I have a pinched nerve in my neck and it radiates pain across my collarbone, to the top of my arm and all the way down in a special electric current to my wrist and finally a ball of fire to my hand. It started two weeks ago for no apparent reason, except for the fact that I slept wrong in a funny position one night and then it got progressively worse.

Each day it hurt more, and I started to take steps to solve it; at first on my own, and then later with medical professionals. And as I was going through this experience, I realized that there are many parallels between running or working for a successful business and dealing with the aches, pains and general battering we put our bodies through every day.

Here are what I think are the mistakes I made, and the business mistakes I see many others making every day:

Mistake #1- Redeye flight from LA

Redeye flight, L.A to Philly non-stop, crammed into a window seat, crowded, hot. I didn’t sleep much, pressed against the window. At 6 am on a weekend morning, I landed stiff and sore. Why do I think I am Teflon? That I can abuse my body and not have consequences? That I can do it all? (By the way, I work for myself, so the pressure is self-imposed.)

Business Lesson: Why do we push our team so hard they start to break down physically? I have conducted many training classes where an employee arrived for class sick and likely infectious. Is that expected of them? Can you learn anything when you are sniffing and sneezing? I know many companies where people are expected to call into conference calls when they are on vacation and answer emails the whole time they are gone. Why? Don’t we know people do need to take breaks?

When people are driven to burnout, productivity doesn’t go up, it goes down
Mistake #2: Treat it with heat. I started laying on the heating pads for my pain, using both heating pads and those patches you attach to the spot like a personal remora to cure the pain. My pain shark wasn’t having it. Nope, it made it worse. Once I talked to my chiropractor and my family doctor both of them said I did the opposite of what I needed to do (I should have been icing it). Whoops. I now wish I would have done the research first before jumping in trying to solve it.

Business Lesson: how many times do we address the wrong area, applying massive effort (“Sales are down; it must be our salespeople”) only to find the actual solution is completely different? One client wanted to address the “moral problem” of the team but not the lack of their team leaders’ lack of communication skills. Take the time to talk to everyone involved and do the research before jumping in too fast.

Mistake #3- Massage from heck. On Sunday I was in agony. Pain. Full.
I decide to get a massage to “work out” the muscles that were causing me so much pain.
They worked me over like I was a ‘57 Chevy on the TV Show Overhaulin’. As they say in the South, they tore me up. It was the most painful 20 minutes of my life. I should have stopped after five minutes and left. I later found out they were pushing and grinding on the nerve in my neck and making it worse.

Business Lesson: Sometimes our instinct is to say, “This doesn’t feel right.” Yet if the numbers, the money, the resumes of the parties involved and their backgrounds and pedigrees all look great, then we choose to ignore our own voice. We do this at our own peril. Years after you dissolve a business partnership people still say, “I never knew what you saw in your partner.” Oops. After you drop vendor hundreds of customers tell you how shabbily they were treated. Ouch. We need to listen to the voice in the back of our head; that’s why it’s there.

Mistake #4- Not resting. Right now, I guess I should be resting. Instead of working. Maybe. Yes. No. I don’t know. The point is when you own your own business it’s just you, and the reason you are successful is the drive that is there. If you work for an organization, you are successful because you have a work ethic and an innate sense of responsibility. As the old saying goes, you are only as good as your last month.

Business Lesson: I think we need to figure out when to rest and when not to. In today’s shaky economic world maybe, we feel like we can’t. So, w
hen do we rest?

We need to take some time to think through what we are doing and how we are doing it. Not at a shallow level, but at a more in-depth level. We need to really look at the nervous systems of our organizations, and well as the flowcharts for maintaining and operating a successful body.

Shawn Doyle is the President of )ShawnDoyleMotivates ( www.shawndoylemotivates.com) a company specializing in Training and Development Programs. He has also authored 22 books on leadership sales and motivation. shawn@shawndoylemotivates.com

My answer: “Seek total and complete mastery.” That led to a dialogue about what true mastery means. I realize I am starting to sound like some sort of mystical guru, which I promise you I am not. (I don’t even own a white flowing robe) However, this fascinating discussion did get me to think about a key question: Why don’t many of us seek mastery in our respective fields?

We live in a fast food age where the media is constantly crowning the latest entrepreneur wunderkind who is the overnight success. It might be the creator of some new technology, Internet application, or a new musical artist who hits it big. Infomercials promise dramatic overnight results. Contestants on The Biggest Loser T.V. show lose 15 pounds in one week. This gives the distinct impression that this is how success really happens. As most people know, this is the exception, not the rule. A career is a marathon, not a sprint; a very long run down a dusty road.

