Male bosses tend to look at the longer outcome, the female bosses tend to look at the shorter outcome – Do you agree with this?  Male bosses tend to look at the vision and devise all means of getting there.  Generally, they do not spend time focusing on devising the process of getting there (although they do), their objective is not to think about processes.  Female bosses will generally look at how to get there instead and devise the every step required.  They will tell their employee what exactly to do (something like spoon feeding).  This can be counter productive as the female boss maybe spending time irrelevant to overall goal.  Furthermore, the employee’s lack of autonomy only result in lower morale due to restricted proposals

They good thing about being careful with every process in reaching the goal is that all things are covered nicely.  That is what the female bosses tend to be good at.  Female bosses tend to be more meticulous in details.  They can check on the missing gaps that are necessary for the overall outcome.  However, excessive detailing of the outcome can create unnecessary overhead to the employee.  Overhead is also created for the female bosses themselves when they focus too much on the details.  They are blinded by the details that they do not see the overall goal anymore.  What are the mistakes they can make?  They focus too much on grammatical mistakes of the reports, the amount of purchases to make on small insignificant items (e.g. stationary, office equipments).

Lastly, male bosses tend to empower employees, whereas the female bosses tend to oversee and watch over everything little activities in delivering outcome. The good thing about empowerment is that employees can do whatever they can do deliver results.  They are not bounded by rules and should work within guidelines.  The problem is sometimes, when the male bosses tend to focus on the outcome and empowers everyone, he maybe slowing drifting away from this team and not knowing what they are actually doing on the ground.  This can affect morale issue!  Female bosses on the other hand, focus on the every little activity, they hand-held you in your tasks, telling you specified instructions to perform.  That is good for beginner staff but this is robbing freedom from the employee.  Without freedom and autonomy, the employee are restricted in their creative and in the end morale will be affected as they ponder the real purpose of work they are doing…

Now having pointing out these, it seemed that working under a female boss is a dread.  We guess is every employee’s preference of who he love to work under.  Do you agree with us?  Not necessarily all are working in this manner.  There will be exceptions and we hope you are one of those lucky ones!

1. Be consistent in your expectations and delivery – This will determine your integrity and consistency.  Your team members would not want to work with a leader that is always unpredictable.
2. Communicate positively and firm – Avoid negative remarks that will only will wash the moral from your staff.  What you need is a highly motivated team that deliver wonder results right.  Not a team of lousy feeling employees waiting for the next pay cheque to come.
3. Communicate regularly with your stakeholders – That includes your employees. You need to keep them updated of progress.   When it comes to planning, as much as possible, involve your employees in day to day decisions and long term planning.  Give them a sense of ownership and belonging.  Everyone is important in the organisation!
4. Intervene when something is wrong – If you feel something is wrong with certain task; find out more of the problem.  Terminate the task if that is an option.  Sometimes, its better to terminate the task then to find alternatives to resolve ti.
5. Teach your team members how to fish and not show them the fish – You will be tire out one day if you keep showing them the fish.  Teach your team members ways to be productivity, let them learn new techniques (that works for them).  Their productivity will be your input for your personal productivity.
6. Determine your staff abilities – Assess each and every one of your team members.  Some maybe strong in certain areas of work while others may not be.  Let’s face it; you can’t get the best people from your recruitment exercises every time.  Therefore, it’s best to optimize your staff by understanding what they are best at and grouping them together to boost productivity!
7. Create a pleasant, safe working environment – You do not you’re your employees to come to office with a worried mind.  Everyone is happy to come to office and no one is hurt.
8. Constantly evaluate your operating procedures and fine tune it for improvements – Processes do not dictate how you should do things.  Processes are designed by human beings in first place so do not allow processes to dictate your innovation.  Constantly find out the loop holes or areas of improvement in your organisation process so that your team can work more efficiently.

1. Have a vision for your team and organisation – You know what is best for your team.  You should know what your team will become or what you like the team to become in the next 2 – 5 years.  You want to get there.  You know the objective and outcome of what you are doing.  You know the mission statement of the team.  You know how the team should function.  It can be an overview picture but that is sufficient for you.
2. Influence your vision on your team and organisation – The next thing you want to do is to influence this strong vision that you have to your team members.  You want them to feel (at least) you.  You want them to know what’s going on and how to get to the objective together as a team.
3. Lead by example – If you want to convince your team members to follow you, you’ve got to lead by example and show them that things can be done.  You want to make them feel that you are with them throughout the task giving them support too!
4. Stick with your principles no matter what – Whatever circumstances and situations you reach, you have to stick with your guiding principle.  Your team member will assess you if you have the integrity to stick with your principles.  If you do not, they loose trust in you that you do not have a guiding principle to work on.  Do not give in to external threats
5. Honour what you say – Honour all the commitments and promises you made to your team members.  A broken promise you made before will only pull you away from being a honourable leader in the eyes of your team members.  Your team members will be depending on how you honour your promises make.  This is the trust they have in you.  If you are unable to honour what you committed, you are breaking that trust from them.
6. Be firm and not aggressive – Be firm with what you want to achieve.  However, avoid being aggressive.  Your team members will not want to work under a tyrant boss.  There are various ways to be firm and influence your team members to get the work done.  But definitely, the use of aggression shall be left to the last few alternatives.

How do you define a great leader then?  Are you troubled of finding ways to become one?  Or are you working under a leader that doesn’t have leadership quality instead?  Maybe he is a manager not a leader?  Tell us more!

A leader, we defined here is a person that can lead the team to his objective.  He may not know the steps to reach there but he knows where the team should be heading to.  He has the objective in mind and will clear obstacles with the team to get to the final destination.  Leaders inspire their subordinates to work hard for them.  He knows that he needs support from his team to get to the objective.  He influences and aligns objective with his subordinates.  In order to influence them, he knows he needs to understand the interests of his subordinates.

True leaders are responsible for their actions taken.  He will justify and defend his subordinates for their mistakes made if appropriate.  He has assess and taken responsibilities for their actions.  A true leader will also lead by example.  He knows the best way to influence people is to show that he can do it himself.

On the other hand, a manager, where we defined it, is not the manager title you see everywhere.  We refer the manager as the working style your boss employs in his management tasks.  Our definition of managers is that they treat you like a resource.  They managed you like a resource in terms of schedule, accountability, risks, effort and commitment to a task.  They can be task-oriented or goal-oriented where they are just too concerned with the outcome of a task.  Their concern may be ensuring additional personnel at the data centre for the server maintenance.  Or ensuring the statistic report is delivered on the coming Monday (where today is Friday).   They can also call you on the weekend to ask you to check your mailbox and respond to an email… Well, generally, they do not care about your welfare or interests.

A manager may or may not take responsibilities directly.  He may shift responsibilities to his subordinates if they make mistakes.  He doesn’t lead by example.  He “outsources” unimportant tasks to his subordinates.

In this modern era, it is not easy finding true leaders anymore.  Most of the management are too concerned with results or getting things done.  The expense of having immediate results is dissatisfied employees or the blinded vision of the organization.  They don’t define directions for the team anymore and oversee the welfare and interests aspect of their employee.  Personally, we’ve come across more managers than leaders.  Where they are more concerned about the outcome or reducing risks than defining the direction the team needs to head to.

Understanding this makes a big difference in your work.  Why?  You will know how much effort you should put in for your boss.  You will know if it is worthwhile to go an extra mile for the boss.  On the other hand, knowing how your boss operates brings another benefit.  You will be able to align expectations between you and him by understanding him more (You factor) thus delivering results that he wants.

What is the leadership style that you yearn to have?  Do you belong to a true leader or a manager?