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Would you find it easier to get a sale if you could read your customer’s mind?

Assuming you said yes, here’s how to do it. Ask the right questions and listen carefully to the answers, your customer will tell you everything you want to know. Easy, eh?

Well it sounds easy, but it takes self-discipline to do it right. Let’s start with the questions to ask.

The first type is what are known as ‘open’ questions, meaning that they usually produce informative answers of some length - as opposed to ‘closed’ questions which do the opposite.

“Leadership is influence.”
- John Maxwell

There is a difference between leadership and management. You may be a workplace manager, but not necessarily a workforce leader. You may even have supervisory responsibility of employees, but that doesn’t automatically make you a leader.

Leaders differ with managers in that they posses and practice qualities that allow them to succeed in motivating people. They don’t just manage projects; they lead people in the accomplishment of those projects.

So if you want to transform your workplace management role into successful workforce leadership results, consider incorporating these ten qualities into your work:

People say there are two certain things in life - death and taxes! Well, in the project world, there is a third thing that is certain - things will go wrong in your project.

It’s no good relying on luck and hoping things will go according to plan, because they won’t. We all must spend a little time thinking about the risks and either remove them before the project starts, or be ready with a backup if they do happen. I’m going to remind you of 2 different ways to find out the risks on your project. Don’t be deceived by how simple they appear, they are very powerful and will provide you with back-up plan and a much greater chance of success in your project. Try them out.

Managing professionals has been compared to herding cats and, as all cat owners now, cats are officially un-herdable. However, skilled animals trainers know that cats can be trained, if perhaps not herded, to an extent that amazes those unfamiliar with the methods. Can it work with professionals too?

You do have to work with the temperament of the cat.

Cats do not respond to “negative reinforcement” or punishment. This includes being put on a lead, being ordered around, being shouted at and being subjected to any kind of: “do this or else . . .” approach.

A survey of standard wording in Product Line Manager (PLM) job postings reveals the following skills and attributes:

Project planning, organizing, team motivation, and delegation Budgeting and data analysis skills Understanding and experience with related business Goal oriented Customer service Documentation skills Team player Written, verbal, and communication skills Organizational skills and attention to detail Time management skill Ability to work tight deadlines Fast learner Ability to work independently or in a group.

All of the above are important, but do they really describe what is ideal for a project manager or do they actually describe what is ideal for every single employee. I suggest the following attributes to be as important as, or rather, more important than the above attributes:

Leadership is an apprentice trade. You learn some of it in the classroom and from books. You learn most if it on the job. You learn it from others and you learn from experience. Here’s how to get the most out of what you learn on the job.

Improve your Odds of Getting it Right the First Time

Get some training in supervisory skills. Classroom training and reading can give you ideas of how to analyze situations and what practices to try. They can be the basis for your on-the-job experiments in leadership.

Business meetings can fail for many reasons, and one of the most common is that the wrong people are in attendance. In planning your business meeting, here are some questions to ask yourself before deciding who to invite.

— Who has information that will be needed for discussion of the agenda items? Issues that can’t be resolved because the person with the information is not there are a frustrating waste of time. If there are several items on the agenda, consider having certain people attend only for the appropriate items. This respects their time, while allowing the group to have the information it needs.

Just as there are many requirements in mentoring, there are just as many rewards. We frequently speak of the personal and intrinsic qualities that mentors bring to their relationships and the value of those qualities. The simple truth is that not everyone can be an effective mentor. The sharing of knowledge and experience are only two of the transactions that take place in a mentoring relationship. A mentor must also share vision, spirit, humor, mission, and wisdom that are only a short laundry list of essentials of mentorship. But one requirement that frequently is overlooked is the time investment a mentor must make to their partner.

Those dreaded morning meetings usually play out like this: Half alert employees suck down coffee and doughnuts, while worrying about the e-mails, voice-mails and other work piling up for them during the early morning rush. All that worrying and eating certainly doesn’t make them the most productive bunch.

But you can make your early a.m. meetings more productive, efficient–and faster by using these tricks:

• Offer employees an incentive. Tell them: “The plan is to wrap this meeting up in an hour. But if we stay focused, we can do it in less than 45 minutes.” Immediately offering them an incentive if they’re concise will keep them on track.

Your business has potential. The idea that you had worked - and worked well. The business has really started to kick off and you are getting successful. It is a great feeling.

Beneath that great feeling is a level of unease. You know that what is keeping your business going is all about you - and the stresses and strains of that are starting to show.

It’s a feeling of exhilaration tinged with fear and disillusion. You know that you cannot keep up this pace forever. What happened to the success and what it was supposed to give you?