Jill Christensen
Jill ChristensenAuthor Blogger
Jill Christensen is a guest blogger for EmpowerPoints, an employee engagement expert, best-selling author, and international keynote speaker. She is a Top 100 Global Employee Engagement Influencer, authored the best-selling book, If Not You, Who?, and works with the best and brightest global leaders to improve productivity and retention, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth by re-engaging employees. Jill’s Website | LinkedIn Profile

In my keynote speech, I share that with leadership comes an enormous responsibility – to ensure your company succeeds.  Leaders are dealers in hope, and with every hand they place on the table, they are betting on the future success or failure of the organization.

Pat Rigsby coaches entrepreneurs to build their ideal business.  At the age of 23 she became a college baseball coach, so she had to quickly learn about leadership.  She says she did that by reading books written by respected leadership experts, but found that she learned most by doing every single day on the field.  Rigsby recently penned an article in Forbes.com where she shares four principles to be a better leader.

  • The golden rule still works. Treat people the way you want to be treated.
  • Get everybody rowing together. When you and your people all believe in and work toward the same goals, you’ve got a much greater chance of achieving them because you’re all rowing in unison.
  • Catch people doing something right and reward them. When you hand off a responsibility or give a new role to a trusted employee, 90% to 95% of what they do is going to be spot on. Unfortunately, a lot of leaders shine a spotlight on the 5% or 10% that goes wrong.
  • Do as you say. If you aren’t leading with integrity and living the values you want your business to express, you can’t blame your people for not doing it either. Demonstrate the qualities you want your people to display and they’ll pick up on them.

WHAT CAN I DO?  Like employee engagement, good leadership does not have to be difficult.  Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, set a clear direction and inspire people to rally around it, recognize people’s good work, and walk your talk.  And… keep reading those leadership books because we all know that one key trait of successful people is that they read.  To your growth!