The best leaders are nearly always excellent communicators. Clear and productive communication between management and staff is a great stage-setter for a successful and rewarding workplace environment. Whether you feel that you’re already communicating well with your employees or know this is an area that needs polishing, it’s always wise to review some common-sense strategies.

Listen with Intent

The art of meaningful listening requires effort and practice, but it is well worth the effort in the end. Generally, most of us are pretty lousy listeners. Although we might keep our mouths shut, we’re mostly likely just biding our time until the other person is finished and we can have our say. We think we know what our conversation partner will say next, so we plan our responses, which means we are not honestly listening. How can we possibly understand what someone means if our attention is silently focused elsewhere? Pay attention and be an active listener. And whatever you do, don’t interrupt.

Pay Attention to Tone and Body Language 

Body language is often more telling than the words that leave our mouth. As you’re listening to your employee, be an active observer as well as an attentive listener. Body language experts assert that 90% of how we communicate is nonverbal, so what we do with our body and facial expressions are as powerful as the words we speak. Practice using open body language that indicates you are receptive and willing to enter into a healthy conversation. This can include leaving your arms by your sides instead of crossing them and leaning slightly toward the speaker.

Tone of voice is also important. Unless we listen to recordings of ourselves regularly, it’s hard for us to relate to how our voice sounds. Be aware that your voice may indicate how tired, stressed, bored or irritated you are – even if your words indicate otherwise.

Follow up on Conversations

Don’t depart from a meeting without restating what you just heard. That will go a long way to eliminating the possibility of misunderstandings. Also, get into the habit of sending a quick email recapping what was discussed in a meeting or other work-related gathering. Often, employees bring up questions or concerns during a meeting, so a prompt follow-up addressing those issues is a valuable communication tool that lets your staff know you were listening and that you care.

Great leaders know that a company’s fortunes will rise and fall on the contributions of its employees. Creating an environment that promotes open communication among all employees and supervisors will foster the trust and collaboration necessary for long-term success.

Diane Pierre-Louis is a writer for Bisk Education and covers a variety of topics related to higher education and the workplace, including effective leadership and conflict management.

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The Product Management Perspective: One of the best ways to show customers you care about them is to truly listen to them. Too often product managers hear the words coming out of a customer’s mouth and immediately start talking about how their product will solve the problem, rather than listening to find the root of the problem and seeking answers. Most product managers understand that customers are not always right. However, it is always in your best interest to listen to them and understand what they are saying.

When we understand how we’re deceived, we have the power to no longer be enslaved by the illusions and misperceptions that create personal, social and business crises. This is how we achieve freedom.

Each chapter deals with a compelling topic, with humor and emotion. I literally laughed out loud reading some parts and shed tears in others. Brad’s ability to teach principles through stories is second to none. For example, he discusses the terribly difficult business crises of Tylenol and Jack In The Box to drive home the point that bad situations can lead to great opportunities.

Brad teaches, “Anything is a blessing – illness, accident, injury, bad luck – depending on how we respond to it and grow from it.” He illustrates this with a powerful story about his brother Will, who became a quadriplegic after a terrible accident. Will almost died (actually did die and came back), never gave up hope, worked hard and eventually was able to walk.

Brad tells his own story about overcoming tremendous odds to become a top college athlete. “Helping others is the best way to help yourself.” He also developed what he calls the Ten A’s, “the magic formula behind the power of positive perception.” They are: acceptance, acknowledgement, acclamation, action, approval, appreciation, appraisal, achievement, accessibility and allegiance.

Beyond Illusions is an excellent (and quick) read that will change your life. It will improve your leadership and your outlook.

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The Product Management Perspective: Every product manager can benefit from the magic of positive perceptions. As the chief product evangelist you play a key role in keeping everyone engaged and optimistic about the work they’re doing. This book has valuable tools to help you win the fight.

I found two recent articles about Clayton Christensen that have increased my understanding about leadership: The first is published in the BYU Magazine’s Spring 2013 edition. (As a BYU alum I get the magazine in the mail; it will be available online in a few months.) The second article is an interview in Wired magazine. In this interview author Jeff Howe asks Christensen questions about his career and sheds thought-provoking light on how he became so important to the business world.

So how do leaders make lasting change? According to Christensen, you keep nimble and respond to up-and-coming innovations at the bottom of the market. You make a concerted effort to not let your company become vulnerable to what Christensen coined as disruptive innovation.

What’s even more important to Christensen is the application of his theories to individual lives; making lasting change in your personal life. He recently wrote the book How Will You Measure Your Life in response to his experiences with former classmates and students. Rather than attempting to explain it I will point you to a TED video where Clayton describes it himself.

