I saw a great post from Mark Miller last week on New Year’s resolutions for leaders – and it really challenged my thinking. I’m not sure what your leadership goals are for the new year, but if you haven’t thought about it, I’d suggest picking something from these ideas below.

1. Speak Up

Jack Welch made an observation in his book Winning that society and business generally seem to favor those who are energetic and extroverted above the rest. So where does that leave all the introverts (myself included)? Here’s a start: when you see something, say something. Whether it’s a safety concern, a new idea or simply providing your two cents’ worth, your voice will never be heard unless you take the opportunity to speak up.

2. Help Others Build Relationships

Nearly every organization struggles with poor communication, from top to bottom as well as sideways. One of the underlying factors I’ve found is that people simply don’t know each other. People who know each other are more likely to communicate and work well together. You may not be a social butterfly, but with a little initiative, you can still be a connector. Take a look at your network. Who do you know who needs to know someone else? What can you do to make an introduction?

3. Fight Off Pessimism

Pessimism – even under the guise of realism – will destroy your leadership influence. The reason is simple: no one wants to follow a pessimist. If you truly believe a project or initiative you are leading will fail, how can you expect anyone supporting you to believe differently? There is a direct relationship between expectations and results. Positive expectations get positive support which leads to positive results. Be an optimist.

4. Join a Cross-Functional Working Group

In any organization, there are generally three leadership opportunities: leading yourself, leading others and leading an organization. There is only so much room on the executive team, but a good way anyone can influence an entire organization is by joining a cross-functional working group. Instead of representing your function’s interests, you partner together to solve an organizational problem. And who knows, it could be great executive practice.

5. Smile

Dale Carnegie pointed out in How to Win Friends and Influence People that a smile is usually the first impression a person gives. In the business world, smiles lead to dollars because people prefer to do business with friendly people. A smile is the modern day game face. How’s yours?

6. Conduct an Experiment

Have you ever wanted to try something new, but felt you didn’t have the information you needed to know you would succeed? This over-reliance on research stymies people and organizations alike. Chip and Dan Heath propose an intuitive solution to this lack of action in their book Decisive. “Ooch.” Instead of waiting for all the data come in, conduct a small experiment to see if your idea can work. Why guess when you can know?

7. Learn Something New & Teach It to Others

Many organizations offer tuition assistance or provide a learning budget. Employees are sometimes required score a passing grade in the course to be eligible for reimbursement. But that’s usually where the expectation ends. The ROI on learning stays low unless people take the initiative to share what they’ve learned with others. If you engage in a development opportunity, host a lunch ‘n’ learn or ask for 15 minutes during your team meeting to spread the wealth of knowledge around.

7.5 Floss More

You haven’t gotten a lecture about flossing until you’ve gotten one from a high school buddy who is now a dentist. Maybe it’s not a leadership resolution per say, but my dentist friend told me recently that he always tells parents to floss in front of their kids because positive action examples are “more powerful than a million verbal reminders.” That’s a good leadership resolution for all of us: to set a positive example through our actions, whether flossing or anything else.

If you were to add another leadership resolution, what would it be?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

You’ve undoubtedly been asked this rhetorical question before. Apparently how you answer is supposed to quickly reveal whether you are an optimist or a pessimist – and perhaps a lot more about your inner worldview.

I’m not sure what the “right” answer to the the glass question is – although I always think it should somehow depend on what’s in the glass to begin with. But when it comes to being an optimist, I’m am sure of this: optimists are in high demand.

Here’s why.

Your Vision Won’t Last Without It

A vision is normally the first step for any change initiative. You’ve got to develop a clear picture of what the future could and should look like. But if you don’t believe you can bring the vision to life, why even bother to get started? That’s why leaders must be optimists. It’s not that they can’t see problems for what they are, but they use problems to fuel their vision of a better future.

You’ll Never Be Completely Sure

Can’t we just settle for being realists? After all, some of the criticisms of overly positive people is that they are naive, have their head in the clouds and are unrealistic. Author Mark Miller addresses this in The Heart of Leadership. He says expecting the best doesn’t mean ignoring the facts. We need to have as clear a grasp of reality as possible. The problem is that we’ll never be 100% sure of anything. There will always be uncertainty. That’s where optimism comes in. At the end of the day, each decision should be a calculated guess. But if you believe it will fail, you’ll never be able to enlist the support you need to pull it off.

Leaders must be optimists because of uncertainty, not despite it.

People Need It

In his book Winning, Jack Welch observes that upbeat managers with a positive outlook naturally tend to have teams made up of… upbeat employees with a positive outlook. It’s a fact that people respond positively to positive expectations.

But to take this a step further, probably the best tactic in human relations is to believe the best about people. Napoleon said that people are dealers in hope. A little hope doesn’t just go a long way. It could make all the difference in the world. Think about the teachers, coaches or bosses you’ve worked the hardest for. Chances are they saw what you could become and challenged you along the way.

Will you ever be wrong? Will people ever let you down? Of course they will. But that won’t stop you if you genuinely believe the best about them – for their sake, not yours.

No One Wants to Follow a Pessimist!

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shared in an interview at the Leadercast seminar in 2013 that leaders must be optimists simply because no one wants to follow a pessimist! This is really the bottom line. If you want to be a pessimist, that’s fine, but don’t expect people to line up behind you.

So where does that leave us: glass half empty or half full? I understand we all approach the question from a different stand point. Being positive can be a challenge sometimes, but when it comes down to it, optimism is a choice.

Will you make the choice to be an optimist today?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

It’s hard enough to want to delegate in the first place. Many leaders lack trust, are insecure or are control freaks. But once you get past those barriers, what happens when your followers can’t pull their weight? Let’s talk about a few ways managers can guide their projects so that everyone can contribute.