The only way to truly be successful is to seek mastery. The people that are masters in their field make the most money, are the most successful and have stability and longevity. As Alan Pease once said, “Brain surgeons earn 10 times that of a general practitioner. It pays to be an expert.”

We all know masters when we see them. Think Warren Buffet, Jack Welch, Andrew Wyeth, Willie Nelson, Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, and Maya Angelou.

So how do you achieve mastery in your field? Based on my experience executive coaching and working with thousands of people across the country in the last twenty years, here is what I have learned:

 Masters have been doing their work for many, many years.  In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he asserts that most people who are extraordinarily successful (masters) have been practicing their craft for at least 10,000 hours to achieve that level of competence. The idea is if you do one thing for 10,000 hours you generally get pretty good at it. Many people I meet don’t have the patience or aren’t willing to invest that kind of time and effort.

Question: How many hours have you invested in mastery of your field?

 Masters keep up with the latest developments in their field. Many people discount the idea of attending trade shows, symposiums, and special training events because they are expensive and time-consuming. They don’t belong to or participate in their industry associations. They have piles of dusty trade journals on the back of their desk they never read. But they are missing the point- this is where the new ideas emerge and massive connections with other experts can be made. How can you be a master if you don’t know what other masters are doing? I recently attended a National Speakers Association Meeting. There were 400 professional speakers who gathered for three days on a weekend and on their own dime.

 Question: How do you keep up with the latest developments in your field?

 Masters are driven by their passion. They have a passion for their work and the field they have chosen. When asked they will tell you, “Even if they didn’t pay me- I would do it for free.” This kind of energy and enthusiasm drives the work and energy required to achieve mastery. They want to be a master in their field because they love it.

Question: Do you have a passion for what you do? If not, with all do respect, get out and go do something else.

One last thought- if you were seeking out a medical specialist, and I asked you what you were looking for I know what you would say: “I want the best in the region, or maybe the best in the world.” It almost goes without saying.

But it needs to be said. Isn’t it what you would want people to say about you?

Don’t you want to be that person?

The way in which we view leadership development now is worthless. I see managers and leaders who are failing themselves, failing their teams and failing their companies. Their companies, of course, failed them first, by never providing the proper training for their leadership roles.

To start the much-needed revolution, it’s time for The Leadership Manifesto. Follow it and see the difference. Ignore it, and bask in the ineptitude of your leaders, until your company goes down in flames, buried in the ashes of leadership incompetence.

There are six principles to follow in The Leadership Manifesto.

1. Stop promoting people to leadership roles just because they are technically competent.

Fred is a brilliant programmer who got promoted. His new position requires that he manage a team of sixteen people. However, he has no interest in leading people. All Fred ever wanted to do was do his job well, but now he has to manage a team, which is killing him slowly.

Solution: Promote people in the organization that have the technical knowledge and the potential to lead.

2. Stop promoting someone and then assuming they know how to lead.

 Alexis gets promoted to a leadership role. She is excited and optimistic about the future but scared to death. Why? She has never led a team before, and she doesn’t know how. She won’t admit it or ask for help. She figures that since she was promoted, she’ll just have to figure out how to be a leader. Alexis goes from the frying pan straight into the fire. Her only option is to model what her managers (many of whom were incompetent) have always done in the past.

Solution: Have a comprehensive leadership development training program to get new managers up to speed.

3. Stop assuming existing managers don’t need development.

I once asked the CEO of a small company about his current training and development initiatives. He raised an eyebrow and said, “Who would I train? Most of my managers have been here a long time.” When I mentioned ongoing development, he smiled and replied, “I hired them because they know what they are doing. If I have to train them, I hired the wrong person.” I could tell that the discussion wasn’t going to go anywhere. He clearly did not understand and was never going to. Just because you hire a manager doesn’t mean that he or she is already a great manager. Even if they are, training always helps the people in leadership roles to grow their skills.

Solution: Every leader in the organization should have an individual development plan and should receive training annually. If they don’t, they will leave and go somewhere where they can get training and development.

4. Stop allowing mean leaders to lead teams.

I have been in many organizations where I meet and observe managers who are mean, surely, demanding, rude, offensive, and specialize in striking fear into the hearts of the team members. Why is this allowed? The answer is always either “they get results”, or “they have been there a long time”.

