04 Dec 2012

3 Great Strategies to Lead Your Team to Success

Article on - 3 Great Strategies to Lead Your Team to Success

Leading teams is never a one time event – It is for every day, 365 days a year. ”Once a Leader, Always a Leader”. It has remained a challenging but fulfilling task for Directors, Department Heads and Managers when done successfully.

In my leadership seminars and workshops, attendees love to ask me the secrets of Successful Leaders at the workplace. I shared with them that on top of traits & personality, Great Leaders also adopt strategies to lead, communicate and motivate their teams. It is the combination of both that makes them successful.

In this post, I would like to share with you 3 Great Strategies to lead your team to success:


Strategy # 1 Lead More, Manage Less

To achieve leadership success, directors, department heads and managers need to lead more and manage less! Let me share with you a quote that captures the essence of the differences of managers and leaders:

Warren G. Bennis says: “Managers do things right, Leaders do the right things.”

Managers and leaders think and act differently. Managers in general like to think incrementally and solve work problems systematically. On the other hand, leaders tend to think more unconventionally and would explore ‘out of the box’ options to solve work issues. The main focus of leaders is people – their personal development and well-being. To them, people are equally important to the work results.

I feel it is important that superiors lead more and manage less if they want their teams to do better. I find that the directors and managers have a tendency to micro-manage their employees. It is better that they teach the employees how to do it and then leave them alone. Over time, the employees would learn, master the skills and deliver better outcomes.


Strategy # 2 The Yin and Yang of Leadership

Increasingly, we have more and more women managers taking on leadership roles at the workplace. Some staff tell me they prefer a male leader over a female leader because he is better. I beg to differ as I have met and worked with some really wonderful and successful female leaders.

We can learn from the Successful Female Leader (Yin) to:

  • Be Focused on the Details
  • Shower Motherly Love & Care for Employees
From the Successful Male Leader (Yang) we learn to:
  • See the Big Picture
  • Be The Strict Discipline Master
It is important for the managers and supervisors to learn and do both the Yin (Caring & Loving Staff) and Yang (Asserting for Work Results and Instilling Discipline) at the workplace. A fine balance between them is required for leadership success.


Strategy # 3 Power UP Your Team’s Performance

I would love to share 3 little secrets to power up your employees’ work performance:

Secret # 1 Acknowledge, Praise and Reward Great Performance

Secret # 2 Conduct Fair and Constructive Performance Appraisal Discussions

Secret # 3 Do not accept Mediocre Performance

Great Leadership is never a one time event. It remains a continuous process to be fine-tuned over the days, weeks, months and even years. I strongly encourage you to learn and apply these 3 strategies to achieve leadership success in your team.



Contributed by Ken Wong of ProActive Training and Education Pte Ltd. Ken Wong is a leadership coach, certified management consultant, professional seminar speaker and entrepreneur with more than 16 years of corporate training & coaching experience in Asia.