This is Part 1 of 4 in this series.

Here’s the thing, I have a strong belief that people know how to be a great leaders. I know this because most people know how they want to be led (kind of like the Golden Rule). But when you switch the roles around and all of a sudden you’re in charge of a team (like my previous post) you tend to forget (or ignore) a few things that stop you from being great!

This post is dedicated to those hard lessons I was taught through either advice or mistakes that I wanted to share.

Get off your seat and walk around

• One of the number one complaints I get when I talk to individual contributors is “I never see my manager,” “They are always behind the computer,” “Do they even know what I’m doing?” or even worse – “I have no clue what they’re doing.” The number one piece of advice I was given – talk to your team, everyday!
• There are things that you discover in these conversations that you may not get over email or chat or message board….
• Its sooo easy to come into work with 76545 unread emails organizing your day by tasks and never seeing the team you manage. How can someone be lead if they don’t see their leader?
• My advice – take some time everyday to say hi and schedule 15 minutes every 2 weeks for a 1:1 (Side-note – these 1:1′s matter, during crazy call volumes they were the first to get cut and my team was the first to notice, they always knew when their last 1:1 was and they kept me on track because they valued it)

People are always watching you… always

• Another thing that I learned on the floor was that your team is watching you, even if you don’t think they are. Another friend of mine who was a tenured manager once told me a story:

She was working hard on extra projects and staying late. She was a bit stressed out and she admitted that sometimes it showed but didn’t think too much of it. Then one day one of her team members asked he if she was ok, and then at anonymous review time it was noted that it looked like she couldn’t handle the job, and some even went on to say they’d prefer someone who knew what they were doing. For all intents and purposes she did know what she was doing but it sure didn’t LOOK like it, and at the end of the day, perception is the reality of the team.

• That story isn’t meant to intimidate but to show that how you hold yourself matters to your team, if you are confident then your team can be confident in you. When you are frustrated and stressed it gives your team permission to stress out.

Check out Part 2 for more leadership tips people choose to ignore.