Real leaders have to lead with influence, negotiation, expectation, and motivation. What companies don’t understand is that allowing abominable managers to keep being mean is sending employees a confusing message: “We allow our managers to treat you like dirt, but we still value you.” Yeah, right.

Solution: Mean leaders need to be put on notice that they have to change or they have to go.

5. 5. Stop allowing executives to think that they don’t need development.

In many companies, I hear: “Well, we can have training, but our Vice Presidents won’t attend.” In many organizations, attending training is viewed as a sign of weakness. Just because someone attends training, they’re weak? Shouldn’t commitment to development be viewed as a strong point? Apparently not. In the leadership ranks in many organizations, this is a liability. Arrogance and ego are robbing executives of development that they need.

Solution: The CEO has to model a dedication to development and insist that every executive get training and development annually, based on specific and identified areas for improvement. When the rest of the organization sees that executives are committed to development, then they will be more inclined to do so.

6. Stop waiting until you have a vacant leadership role to identify talent.

Someone in a leadership role resigns or gets fired. Panic ensues. Is there someone internally they can promote? Do they need to do an outside executive search? Although they seem organized, they will never admit that there is no strategy.

Solution: Every organization should have a talent management initiative. This would include recruitment, succession planning, leadership development for future leaders, leadership development for current leaders, and ongoing individual development plans. This helps to build the talent pool for future needs.

I want to see a brighter day when companies and organizations are led by leaders who are inspired, dedicated, and skillful in the way they lead their teams. Let’s tear down the old bronze monuments to arrogance, incompetence, and management by intimidation.

Let the revolution begin.

#1 — Everyone gets development- If you have a department with sixteen employees, each and every one of those employees deserves individual development. On occasion I will have someone in my training programs object to this concept.  They may say,  “Are you suggesting that my administrative assistant should have an Individual Development Plan? “ Yes, that’s exactly what I am suggesting.  If you want an administrative assistant who is fired up and dedicated, with a high level of morale, then one of the proven techniques for getting that kind of commitment is committing to that employees’ development.  Yet many leaders don’t do this.

#2 — Have an Individual Development Plan meeting.  Each year, you should schedule an Individual Development Plan meeting with each employee.  This meeting should take around sixty minutes, and should be a conversation between you and the employee to determine their future career goals. After the discussion in that meeting, the manager and employee should decide upon a specific and measurable Individual Development Plan to be rolled out over 12 months.  The purpose of the Individual Development Plan is to help the employee reach their career goals and aspirations, personally and professionally.

#3 — Individual development should not be part of your review process.  In many organizations people in a leadership role will combine the annual performance review with an Individual Development Plan meeting. They spend fifty minutes on the review and ten minutes on IDP.  These two meetings deserve separate dedicated time.  I strongly recommend that you have a separate Individual Development Plan meeting with each employee that is distinct from the annual performance reviews. The review is talking about what they did, while the IDP is talking about what they want to do. It also shows that you care and respect them, and are investing in them.

#4 — It should be their responsibility.  Once the individual Development Plan meeting has occurred I believe it should be the responsibility of the employee to make sure that the IDP is rolling forward.  It is their responsibility to take the actions that were decided on for the IDP and is up to them to schedule and set up meetings with you to update you on the progress. They have to own it. Your responsibility is to make sure that they’re following up with you to track the updates, and to provide resources and work to help them achieve their goals.

#5 — Make sure there is a timeline. As we all know, people lead very busy lives. If the action items are not put into a specific timeline in the calendar, they won’t happen. You have to prioritize and “calendarize”. If you don’t, nothing happens.

#6 — You have to care. I know this sounds like an odd statement but in a leadership role if you’re going to help people and coach them through their individual development plans then it is critically essential that you actually care about the results.  What do I mean by that?  Well if you as a leader are not truly committed to caring about the results they will be able to tell you’re not authentic and you’re literally just going through the motions.

#7 — They have to care.  When you sit down with an employee to create their Individual Development Plan, they also have to care about growing and developing, and they have to be committed to the plan.  If they don’t care about the results it’s simply an empty exercise.

#8 — Don’t discount people’s dreams.  There may be an occasion where someone says during their IDP meeting “ I would like to be the CEO” If someone aspires to a much higher level position, you may think it is not realistic, or may even be a ridiculous idea.  But it is not up to you as a leader to squash potential.  You are not and should not be a dream killer! Your role and responsibility in a leadership position is to build people up and to help them move towards their dreams.  So if I have a cleaning person who tells me they want to be the CEO, it’s not fair to tell them that it’s not possible.  Tell them that will be a long road to travel, and there will be a lot of work involved, but it ‘s not up to you to tell them that they can’t.

