What’s the Best Leadership Style for Your Business?

Effective leadership is at the core of any successful business. A good leader knows how to motivate his employees and listen to their needs. He also has the skills required for managerial activities. The best leaders will approach each new project thoughtfully, see the lighter side of things when times are tough, and help others reach their career goals.

From situational leadership to transactional leadership, there are various ways to run a business. An experienced manager or CEO should be able to choose the right approach for the situation. Studies indicate that successful business owners combine two or more leadership styles. The goals and culture of an organization determine which one works best.

Here are the most popular leadership styles and their unique characteristics:

Autocratic Leadership

Managers who adopt this leadership style make decisions on their own. They rarely consult their team members, which can be useful in emergency situations that require immediate action. However, autocratic leadership rarely works in a democratic organization.

Small Businesses Owners: Outsource These Tasks to Grow Your Business

Small business owners have hundreds of tasks on their to-do list at any given time. It’s impossible for anyone to tackle them all by themselves. Even if you are a super human and can take care of these tasks yourself the question still remains – should you? Are you better off spending time on tasks that are directly tied to your core business instead of the ones that can be taken care of by others? Based on interviews with number of small business owners and opinion of experts the answer is unequivocal YES. By focusing on core competency and letting others take care of non-essential ones you will be able to focus on and grow the business. So what tasks are better suited to delegate to others? Here are few that easily come to mind.

• IT support – Technology has become an essential part of every business. You simply cannot operate business without computers, network routers, storage, etc. Maintaining these IT systems is not something that anyone can do. You are better off finding a company that can provide support for IT systems rather than doing it yourself.
• Real Estate Maintenance – Maintaining a building is another job that not everyone is suited to do. There are any number of things that can go wrong with the building. Finding a company that can send the right handyman to take care of them is a better approach than having someone on your payroll all the time.

Starting a Business? Don’t Forget About Your Employees!

Your new business venture can feel awfully lonely and empty if you don’t staff it with the right team members. Unless you have a business idea that can be solely run by yourself and the help of freelancers, you are going to need some employees. In fact, if you haven’t already gathered some interest from internet and local job listings, then you’re going a bit too fast with your new startup and you need to slow down before you crash and burn.

How to advertise positions

Make sure that you make a list of the available positions in your workplace. Do you need a receptionist? Perhaps you are looking for office works and administrators? Do you need a tech expert? What about a social media promotions expert?

As a startup that (probably) doesn’t have a lot of money, you need to make good use of flexible employees. Someone that does regular office work can also manage your social media accounts if they are internet-savvy, and many young workers are also great with tech and computers now and they can usually fix most common issues and even recommend new computer parts and equipment for your business. It’s these types of employees that are the most valuable for a business because not only are they hard working, motivated and flexible, they also have great capacity to grow into senior members of staff over the course of a few years that will become the founding pillars of your business when you grow from being a startup to a full-sized business.