10 New Year’s Resolutions to Up Your Leadership Game in 2019

As we embark on a new year, most leaders are busy thinking about organizational goals; but does your list include leadership goals? Our goal at Peter Barron Stark Companies is to help you up your game as a leader in 2019. We encourage you to be intentional about adding the following leadership resolutions to your list to maximize your leadership potential and take your influence to new heights in the new year.  

1. Serve more. Recognize that your employees don’t work for you, you work for them.  Envision yourself as a servant of the needs they have to be successful; if they are going to accomplish their goals, it is your job to see that they get there.  The leader’s job is to communicate a clear, compelling vision for the future and then to support each employee in accomplishing his or her contribution to the vision. A great question to ask each employee is, “What do you need from me to be successful?”
2. Clarify your vision. As Stephen Covey once said about the habits of successful people, “Begin with the end in mind.”  Make sure every member of the team starts off the new year with a clear understanding of the desired future for 2019. Your vision should excite and motivate your team members.
3. Raise the bar. Your customers and clients are continually raising their expectations for the products and/or services you provide. To keep pace with these expectations, it will be vital for you to set higher targets on some of your most strategic goals. Set clear and measurable goals and expectations for each team member that support the new targets.
4. Invest in your people.  Create development plans for every employee and provide necessary training. A recent PwC study reported that 52 percent of millennials value opportunity for career progression over competitive wages and financial incentives (44 percent). Sixty-three percent of millennials in the same study report that their leadership skills are not being developed.
5. Expect innovation.  How do great companies stay ahead of their competition? They hire great people who, at the core of their DNA, want to innovate and then they make innovation everyone’s responsibility. For more information on creating a culture of innovation, check out our blog on “What’s Innovation Got to Do with It?”
6. Listen and act.  Listen more than you speak (that’s why we were given two ears and one mouth). Show your team members you value them by asking for their input and ideas. Listen. And most importantly, implement their good ideas.  Otherwise, asking could be perceived as an empty gesture.
7. Give feedback early and often.  Organizational assessments we conduct all too often indicate that employees do not receive regular or helpful feedback from managers and supervisors.  Make it a habit this year to provide employees frequent feedback on performance and progress. If you wait until the annual performance review, it’s too late for them to do anything about it; and then we wonder why employees are not meeting their goals.
8. Practice patience. Take a lesson from the best golfers; everyone needs a mulligan (do over) once in a while. Allow people to learn from their mistakes.
9. Stay fit.  Reduce your stress and increase your productivity by making it a priority to take care of yourself. Exercise regularly, eat a healthy diet, relax more and take time to balance your personal and professional life. What would that look like for you?
10. Give thanks.  If you are not sure how gratitude relates to leadership, think about this: What if none of your employees showed up for work today. How would you serve your customers and accomplish the day? If you think about this, it should be easy to be grateful for the people on your team. Find ways every day to show appreciation for the gifts they bring to your team.  Click here to read more about “Gratitude’s Role in Leadership.”

We hope you will resolve to make these 10 resolutions part of your personal leadership development plan in 2019 and watch your team exceed all expectations!  Happy New Year!