Your Team’s Performance is Your Responsibility

This should go without saying, yet it needs to be said. If you are the leader, you are responsible for the total collective performance of every person on your team. Most people understand this intuitively. A manager can’t explain to his executives, customers or clients that he couldn’t get the job done because one of his staff couldn’t pull their weight. But unfortunately it’s a major reason many great workers avoid management responsibilities. No one wants to manage a poor team and no one wants to be responsible for multiple jobs all of the time. So what can you do?

Not All Employees are the Same

We also know this is true, but our sense of fairness compels us to treat all our employees the same. That’s often the problem right there. Some employees are high performers and some aren’t. Some are highly experienced and some are new. Some work best while collaborating and some work best alone. Some will get all their work done ahead of time and some wait till the last minute. Of course it’s possible and sometimes necessary to remove under-performers through HR processes. But many times this isn’t the real need and doesn’t solve the problem. First, take the time to diagnose where your employees are on the performance scale. Work with them to create individual development plans for growth. Understand their career goals. Give as much responsibility as they can handle, with the stated goal of giving more in the future. Get to know their learning and working styles. None of these should excuse poor performance – and you’ll both be better for understanding.

Cast the Vision

When you launch a new project, don’t start by communicating the nitty-gritty details. Start with the bottom line up front (BLUF). At the end of the project, what will be accomplished? Explain the difference the project will make in the grander scheme of things. Communicate why it’s crucial for everyone to work as a team and address the benefit to them (WIIFM = what’s in it for me?).

Set Performance Expectations Upfront

Next, for each team member, explain his or her role on the project and the tasks that go with the role. Be as explicit as you can be about the responsibility and as detailed as you need to be about the tasks. For inexperienced employees, this could mean explaining the implied tasks until they reach the next stage of competence.

Make a Project Plan

A project plan is basically a document that breaks down all of the tasks and milestones of a project, their due dates and who will be responsible for each one. I like to use Microsoft® Project or Excel. It sounds complicated, but it’s really not. Think of it as creating an outline before writing an article. It doesn’t have to be perfect and it will most likely change (multiple times). But a project plan allows all parties to be on the same page at all times. Even more, it establishes an added level of responsibility and accountability. It’s up to me to follow through on all the project plan items assigned to my name. In project meetings, it’s up to me to provide updates on my items like percentage completed, red flags, additional information needed, etc. By the way, don’t just assign completion dates on your project plans. Assign first draft dates, review dates, dates to incorporate feedback, test/pilot dates and final dates – all as needed.

Set Leadership Expectations Upfront

Finally, how will you support the team? This should be addressed beforehand as well. If you manage the project plan, make sure everyone knows when their updates are due. (Management challenge: delegate the project plan responsibilities). Schedule review meetings with each individual (if possible) so all parties will have the opportunity to address questions and concerns before there’s an issue. And clarify what you want the employees to do when they need help (hint: they don’t always have to come to you first).

Project management can be exhilarating and exhausting, rewarding and trying. Most of us have been on projects we loved and ones we hated. Usually, the difference was leadership.

What else would you add on how to tactically execute a project effectively?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Several years later, I got a lead role on a consulting assignment to develop a plan to significantly improve an organization’s corporate culture. In fact, I was told this was my chance to “really shape the project.” I spent the next few months analyzing employee survey data, referencing strategic plans and carefully crafting a solution. Finally I got to present my plan to a senior client in a boardroom meeting and was thrilled when he accepted it. Now it was time to get to work. But much to my chagrin, a bigger problem soon emerged: no one wanted to take responsibility for seeing the plan through.

These experiences confirmed for me a simple but poignant lesson: you can’t want something for other people more than they want it for themselves. It doesn’t matter how much you care if they don’t.

This seems to go against the nature of empathy and basic altruism. But as a leadership principle, it’s proved to be true for me.

So what do you do when you do care? Here is the approach I’ve learned to take:

Inquire About Priority

When you talk, coach or consult with others, hopefully they trust you enough to share their challenges with you. I always try to ask three specific questions to quickly understand where another leader is coming from. But just like our own thoughts or mindless complaints, at any given time their concerns can range from short-term or inconsequential to long-term, significant or overwhelming. Not every problem carries equal weight and requires an immediate solution – or even any solution at all. Instead of assuming that a person is looking for answers, try to get a sense of the priority the challenge represents. There is a big difference between a level 1 “would be nice to fix” challenge and a level 5 “front page headline” challenge.

Understand Commitment

If I had to do the culture transformation project over again, I would have asked a simple question before I even got started: who from the client team will be the executive sponsor for this solution after the planning phase is finished? Not understanding local commitment was an oversight on my part. You can avoid that mistake by pressing the issue upfront. The perfect plan with no commitment provides no benefit. It’s a complete waste of time and effort. Not only will commitment help you manage your expectations, it will help the other party decide if a solution is worth pursuing in the first place.

Ask the Ultimate Question

I mentioned above how I used to take the responsibility to try and solve the leadership challenges I encountered. I don’t do this anymore. It was hard to resist at first, but I’ve learned a much better way. It comes in the form of what I call the ultimate leadership question:

How would you like me to support you?

This question almost works like magic. It leaves all the responsibility where it belongs: with the party who has a challenge. But it communicates that you are willing help. And it gives the other person a variety of choices to make: do they prefer to tackle this challenge on their own, would they like a helping hand or do they prefer to leave it be for another day?

Jack Welch said that if you don’t like people, you should find another job because leadership is 70% people development. If you’re going to be a leader, you need to care about other people. But caring about them shouldn’t supersede the principle of boundaries. To empower others to drive change, you must keep your initiative in check. If you find that you care more about their outcome than they do, you may be headed for trouble.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.