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Learn how to be a good leader to improve your team's engagement and success. Learning to be a good leader can greatly impact the success of your team, your organisation, and yourself. To be an effective leader, you must understand your own motivations, strengths, and weaknesses. Great leaders connect with their team by facilitating open communication, encouraging employee growth and development. Read on for some ideas.  Engage in honest, open communication One of the most important elements of effective leadership is creating an open line of communication with your team members. Your own honesty and transparency should serve as an example for your team members. With the responsibility of being a team leader there comes the importance to be straightforward. Your business and its employees are a reflection of yourself. If you make honest and ethical behaviour the key value, your team will follow. Great leaders are able to suit their interactions and communication styles to each situation and team member, based on individual preferences. They take the time to get to know which communication mode is preferred by each team member (text, email, phone, or face-to-face). They are also great listeners and are authentically interested in other people. When you display active communication skills and transparency this can build trust among your team. It is important though to be genuine. There’s genuine, and there’s fake. Be the genuine one!  Connect with your team members Leading a group of people requires a mutual sense of understanding and trust between the leader and their team. To achieve this, leaders need to learn to connect. Look at it this way: being a “more human” leader requires positivity, purpose, empathy, compassion, humility, and love. This will put you on the road to genuine connections with the members of your team. When you build a real, personal connection with your teammates, the trust necessary to build a strong culture of accountability and exceptional performance comes naturally. If you know your team members’ personalities, interests, strengths, weaknesses, hobbies, and preferences, this will give you some insight into their goals and motivations.  Encourage personal and professional growth
Be the cheerleader of your team! This is an important part of being an effective leader. You need to be invested in their success and growth. A small budget (could be very small) to dedicate to the growth of your employees pays off hundredfold. There are so many options today, like on-demand, virtual (and) in-person learning, there’s a great opportunity to continue learning new skills or further developing existing ones. Empower your employees to take the time to learn. Employees like challenges and feeling the satisfaction of overcoming them. If it’s a tough client, a difficult sale, a hard situation, or whatever the case, it’s always good to let them take on these challenges. When leaders believe in their employees and give them the opportunity to learn and grow, they might be surprised at how much they can accomplish. Don’t be afraid to delegate tasks and encourage freedom and creativity.
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We live in an age of constant communication through multiple channels. Written correspondence can be as full of care and effort as a handwritten letter, or as “sweet and short” as a tweet or a text. The line between professional vs. personal and formal vs. informal addressing of someone can blur these days. Conversation channels have often changed how we write, but we are still human, and we all appreciate being approached in the correct context of a relationship. How we open and close our correspondence shows how much we know about the person we're speaking to and why we are contacting them. In today's world of content overload, we as careful writers want to ensure we engage each message and audience with language that fits.  Personal Correspondence If we're addressing someone we know well, i.e. a friend or a family member, a fail-safe salutation remains Dear (First Name). When sending an email, we usually write Hi, Hello, Greetings, or Good Morning, Good Afternoon, or Good Evening. Salutations in personal correspondence are followed with a comma (i.e. Dear Samantha,). In a phrase (i.e., including more than one word) the norm would be to capitalize all words if it stands alone (i.e. Good Afternoon) and capitalize only the first letter if it includes a personal address (i.e. Good afternoon, George). The closing phrase in personal written communication depends on the type of relationship and the tone the writer wants to convey. Just a few include:
The first word is typically the only one capitalized in a personal closing; however, we are free to capitalise all words if we want to. Also note that personal closings are followed by a comma (i.e. Your friend,).  Business Correspondence A business relationship can be close or distant, but in either case, we must remain aware of a professional context with proper boundaries and degrees of distance. The salutation Dear (Name) can be used as the writer sees appropriate in business correspondence. The name can be the recipient's first name, full name, or last name preceded by Mr., Mrs., or Ms. If unsure of a recipient's gender, include the full name and exclude the prefix. Salutations in business correspondence are followed by a colon (:) if formal or a comma if informal. Examples
In any case, be diligent about spelling names correctly, including a person's use of hyphens and second capital letters (i.e. Mary Perkins-McMurtry as opposed to Mary Perkins Mcmurtry). Often the salutation can include the person's title. Include the last name if it is known or exclude it if it isn't. This context will almost always be formal. Examples
 In today's business communication, we avoid the once-acceptable salutations Dear Sir or Madam and To Whom It May Concern. Such openings suggest the sender did not take the time to learn basic details about the recipient, and this may not make the best first impression.
To finish business correspondence, you can use one of several commonly accepted sign-offs as you believe fit. As with personal messages, first-word capitalization is considered standard.
Just like please and thank you, proper salutations and closings are small and simple investments that can help you reap desired returns. |
AuthorHi, I am Marion of Marion Metz Solutions Archives
February 2025
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