Humanistic Leadership tips.

Humanistic Leadership starts with respecting your staff as the real human beings they are. It is very easy to forget that they have real dreams, desires and problems they are dealing with. But the leaders who respect their staff and the ones that do the best.  Here are 4 ways you can improve your leadership skills by taking a more humanistic approach to leadership.

Tip 1: Trust your employees. You presumably hired them for a reason. Trust that they are the good and qualified people they are. Give them some space to do their job and empower them to bring problems to you. This approach makes a huge difference in whether or not your employees feel valued.

Tip 2: Be Professional: Yes, you may want a casual atmosphere at work, but you also need to be the boss. That means, you need to be responsive to your employees. Set an example and get back to them right away. Keep them in the loop when you need to research something. Let them know where things stand for real. Always remember Elvis’ motto: Taking care of business in a flash. Take care of business. Professionally. Just think how you would want your boss to treat you and respond to you and that is how you should be with your employees.

Tip 3: Be ethical. Be honest. Don’t lie. Be Responsible. Don’t say you will do something and then not do it. The secret to ethics is to understand how much easier your life is when the people around you are ethical, honest, responsible and don’t lie. Once you understand that, it is easy to understand why you need to be as ethical as you can be as well. To make life easier on your employees!

Tip 4: Be Compassionate. Everyone who works for you is a real live human being. They have their own issues and problems and you need to be compassionate with them. This doesn’t mean that you should allow them to behave badly; it is more that if you feel compassion for your employees, you will treat them better and come up with better management solutions to help your employees succeed. They aren’t just there to support you. You are there to support them as well. 

An Imperfect Balance

A lot of the stress of life involves us not finding a good balance between our work, our personal life and our interpersonal relations and societal obligations.  (which I’ve written abouthere).  The other part is knowing when good enough is good enough.

The Harvard Business Review  had a great article about how balancing life is always an imperfect activity.  The lead quote  is “You can have it all. It just won’t be perfect.” (http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2012/08/the-imperfect-balance-between.html)

The article then talks about the need to outsource your tasks to free up more time for yourself and how that requires you to give up control. The article is also about how to not get stuck in the trap of thinking if everything in your life isn’t perfect all the time, you have failed.  It’s this last part I agree with the most.

Life is messy. It’s imperfect. Our solutions to the problem of finding work life balance is always going to be, to a certain extent, out of balance, requiring constant re-adjustment from us. And yes, this is frustrating. If you’ve ever played a Wii Balance game you know, you have to constantly re-adjust your balance to do well.

So instead of getting angry that you can’t set your life on autopilot in order to enjoy it. Accept that life requires your active and intentional involvement to work well. Not perfectly, but well. This knowledge will help you free up your mind precisely because it is reality based.

My Happiness Project

Finding balance between work
and family is the key to finding
happiness.

I was talking to a friend the other day about balancing work and life. We are both self-employed stay at home moms. A big part of the reason we choose this path for ourselves is so that we can have more time with our families. We are also both encouraging our husbands to make similar choices.

Why? Because money isn’t everything.  We need enough money to live off of, but we would rather not accumulate money at the expense of quality family time.  Why?  Because I married my husband because I actually like spending time with him. I like spending time with my son too.  Excessive work gets in the way of that sometimes.

We both realized we are embarking on a personal happiness project. Our goal is to find a balance between work and family that works for us. I don’t want to have it all. I want a little of everything and that requires me to make choices that will help me realize the balance I seek.

And yes, it does mean I’m not looking to make a 6 or 7 figure salary. Mid to high 5 figures is fine with me and much more realistic a goal anyway. As long as my chosen career affords me the time I want to spend with my family – I’ll be happy.


Image: "Businessman Thinking" by 89studio FreeDigitalPhotos.net