If you really want to make lasting change in your life, understand these principles. In the end, says Christensen: “God will measure my life by the individual people that I have blessed.” That’s how you make lasting change.

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The Product Management Perspective: Product managers operate in a very interesting position (in light of Clayton Christensen’s theories): they need to innovate and keep their products viable. However, the very things they do to innovate lead to The Innovator’s Dilemma if not watched and guarded closely. Take a careful look at Christensen’s writings and talks, and look for ways to apply them in your role as product manager.

One recent article in Forbes magazine examined the interesting phenomenon behind a shift in today’s leadership principles. The article’s author asserts that old leadership models were based on power because business was essentially about competition.

Today’s more collaborative, creative business models, on the other hand, require leaders with high emotional intelligence – business leaders who can build trust among their colleagues and employees.

The bottom line: if you want to make it as a real leader in today’s business culture, you’ve got to earn trust from those above, below, and beside you. Here are five key practices to help you do this:

1. Be vulnerable

On some level, trust comes from authenticity. If your people see you as an authentic, open, vulnerable human being, they’ll be more likely to trust you.

There’s a fine line to walk here, though. You don’t want to be naïve and set yourself up to be taken advantage of, but you do want to own up to your failures and be honest and humble. One way to do this is to let some of your personal life into your work – though, again, there’s a fine line to walk here. Another way to do this is to admit past or current mistakes, especially when mentoring your team members.

2. Don’t pass the buck

President Harry Truman was famous for the wooden sign on his desk reading “The Buck Stops Here.” One of the reasons Truman was able to build trust in those around him was that he wasn’t afraid to take responsibility for his decisions.

This should be one of your mottos as a trust-building leader. Yes, there will be times when other people will mess up, and you’ll have to deal with that. But if a decision ultimately comes down to you, make the choice, and then stand by the consequences – good or bad. If your team knows that you aren’t going to try to pass the blame to someone else, they’ll trust you more.

3. Stop micro-managing

Micro-management in the work place is a great way to tear down trust. That’s because trust is a two-way street. In order to feel trust for you, your team members also need to feel that you trust them. And if you’re constantly micro-managing their processes, they won’t feel that you trust them.

If you think you might possibly be a micro-manager, talk to others about this. Then, learn to step back and let your team members do their work. This may mean leaving room for failure, but it also means leaving space for others to learn from their mistakes.

4. Allow room for confrontation

As a leader, people will trust you more if they feel that they can bring up negative points about you, your team, a project you’re working on, or whatever. You don’t want to seek out confrontation, but you should leave space for healthy, professional confrontation that, in the long run, improves relationships.

You can create this culture by not shying away from the hard conversations with your team members. And you can create space for negative feedback by meeting with your team members on a regular basis. If you are confronted about a mistake, a choice, or something else a team member is unhappy about, listen to their complaints, take them seriously, and handle the confrontation as professionally as possible.

5. Tell it like it is

Talking in circles or constantly using subtext in your professional life is another way to break down trust. To build it up, practice telling it like it is. Open up; write a blog that others can see. For instance, we publish a blog for small business owners to help us earn trust from partners, small business owners, and our fellow team members.

This doesn’t mean you need to be tactless, but you do need to be direct and honest. If you have a reputation for directness and honesty, others will learn to trust what you say about yourself, your team, and your work.

Remember, building trust takes time, and it’s a very relational thing. You can have a great reputation for trust company-wide, but if you break trust with one person on your team, you’ll have to work hard to rebuild that person’s trust in you. This takes time and effort, but if you consistently put these five habits into practice, you’ll be a more trustworthy leader in general.

Daniela Baker from CreditDonkey is a small business blogger and social media advocate.  She studied journalism and new media. She has lived on three continents and collaborates closely with a select group of international publishers. One of her favorite quotes is: “Decisions are made by those who show up.”

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The Product Management Perspective: Trust is the most important characteristic a product manager can possess. To effectively work with development, sales and other teams in your organization you must gain their trust. Trust is key to understanding your customers and your market. Trust is a two-way street: you need to carry out your tasks in such a way that the team members will trust you. You also need to trust that the team members will do what they have committed to do. The five key practices listed above provide an excellent roadmap to developing trust with your teams.

Leadership is a personal trait that often proves elusive to many people, however is intimately related to personal success. Leaders are at the forefront of their fields; they are respected and quite often wealthy. Leaders also foster social change, and most of our cultural, social and economic progress is the result of leadership.

