Todd Macey

Even the most skillful leaders understand that a company can’t be run entirely by a single person. Delegation is a critical component of any successful company and the only way to ensure that a you and your managers are able to focus on the tasks that will drive the most value for your business.

Fortunately, delegation is a skill that can be mastered over time. Here are a few secrets to better delegation.

The presence of a great leader can be the difference between a team that succeeds and one that fails. Studies have shown that companies with strong leaders have nearly double the revenue growth compared to companies with weak leaders. This is especially relevant in the modern information economy, where productivity often depends not on a rote set of mechanical skills, but on the complex interpersonal factors inherent in coordinating a team of people with wide-ranging disciplines.

While there’s no “secret formula” to becoming (or making) a great leader, there is a set of common traits that many great leaders share. Here are five of the most important traits of great leaders, and how you can put them into practice in the workplace.

Bingo! You have an exciting new idea that you want to share with your colleague. But as you begin communicating and start to present the idea to them, they interrupt you with the following statement:

"We shouldn't go through with it. We've tried it before and it didn't work."

Your colleague is not purposefully being difficult; rather they are an evaluative listener. They tend to jump to conclusions before hearing the full idea and without giving it much thought.

As a team leader, you may have experienced the following scenario...

Your team member asks if he/she could have Friday and Monday off to go on a ski weekend. (With the many feet of snow that has blanketed the country this year, who wouldn't want to have a long ski weekend!) You, as the team leader, refuse to authorize this leave because of pressing work deadlines. Your team member takes those two days off to go skiing anyway.