from close up, so you also need to pay attention to the details.
If your audience is viewing you from far away (e.g., via your social outpost on Twitter), do they clearly see the same message as close up (on your own website)? The tools and trappings may be different, but the impression should be the same.
Hereâs a low-tech exercise that gives you a quick look at your brand consistency:
Go to each online location where your brand lives (Facebook page, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn corporate page, main website, etc.), and literally print out the pages. Tape them to a wall.
Grab a cup of coffee, and stand back. Does it look focused, or does it look like fingerpainting?
Assess which pages donât contribute to the impression you want to build, and tweak them until they fit. Remember that cohesiveness doesnât mean sameness!
Consider your messaging from several perspectives, and the audience will recognize your artistry regardless of the medium.
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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O” Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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As I look back on every SOBCon event, a continuous them is …
Decide literally means to kill off all other options. But how do we choose the motivating strategic decision — the one that not only moves us forward, but also enlists, engages, and motivates people to join us in executing that decision?
Strategic decisions are built on understanding position and predicting.
On the most quantitative level, people are part of both position and prediction.
Yet too often we make decisions without considers how the decisions might impact the people who we want to keep closest to us.
Too often when we make decisions — especially important and urgent ones — our thinking narrows too tightly. We lose sight of the people and focus only on facts and information. We see the problem, but lose sight of the people who will help us achieve it.
Our decision is only an half strength if we don’t consider the people who execute it. Each of those people brings his or her thinking, traits, perceptions, and responses with individual goals and personal intentions.
How does a leader motivate people to support a strategic decision? A leader looks to the characteristics of the people he or she wants to move to action. Motivation is 100% about aligning goals — being mission critical to THEIR mission. Once we set our course and direction, the next strong step is to consider what fuels the people who will fuel our mission. The key to moving people to action is in how we communicate that decision. It’s important to reach out to the higher values that drive the members of the community.
The people we try to motivate will have have these five traits in differing levels. Addressing these traits when you communicate a strategic decision will increase your success in motivating people to move to action. Before you announce your decision, review these five questions.
You’ll know you’ve communicated well if your community starts selling you on the validity of your decision as they move to action.
you form strategy and make decisions that help you enlist the right team of people to carry out your life mission.
What do you consider when you want to motivate people to action?
Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
The biggest part of my business life takes place offline. For as much as I’m visible on Twitter and my blog, I’m most often on the phone or in offices listening and talking about how people think and respond in business situations — how we buy, how we create communities, how we rally to cause, and how we are moved by influences.
In those ongoing business conversations, people I work with and for sometimes bring up cases of negative social business behavior. I bring up a four points that we often lose sight of in such situations.
What to do about negative social business behavior?
Try the rule of fleas and mosquitoes.
What do we do with fleas and mosquitoes? When they keep their distance, we don’t even think about them. They’re irrelevant. When they bite us, we build environments where fleas and mosquitoes don’t thrive and flick them away on occasions we must. Then we get on with what makes our lives worth living, not bothering.
It’s easy to have a knee jerk reaction in a situation where many have tools to reach a few thousand people. So those fleas and mosquitoes, who choose to suck bits of blood for their own advantage can appear to be powerful. But only have the power that we give them. Be aware of what feeds them and remove it from your environment. Starve the fleas and mosquitoes of attention. Gratefully thank them for their wisdom and move on. The folks you want in your community don’t like fleas and mosquitoes either.
Focus your attention on giving food to what keeps you strong and protects you — the folks who already love you. Give the folks who love you even more attention. They’re the ones who deserve the explanations. Give them your commitment to continue doing what they already love about you. Let them know your trust won’t be bent or broken by voices who yell louder than they might. Invite them to be closer to you. Reward them. Celebrate them as heroes.
You’ll never go wrong by valuing the people who love you more than the fleas and mosquitoes.
Keep your head, your heart, and your adrenalin on the mission of the people who share your values.
Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!