It’s no surprise that many people would like to acquire this trait and would like to see their children develop strong leadership skills. While leadership remains easy to define and identify, a consistent summation of characteristics that make an effective leader remains elusive. So, too, does the way to impart leadership to an eager young mind.

There are many institutions that propose to teach leadership in different areas, with varying success rates. There are even people who speculate that leadership is an innate trait, and therefore can’t be learned. However, there seems to be something of a consensus regarding the relationship between sports and leadership, at least as acknowledged by governments and industry.

Not just any sport will do, however. Team participation is often cited as an important aspect in using sports to develop leadership skills. In fact, team participation is often more important than the physical component, as a search through the biographies of the captains of industry will show: few of them were High-School Quarterback. They all were on some team, however.

Sports are highly competitive, and their nature is to push enthusiastic participants to achieve more than their rivals. In fact, the basis of competitive sports is rivalry, and it is in this competitive atmosphere of team sports that pushes people towards “taking one for the team”, and fostering team spirit. It is within the cohesion of a team that a captain will stand out and acquire the position of leader.

This doesn’t mean that people who participate in relatively individual activities such as jogging or weight lifting can’t use their chosen sport to improve their leadership skills. For example, one of the benefits of indoor cycling is that you can communicate with fellow spinners while working out, and help build a team. Organizing teams will help motivate the members to get more out of their routine as well as provide leadership opportunities for the team.

Competition is one of the bases that produces leadership, which is why the University of California hosts Leadership Competitions along with other institutions that foster leadership, such as the Rotary Clubs. Competition is a motivating factor in human psychology, and one of the traits of leadership is the ability to motivate people to challenge themselves and meet goals.

Competitive team sports creates and environment where people have to work together in order to achieve their goals. Team spirit and the ability to work with others is an essential part of being a leader. An often overlooked part of leadership is the ability to work within a team, which also means listening to other people and understanding different points of view. Someone who can’t play for the team cannot hope to lead it.

The teams and competition of sports are an analogy of the teams of coworkers and competing businesses that leaders must face in the world. The skills learned in each are valuable in the other. If you’re looking to build your own leadership skills or those of your children, consider taking on an exciting and challenging sport today.

Jordan Spindler is a freelance writer and avid fitness enthusiast. His health and fitness articles have been published in a number of national news publications, including the Houston Chronicle and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is a graduate of the University of California Riverside, and although his degree is in English, his passions are fitness and self-improvement.

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The Product Management Perspective: The teamwork aspect of sports fits nicely with product management because product managers are usually very competitive. Use that competitive drive to not only become a great team player, but also the team leader.

Recently I had an eye-opening experience with learning by listening. My son invited me to attend a session with renowned sports performance enhancement coach Dr. Craig Manning. The only stipulation from my son was…”you have to set back and listen, and not make any comments.” [Those who know me well know I like to chime in and share my wisdom, so this would be a challenge for me.]

I accepted. I went to the session and for a full hour I sat still and listened. It was an amazing experience. Even though Dr. Manning was teaching my son, I learned some remarkable things about myself. I discovered actions I can take to improve my life and my work. All of this came because I listened (not only to Dr. Manning, but also to my son).

If you want to be happier, work more effectively, or improve your leadership, take the time to listen. Don’t just hear what people say, pause and reflect on what they really mean. Ask questions that will help you to better understand what the other person is saying. Listen, and become a better leader.

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The Product Management Perspective: You work with a lot of different people, most of whom have opinions about your product. A well-known mantra in product management is “Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant.” While I agree the gist of this statement, I find value in listening to others’ opinions. The act of listening to others brings knowledge and enlightenment to us. Even if we end up doing something totally different from what the other person suggested, we all benefit from listening and considering alternatives.

The Leader’s Climb tells the story of how to lead more effectively and how to make a long-term, lasting contribution. Adam, the main character in the story, had been CEO of his company for about three years. He finds himself stuck in several areas of his life. The story of Adam is told as a “business fable” in a way that makes the principles taught come to life. The story weaves the pressure he feels from the board together with a difficult project he’s doing on his home and his love for rock climbing to tell a real-life story that’s easy to internalize.

Often leaders get to a point where they realize something is “off” between their sense of what they thought executive leadership would be and what it is turning out to be. This struggle—this path to decline—has a pattern:

Going to fast: Relying too heavily on what we know rather than slowing down and becoming genuinely curious about what we don’t know.

Fighting too much: Spending too much time and energy denying current realities.

Forcing too many decisions: Wasting energy and goodwill on winning at all costs, forcing other people’s hands or clawing for the edge.