#9 — Be flexible.  It’s also important to be flexible.  There may be times when an employee decides they want to leave your department. There may be times when an employee decides that they want to leave the company.  It will be frustrating because you’ve spent a great deal of time and energy developing this employee only to have them leave.  This is where flexibility can be an asset.

#10 — They may not know what they want.  I am an executive coach and work with many high-powered executives coaching them. At least 50 to 60% of the time they don’t know what they want. So don’t be surprised when an employee says, “I don’t know what I want.“ It then becomes your responsibility to be a coach and a mentor to help them decide what they want to pursue in the future.

The entire idea is to get someone motivated and fired up about what they do currently and what they want to do in the future. Their undeveloped potential is your biggest and most well-hidden asset.

Shawn Doyle is the President of Shawn Doyle Motivates (www.shawndoylemotivates.com),

a company specializing in Leadership Development and Training. He has also authored 22 books on leadership, sales, and motivation. His latest book, The Goal Tender, will be published by Sound Wisdom in July.

Let me give you an example: Take two people who are both attorneys. Attorney #1 (we will call her Susan) goes to law school because she wants to make the big bucks. She graduates at the top of her class and becomes a very successful lawyer. Attorney #2 (we will call her Jill) is a lawyer who decided in law school that her purpose in life was to help other people. She graduated at the top of her class and is with a large law firm. What is the difference between Susan and Jill? Jill feels like she is doing what she was “meant to do.” Susan has a restless, gnawing feeling that something isn’t right and she just works too many hours, but boy, the money is fabulous, so she stays. The difference is that Jill knew and defined her purpose early in her career and Susan didn’t and still doesn’t.

What right do I have to talk about this concept of purpose? I was a person who, for the first 30 years of my life, struggled to find my path.

When I was 10 years old I was lying in bed one night and I was crying. My mom came into the room and asked me what was wrong I said, “I am ten years old and I haven’t achieved anything!” I seemed to somehow understand that I was meant to do something and I had the audacity at 10 years old to think I should already have begun doing something significant. It was about purpose.

I attended college, declared a major in Theater Performance because I was convinced my purpose was to entertain people and to act. The last acting class in my senior year I came to a stunning conclusion, I didn’t want to act. I realized that one of my professors (who was a British Academy Award winner) couldn’t make a living acting and he had to teach in order to make a living. I realized if this acting genius couldn’t make a living then I would struggle, and I wasn’t willing to starve for my art. So I graduated with a B.A. in theater performance never to perform in the theater again. I exited school with my compass out searching for a direction and a purpose.

Searching for and finding your purpose is hard work and is a process, not an overnight decision or a sudden revelation.

I decided that I would give retail management a shot. It seems like a completely foolish idea now, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I spent two incredibly long horrible years in retail management, knew that it was not the work I was meant to do. I was doing work I couldn’t stand without meaning or purpose. I would get up in the morning dreading work and go home at night dreading the next day.

I went into sales and I spent six years in sales and I was good at selling because I was a “people person” and could communicate with people in a way that was convincing. I liked sales but didn’t love it. One morning the fickle finger of fate stepped in and my phone rang. It was a call from the company I worked for wanting to know if I was interested in becoming a trainer. I took the job, after some research, and it changed my life in ways I am only just now beginning to understand.

I have been a training professional for some time now, and it is my life’s work. I believe my purpose is to have a positive impact on other people’s lives. I get up in the morning knowing why I do what I do. The pay is nice, and the people are very nice, but the payoff for me is knowing that I have had an impact on someone’s life. Once you know your purpose, the workflows, the motivation rises and productivity reaches an all-time high.

Shawn Doyle is the President of New Light Learning and Development (www.newlightlearning.com) a company specializing in Leadership Development. He has also authored 13 books on leadership sales and motivation. His latest book, The Manager’s Pocket Guide to Training, will be published by HRD Press this fall. sldoyle1@aol.com

When we think about wildly successful companies like Apple, Google, Ritz Carlton, Zappos and Wegmans, we think of excellence year after year.

While these companies do a lot of things well, I’d argue that their biggest assets are their unique corporate cultures.

As a consultant, I have spent lots of time helping clients shape and build their company cultures. The culture your company creates affects everything that you do and how you do it.

