I have been in management and leadership positions in the military and business world for forty- eight years, and I often get asked what were my best business lessons. Surprisingly (or not) my list of lessons probably has varied to a degree, depending on when in my career they were constructed.

Mike Schoultz

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Nov 22, 2019

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The list of lessons is based on real-world experiences as well as managers and leaders I studied (including many bosses). Being such a business manager is a lifelong learning process.

You are never done learning and renewing lessons you have learned. Every great manager always looks for ways to improve their ability to improve their leadership qualities and attributes.

Related: 10 Entrepreneur Lessons You Need to Know

If you read ten books on business management, you could easily build a checklist of 50 or more management lessons for future business managers. But more is not necessarily better for the best lessons to study and apply.

The following lessons represent my favorites on business management I have learned over my 48 years. They are the ones that have made the biggest impact on my success:

People first

No matter what the job is, leaders always want to look for the best people and then take care of them. A business is just a group of people working on various creations and inventions. People are your business. It is as simple as that. It’s all about the people. They are the lifeblood of the business.

When you’re leading a business or an organization, you’re leading people. It makes sense that leaders need to take care of their people. Many leaders work to have relationships with their employees.

Taking them out for coffee and getting to know them better is common among leaders. Putting people first is an important element in being a leader.
Be a multiplier

Be a multiplier

Multiplier business managers know that at the apex of the intelligence hierarchy is NOT the lone genius. Rather, it is the genius who knows the importance of bringing out the smarts and capabilities in everyone in the team.

Corporate politics

Understand that politics is a fact of corporate life, and learn to deal with it. That means you take time to understand the views of the people involved in corporate conflicts, as well as the conflicts themselves. There will be times when you have to choose between being in the right or being employed. It’s your choice.

Establish a clear direction

Getting people on board, aligned and pointed in the right direction is vital for an organization. If each person is going in a different direction, it can be chaos in an organization.

Keeping people coordinated and aimed is a continual process. You’re the luckiest leader in the world if this happens by default. Two ways to ensure people are coordinated and aimed is setting milestones and having multiple coaches and promoters for your employees.

Do what you can to make sure people enjoy what they’re doing. If people aren’t passionate about the business and love what they’re doing, they are more likely to be going in a different direction and susceptible to becoming disengaged. Certainly not a good thing.

Build connections

Both managers and leaders know their job with their teams is about building lots of connections. They make people feel they have a stake in common problems.

Pay attention to culture

Understand the culture of the organization, especially their expectations of what makes a good employee. They all say they believe in teamwork, dedication, hard work, etc. But look at the employees who are successful, who get the recognition, who rise quickly — they represent what the company is looking for. What do they do that you can do?

Build and maintain trust

Trust is a key element we all need to set aside vulnerability, but it is hard to build, and easy to lose. It is not built on words but through actions and evidence. Only when it works can a team address the necessary issues to win.

Conflict and consensus

Conflicts and fights are not the same things. Conflicts are normal and required factual push backs in business, whereas fights are emotional, often personal, disagreements which do not lead forward to consensus.

Embrace change

Change is the only constant in business, so make it your competitive advantage. Initiate change rather than react to it, and give clear instructions to help the team understand why the change is necessary, and how it will make the situation better.

Foster continuous communication

Communication is the glue that forms the bond between leaders and teams and holds great teams together. Credibility is a required base.

Provide recognition

Recognition drives motivation and human behavior, and human behavior drives results. Recognition validates people and their purpose. Intangible rewards can have an even greater impact than tangible ones, but they must be relevant.

Create learning experiences

We all have a desire to learn and grow. The best learning opportunities are experience and sharing.

Make your boss look good

Understand what your boss regards as a priority, and help him or she accomplishes it. Make sure that you document what you’ve done. Your boss needs the accomplishment, but shouldn’t get the credit for the work you’ve done.

Train your replacement. You won’t be able to get a promotion if there’s no one else to take your job.

Foster teamwork

Peter Drucker is a silent mentor for our small agency. We are big fans. He once made an interesting point when he said that leaders don’t train themselves not to say ‘I’ He’s implying that leaders innately work with others and let the team get the credit. They don’t force themselves to say ‘we’. ‘We’ is natural for them, and it’s the way they’ve always thought.

You work as a team when you don’t care who gets the credit.

So the next time you interview someone with a resume that states, ‘I accomplished x’ or ‘I did x’, it should send up a few warning signals.

Staff development

Many companies follow the motto: “Hire for the character, train for skill.” You hire people that are eager to learn. They don’t have a ton of skills; but as a leader, you teach them, and they become better. They grow with your company and contribute to its success.

You see this with football coaches. In football coaching, it’s almost unheard of for someone with no experience to be hired as the head coach of a team. Most people start in a low-level position and gradually move up.

The same occurs in business. George Bodenheimer is the former president of ESPN. He started out working in the mailroom of ESPN. It would have been very difficult for him to rise to the presidency if he hadn’t had a boss who wanted to help him grow and succeed in the company.

Do not rest on past successes

There is nothing more dangerous to life’s success than a last great result, is there? We are ‘only as good as our next result’. Stay paranoid.

Make yourself a project

Hairdressing icon Vidal Sassoon was famous for having said: “The only place you’ll find success coming before work is in a dictionary.” We have to work on ourselves. Put pressure on ourselves. Critique our days. Give back to society. Be our very best coaches and cheering squads. All of this applies as much to our personal lives as for our business lives.

Embrace change

Darwin said it was not the strongest of the species that survived, but the ablest to adapt to change. There will be more change in the next five years than we’ve seen in the past 50.

Get excited by change. Be part of the most movements that you can. Help shake things up.

Build and maintain trust

Always do what you say and set good examples. Demand from yourself the same level of professionalism and dedication that you expect from others.

Trust, once broken, is seldom restored to its original state. It is the most fragile yet essential attribute of leadership and management.

Accept learning is never done

You have worked hard to get to this point. Rely on your experience but accept there is still much to learn. Learn from everywhere you can, including your team.

The bottom line

The moral of this story is that the best leadership lessons should have a great influence on team development and teamwork. If these different thoughts are possessed by your current management or leadership team, or your emerging leaders, you will be in a good position for the road ahead.