The authors give three steps that reverse the decline and mark a new path toward a more sustainable and effective model of leadership and growth in today’s world:

1. More Awareness: Awareness is more than just knowing you have blind spots; it’s having the patience and discipline to slow down and open yourself up to what you do not know or have not yet experienced. Slow down, step back, and take a fresh look at your situation from a range of perspectives.
2. More Acceptance: It is human nature to overlook obstacles that stand in our path or to fight like mad to overwhelm them. Acceptance is the mature and reasoned embrace of our current realities. The forces we fight may actually help us to achieve some greater accomplishment.
3. More Abundance: By creating an abundance of choices, we open ourselves up to better decisions. It takes a different kind of leader to keep many paths open prior to reaching that ultimate point of decision.

The Leader’s Climb provides key principles for leaders, and the story is enjoyable and informative.

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The Product Management Perspective: The point of creating abundance is important for product managers. It’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you have all the answers. To the extent you are willing to consider all options from the different stake holders, the better your products will turn out.

Elizabeth Haas Edersheim and her team created the ThEME tool to connect you to the “greats of management.” It is an interactive tool for accessing the wisdom and practical experience of great management thinkers and practitioners – both the gurus of the past and today’s pathfinders. Its integrated framework of the elements of management effectiveness provides users easy access to quotes, video clips, anecdotes, and exercises on any element of management.

Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:

“Good is the enemy of Great.” –Jim Collins

“Don’t confuse motion with progress.” –Peter Drucker

“The societal disease of our time—short-term thinking.” –Warren Bennis

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me…Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful…that’s what matters to me.” –Steve Jobs

The ThEME tool will help you gather the specific information you need to manage effectively.

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The Product Management Perspective: If you are leading a team of product managers, set clear goals and make sure your team knows what’s expected of them. Product management focuses on releasing the right products to the right markets at the right time; set both financial and operational goals for your product line. Build strong relationships with your team. They need to know, without any hesitation, that you have their backs and will do everything you can to help them succeed. Build relationships of trust.

General George S. Patton summed up this concept nicely when he said: “A good plan executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Planning is a good thing and it’s always necessary. However, if you focus too much on planning you will never achieve the success you’re really looking for.

Steve Johnson – strategic product management coach and storyteller – wrote about the importance of getting things done in a recent post: “There’s doing it right, and there’s doing it perfectly. You want to focus on the former and not the latter.”

Take a look at how you plan, and then take a hard look at how you execute. If you focus more on the planning than the executing, make it a priority to change, to focus on the latter.

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The Product Management Perspective: Agile development has become an important software development methodology. While it doesn’t make sense for every product development group to use Agile, the idea of iterating between planning and development can (and should) be applied regardless. If writing a lengthy PRD makes sense, do it, but do it quickly and get it to development so they can start working on it. Don’t get caught up in having the “perfect PRD” – it doesn’t exist. Take time to plan, but get moving quickly. Your customers will be the beneficiaries.

Too often leaders of organizations take the credit when things go well, but they find ways to avoid responsibility when they get unexpected results. This behavior will not work in the long-term; accountability is too important for leaders avoid. They need to make every decision with the resolution that no matter what the outcome, they will take responsibility for the results.

So what does ‘accountability’ look like? Leadership expert and author Michael Hyatt summed it up nicely in his article How Real Leaders Demonstrate Accountability:

First and foremost, it means that you accept responsibility for the outcomes expected of you—both good and bad. You don’t blame others. And you don’t blame the external environment. There are always things you could have done—or still can do—to change the outcome.

In the article Mr. Hyatt gives a great example of a leader truly stepping up to his accountability (pay particular attention to the opening paragraph in the summary report).

Leaders will not succeed in the long run if they are not accountable in their personal lives. My friend and mentor Dr. Paul Jenkins is the expert in personal accountability. In his recent video he describes two paradigms that shape individual’s lives. Watch this video – it will change your life for the better:

Take responsibility for your actions. Be accountable as an individual and as a leader. I promise you will achieve more success in everything you do.

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The Product Management Perspective: The way in which product managers see their world – their ‘paradigm’ – influences their effectiveness as a leader. They can take the ‘victim’ approach or the ‘agent/hero’ approach. If they blame others and wonder why things don’t work out, they are taking the victim approach. If they take accountability for their actions and do whatever it takes to succeed, they become agents of positive change. They become heroes to those whom they lead. Not ‘hero’ in the sense of super heroes, but in the sense of someone who does more than they are expected (and probably paid) to do.