Here are six tips and ideas to help you build your organizational culture.

1. Craft a mission and vision statement.

The foundation of your organizational performance should be your company’s mission and vision statement. This is a written statement that outlines what you believe in (mission) and where you are headed (vision).

Bring together a cross-functional team to create these essential documents. This will increase the likelihood that the rest of the company will buy in and support it.

2. Communicate it.

Once you have developed a clear mission and vision, it’s critically important to have a communication plan to roll it out to everyone. You can do this through group meetings, one-on-one calls and in email communications.

3. Develop behavioral standards.

Next, you must develop behavioral standards that describe how the mission and vision will be executed on in terms of behavior. If part of the mission is to be a world-class service provider, then how does that play out in terms of how your team interacts with a customer in person and on the phone? How about by email?

Many people assume team members know how to behave, but the reality is they don’t. The only way to get consistency is through written behavioral standards. The standards must be either observable, tangible or measurable.

For example, you could say: We’ll greet every customer with a smile and a hello (observable). Or you could say: This is what our final product looks like when it is done to our standard (tangible). You could also say: We will answer the phone by the third ring (measurable).

I advise my clients to create a behavioral standards committee to develop the standards. Why? Aside from getting better buy-in, you also get better ideas from people who are on the front lines every day, and they are the people who know what is really happening.

4. Implement behavioral standards training.

Once the standards are in writing, everyone needs to be trained in the new expectations. The companies I mentioned at the beginning of this article obsessively train staff on their standards. It’s how they deliver.

5. Create rewards and consequences.

If you have behavioral standards, then I hope people will follow them. But the reality is that you have to reinforce behavioral standards by rewarding people when they meet and exceed them, and by letting people know there are consequences for not meeting them. When people get rewarded for meeting or exceeding behavior standards, the news travels fast.

6. Conduct performance reviews.

If you have annual performance reviews, change them to include the mission, vision and behavioral standards. If they are not included in the annual review, then after one review cycle, all your hard work will fade away. People only pay attention to what gets measured and evaluated.

The bottom line is that you create the culture. It is up to you to build it, foster it, support it and live it. When you do, you’ll have true excellence, and you will get great results.

This article was originally published on Entrepreneur.com

Shawn Doyle is a certified professional speaker with the CSP designation. Shawn is also a certified corporate coach. Shawn Doyle’s life passion is to make a positive difference in people’s lives by helping them live to their full potential, both at work and at home, as people go through this thing called life.

Have you met Shawn Doyle?

I conduct leadership programs around the country, and lately have had many discussions with people about what their leaders lack, and what they lack as a leader and would like to work on themselves. Here is what I have found:

Lack of direction– In many leadership programs, we have discussions about the fact that many leaders do not state clearly what they expect, or the expectations continually change from week to week, which confuses the team. Make sure you have clear expectations with each person and what you expect them to do. They can’t hit a target if they don’t know where it is.

Lack of attention– I’m told that people can barely even schedule time to meet with a manager, and when they’re successful, the manager is multitasking and distracted.  Managers have too many people to manage and too many projects going at once. As a leader you must carve time out of your calendar to meet with your team members on a consistent and regular basis. I often say in my programs that a great leader has to “prioritize and calendar-ize.” Important things don’t get done unless they are on the calendar and we have the discipline to stick to those calendar items.

Lack of empathy-Many years ago, I woke up in the morning to discover that both my driveway and my road in front of my house were coated with a thick sheet of ice. I quickly realized that no matter what kind of car I had, I was not going to be going anywhere that day. I called the office and explained that my roads were iced over and I would not be in that day that I would be working from home. When I arrived at work the next day my manager gave me a hard time about not coming to work the day before. He explained rather testily that “every employee had come in except for me”. My response was that the people who showed up for work did not live out in the country with roads coated with ice. He had no empathy for my situation and said, “Well, you should have been here.” When you have people who do great work and you show lack of empathy for their individual situations, you damage morale on the team, and make that person question why they are working so hard for you and the company. I believe that a little empathy goes a long way.

Lack of sensitivity to other people’s time– every one of us in our career has worked with the boss who delivered some urgent last-minute project to our desk at 5:15 on the evening on the night of our sons piano recital and said,“ I need you to get this done before you leave.” I am not saying that people should not, at times, work a little later in order to complete a project. But I do believe there are situations when a person’s personal life outside of work may take precedence. There obviously needs to be a balance between the two, but I often find leaders to be tone deaf when it comes to sensitivity about an employee’s personal time.

