a report about teamwork as a leadership style

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Ben Neumann presents …

“Business Strategy Roadmap”

A Report About Teamwork As A Leadership Style

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How To Find The Best In People

To start this piece off, I'd like to share a quick quote with you: "I never met a man I didn't like" - Will Rogers. In this quote, Mr. Rogers was actually referring to Leon Trotsky (revolutionary and founder and leader of the Red Army) and the rest of the quote is as follows: "I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I didn't like. When you meet people, no matter what opinion you may have formed about them beforehand, … after you meet them and see their angle and their personality, … you can see a lot of good in all of them."

You see, Rogers took the time to get to know people, what made them

tick, what made them unique, and he found at least one admirable trait or characteristic in each of the people he met - although sometimes that took some effort. If you look at our "modern" society we have a very much of a “microwave mentality,” in which we make judgments and assumptions about people very quickly. If we're wrong about them, we spend very little time thinking about what our assumptions and judgments have done to that person.

Let's take our aesthetic judgments for example. You see somebody who is

fat and you simply assume they're greedy and eat too much because they enjoy it. But you rarely think about what drives that person to eat that way - do they eat for comfort, for example? Does that man or woman have a genetic predisposition to obesity? Here's another example. How about if you meet a person who has really bad acne, even in their adult years. Do you assume that they just don't wash themselves properly, or that they eat a diet filled with fatty food? Without knowing their medical history, you can never know what is causing their skin problems.

Keeping an open mind about the people you meet or work with each day is the key to finding

their virtues and the things you'll like most about them. Even if this person has disappointed you or caused you problems in the past, every person deserves the benefit of the doubt, and for them to be given an opportunity to show you how they can excel in specific areas of life and in work.

Project-based work can really help you see where a person's strengths and weaknesses are. So,

for example, the 'natural leaders' tend to come to the fore, your 'creative' people are there to give you 1,000 ideas a minute, and the 'project manager' type of people are happily adding structure to the whole thing.

Want a way to engage someone you may have a bad feeling about, but you know you have to

work with? It's an unpleasant situation, but there's a way to flip it in your favor. Here's how. Have an off-site team day, where you get to see how this person or these people behave outside of work. A lot of people have a work "face" and a separate "face" or persona for their real lives and until you know both sides to a person don't be too quick to judge them. A picnic is a safe call, but the bar could be even better! Who said going out shouldn't be a way to socialize, even if it's about work?



Why People Love Energetic Entrepreneurs

They say that laughter is infectious, but if that's true, then other emotional traits must be infectious too, right? After all, no one could prove that laughter is the only emotionally contagious 'thing.' This is something that all too many business people forget about when it comes to the workplace, and how their own energy affects other people around them, and the business as a whole.

You all know somebody in your workplace whose very presence around people is enough to

cheer the office up, and rally the team to work harder. These people spread a positive message to everyone they come in contact with. Then there is the person who is the "black cloud of despair" and people avoid them like the plague because their negative energy affects every single person they come in contact with - they make every working day feel longer and more difficult.

So it's worth remembering for entrepreneurs that when it comes to your business, your

employees are going to take all their emotional and physiological cues from you. For example, if you're slouching around the office with your shoulders slumped and mutter replies to people, it doesn't create the right "energy" for the workplace. That doesn't meant you need to screech into work on rollerblades and cartwheel to your desk (although that would look AWESOME, and probably go straight to YouTube). The point is this: your attitude and energy at work, every single day, will have a domino- effect on those people working with you.

If you want a shining example of how your own personal energy can affect your entire business

have a look at the Virgin brand and Richard Branson. Here's a guy who sold used records from a market stall when he was a kid, then opened a chain of record stores (remember vinyl, folks?). Then, Branson opened his own airline and rail service, and now he'll be the first entrepreneur to offer space tourism via the Virgin Galactic brand. But this isn't some boring old "suit" that barks orders at people - this is a guy who skydives, travels the world in hot air balloons, and tries to break world records - putting his life in danger several times while making those attempts.

Look at this crazy-ass boss!

But what does that mean for his business? Well, if you ask people who work for Virgin, you'll

find happy people who are treated well and who see their "boss" as somebody who cares and somebody who loves life. The energy that Richard Branson creates by pursuing his life and his goals with passion drives every single employee in his company forward in a way that other businesses can only glow green with envy over.

Your own personal energy and your zest for life and for your work will "flow" downwards to

the other people that work with and report to you. What kind of energy do you think you should be sending their way?



How To Add Fun To Any Internet Venture

The Internet has added a whole new lease of life to business ventures all over the world, and not just with the creation of online shopping and e-mail. The Internet also made it possible for small companies to be created by individuals, or very small teams, that made a major impact on the world of online business. Need proof of that? Google, Ebay, Paypal, Hostgator - the list goes on and on, but these were all small Internet ventures that became massive in the space of a few short years.

The Internet also added the aspect of these companies being run by young people who wanted to

do away with the idea of having a workplace that was dry, stuffy and boring. They didn't want mahogany desks, cigars and boardrooms where they roared orders at people. Instead they wanted fun environments where people were encouraged to be creative - because when people are having fun when they work, amazing things can happen. But how do you add fun to an Internet-based business?

There is one simple rule to remember "Work made fun gets done". This is the core principle of a

book called Fish! It is based on the very real business of the Pike Place market in Seattle. These guys figured out a way to not only make working in a fish market fun (yes, despite the smell and the mess and the cold), but they attracted audiences to watch them working each day. They enjoyed their jobs so much that other people came to watch them work and even join in!

So how does Fish! work? There are 7 basic principles. Here are some of them:

• Be There This simply means that when you're in work or working with another person, be emotionally present - listen to what people are really saying to you and focus on what you're doing.

• Play

In the same way that a child's perspective on the world can teach us huge life lessons, you also need an atmosphere in the workplace where fun and playing is not only acceptable but is encouraged.

• Make Their Day Contribute to your co-workers' projects and to your customers' businesses in a really meaningful way. Go that extra step that makes you exceptional. Vas Blagodarskiy, an entrepreneur from Maryland, recently asked a waiter at a restaurant, “How are you?” He smiled ear to ear, and said that he was the first one in a week to ask that. Little things make a huge difference. Every smile counts!

• Choose Your Attitude When you work you can choose to be pissed off the whole time or you can choose to enjoy

what you do. You also need to be aware of how your attitude affects everyone else around you. You can choose your attitude each day before you start work.

Does Fish! work? All you need to check are the thousands of testimonials out there that swear

to the effectiveness of these kinds of simple principles - when you actually put them to work, that is!
