6 Essential Leadership Tips From The Education And Marketing Worlds

6 Essential Leadership Tips From The Education And Marketing Worlds
Summary: There are many essential leadership tips we can take from the education and marketing worlds. Read on to find out more!

The Essential Leadership Tips We Can Take From The Education And Marketing Worlds

Have you ever wondered what qualities are essential for leaders to be effective? Even if some of these traits don’t come naturally to you, the education and marketing worlds have many examples we can learn from. Following are 6 essential leadership tips that can help you cultivate habits that lead to implementing the best course of action in a number of different situations.

1. Be A Positive Influence On Your Colleagues

Whether or not your title includes the word manager, strong leaders are people who are able to have a positive influence on others. This means you lift others up, as opposed to tearing them down. This also means choosing to see the positive aspects in colleagues and work-related situations. Thinking positive also means creating processes to enable people to unlock the potential in themselves and others - regardless of whether you’re physically present. The key, then, is to inspire others to take your lead and expect the best of themselves and others. It’s amazing how much of a difference a positive leader can make to a team’s expectations and attitude.

2. Whatever You Do, Remain Calm

Employees look to managers and supervisors to provide a sense of calm strength in uncertain times. Maryville University cites Harvard Business Review as noting that “[O]ne of the top identifiers of a strong, competent leader is the ability to create an atmosphere of safety and trust”. Similar to the way that students need teachers and administrators to be the proverbial calm before the storm, employees need to know that you can guide them through turbulent times, should they arise.

3. Don’t Lose Sight Of The Forest For The Trees

Just as school administrators must reach out to district officials, if their school isn’t meeting district goals and standards, department managers must keep track of larger, over-arching department goals and be able to recognize if their employees need additional resources or guidance from the company operations, specialist or elsewhere. Don’t allow yourself to get bogged down in day-to-day details that prevent you from keeping an eye on long-term goals and company-wide procedures.

4. Be Internet Marketing-Savvy

While companies may have been safe relying on quality blog content and glossy mailbox ads ten years ago, the internet is a big place, and it demands a bit of SEO-savvy marketing in order to remain a player in the search engine rankings game. This is probably why, according to Conductor, there has been a 22% increase in SEO job positions in the top twenty cities, nationwide.

However, rather than merely  being a component of link building, high-quality site content is still an integral part of comprehensive internet marketing. The difference now is that content marketing and link building are more intricately entwined than in the past; this is, in part, because Google’s recent Penguin updates established more intelligent feelers able to pick up on less-than-organic keyword use and lower-quality writing.

5. Inspire Motivation And Engagement

What’s the point of having a leader if that person doesn’t inspire us to do great things? Fortune recommends creating meaningful connections between your employees’ values and those of your organization, in order to inspire deep levels of loyalty and interest in their work. If people feel valued and honored as individuals, they’re more likely to reflect that respect in the work they do for their company.

Along with genuine respect for your team members, you should try to act in a way that is inspiring to others — in other words, don’t use words without the actions to back them up. The bottom line is, your team needs a leader who inspires them to be their best every day.

6. Don’t Forget To Market Yourself

Although it may seem like marketing oneself is a luxury reserved for those with personal marketing assistants, Jasmine Sandler asserts, via Fast Company, that “Your credibility as a leader is at stake when prospects, the media, competitors, stockholders, and colleagues cannot find you online. Further, if…what is found is outdated, incomplete, negative, or inconsistent, then you…are at risk of being viewed as a poor leader”. Wow: That’s quite an assertion to make! Her point, I think, is that in such a mobile, online-connected world, the power of social media and PR cannot be overstated. Sandler emphasizes the importance of a personal mission statement, communication style, and brand image.

Final Word

Which qualities have you found to be the most important, in your experience as a team leader? Share your thoughts in the comments section, below.