Lack of mission/vision- Many companies have mission and vision statements. What I find is that often there is no translation between the mission and vision, and the actual work that needs to be done individually and as a team. We are not just making another widget; we’re saving a life, improving a lifestyle, saving people time, making people’s lives better, increasing efficiency, on and on. The big question is, why are your people doing what they’re doing other than just for the paycheck?

Take a moment to read back through each of these areas of leadership lack, and decide which one you need work on in order to make yourself the kind of leader that other people will want to follow.

The full article originally appeared in B2B Magazine.

Shawn Doyle is a certified professional speaker with the CSP designation. “My life passion is to make a positive difference in people’s lives by helping them live to their full potential both at work and at home,“ he says. Shawn Doyle has spent almost three decades in the world of personal and professional development, and from 2000- 2003, co-founded a Corporate University for Comcast where Shawn was Vice President of Learning and Development. Shawn Doyle’s clients include Pfizer, Zippo, Comcast, Lockheed Martin, NBC, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Guidepost, ABC, Disney, Kraft, the U.S. Marines, Charter, The Ladders and IBM.

Follow Shawn Doyle on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Motiv8er

#jumpstart leadership #work situations #HR #managing people #mediation #coffee #leadership challenges #seminar #classes #audio books #Shawn Doyle

I was facilitating a leadership program in Ohio. A manager in the back row raised his hand and said “I have a question I can’t figure out. How do I motivate my people? They don’t do what I tell them to do. “ I get this question all the time, it is the number one question I get as I travel around the country as a speaker and trainer – how does a leader motivate their team? What is the magic?

Having worked with hundreds of companies, here is what I believe to be the magic of motivating employees:

1. Thank them for their work.  Imagine that. Far too many leaders are very stingy with giving compliments. How much does it cost you to say thank you? Leaders tell me that they don’t give out compliments because “I don’t need them myself.” Most people I meet tell me they feel very underappreciated at work. Take the time to thank people when they exceed expectations, stay late or put in extra effort.
2. Celebrate success- When people achieve their goals, when people set a sales record, when people do something amazing over and above what is expected of them, when someone is retiring or leaving the company.- have a celebration. People love celebrating success and important milestones. Take the group out to lunch or dinner and tell them you are celebrating someone’s special accomplishment and acknowledge them in public with a celebration. Celebration is the most festive form of appreciation.
3. Ask them about their goals– Meet with each employee and ask what their career goals are short, mid and long term. Once there is clarity around what it is they want, help them create an individual development plan. Tell them you want to help them get there. When you help people get where they want to go- they will be more motivated and excited.
4. Have a positive office environment– Be cheerful, upbeat and positive yourself, and have fun at work. Say good morning to people and ask how they are doing. Believe it or not- you can have fun and work hard at the same time. As a surprise, buy breakfast or lunch for the group every now and then and tell them that you appreciate their hard work and effort. Have fun contests in the office and have teams compete to win prizes.
5. Find out what motivates each person-Ask people on the team what motivates them. What gets them excited and fired up at work? Then try to let them do more of the kind of work and tasks they love and enjoy. What motivates people isn’t really a secret or some sort of magic, all you have to do is ask them. In their history many people have worked for bosses who didn’t ever bother to ask, they only cared about their own self-interest.
6. Take a real interest in them personally-Ask them about their wife or husband. Ask how their kid did in the soccer tournament, or how their son is doing in his first year of college. Listen. When you care about employees and their lives, it is really motivating. Another part of that is empathy, and really showing it. Showing empathy builds loyalty and trust, and when you care about people they care back. As Pete Hoekstra once said, “Real leadership is leaders recognizing that they serve the people that they lead.”

Re-review this list and ask yourself – how many of these do you do? You will see people really respond when you take these approaches – but it isn’t really magic, it just called being a great leader.

A longer version of this article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

Shawn Doyle is a certified professional speaker with the CSP designation. “My life passion is to make a positive difference in people’s lives by helping them live to their full potential both at work and at home,“ he says. Shawn Doyle has spent almost three decades in the world of personal and professional development, and from 2000- 2003, co-founded a Corporate University for Comcast where Shawn was Vice President of Learning and Development. Shawn Doyle’s clients include Pfizer, Zippo, Comcast, Lockheed Martin, NBC, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Guidepost, ABC, Disney, Kraft, the U.S. Marines, Charter, The Ladders and IBM.

Follow Shawn Doyle on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Motiv8er