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How to be a Good Leader [Research + Expert Tips]

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How to be a Good Leader [Research + Expert Tips]

Good leadership is vital for the long-term success of your organization.

Consider, for instance, how there’s a 56% reduction in burnout and 845% greater odds of employee engagement when leaders connect people to purpose, accomplishment, or each other.

Good leaders inspire and motivate their employees.

But it’s easier said than done. There are many ways to be a good leader, and it isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.

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If you’re unsure how to become a good leader, you’re in luck. Here, we’ll explore research-backed or expert-backed tips for becoming a better leader at work. Let’s dive in.

What does it mean to be a good leader?

While the term “good leader” can be difficult to define, it’s easy to spot in practice.

A good leader should have the following qualities:

  • Resiliency
  • Optimism
  • Flexibility
  • Integrity
  • Accountability
  • Empathy
  • Humility
  • Vision

Additionally, when we surveyed 300 people across the U.S., 44% respondents marked “Ability to communicate” as the most important trait/skill of a good leader. Strong communication skills came ahead of resiliency, creativity, humility, and even self-awareness.

most important skill in a good leader

Ultimately, a good leader is meant to inspire, motivate, and challenge each team member to hit their goals, impact the business’ bottom-line, and reach their fullest potential.

In his TedTalk “Why good leaders make you feel safe”, Management theorist Simon Sinek says a good leader is someone who makes their employees feel safe and secure.

Learn more about what makes an effective leader — according to experts at HubSpot, Google, LinkedIn, and Monday.com — in this post on developing leadership skills.

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Fortunately, leadership isn’t a trait that you’re either born with or you’re not. Instead, good leadership skills can be learned. Let’s explore how to become a better leader, next.

How to Be a Better Leader at Work

1. Take a leadership assessment.

The first step towards becoming a better leader is assessing your personal strengths and weaknesses to understand areas for improvement.

Start by taking a leadership style quiz to determine which of the 8 leadership styles fits how you lead. Understanding your leadership style can help you determine how your direct reports view you, as well as the gaps that might exist in your current style.

For instance, let’s say you determine you’re an autocratic leader. An autocratic leader doesn’t ask for input from any team members before making a final decision — which can be ineffective, since it inhibits the leader from hearing different perspectives, and doesn’t empower his or her employees.

Once you’ve determined this is your leadership style, you can work to actively request input from team members —  which enables employees to feel heard and empowered, while also helping you ensure you have all the information necessary before making a decision.

2. Be transparent and create open dialogue.

Ultimately, transparency and honesty leads to a higher level of trust between team members and leaders, so remaining transparent with your direct reports is critical.

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Your direct reports want to know what’s happening with the organization at-large, so taking the time to have direct, honest conversations with them about the company’s goals is key.

For instance, if your department is going through a re-org, take the time to explain to each direct report why the re-org is taking place, and make space for each employee to express their concerns.

Being transparent and honest also encourages your direct reports to do the same. If they feel you hide information from them or aren’t forthcoming, they’ll act similarly — which can lead to confusion and an increased risk of miscommunication.  

Good leaders are also excellent communicators. As Vice President of Blue Frog, Kelsey Halverson, told me, “Good managers teach, great managers listen. A manager becomes a great teacher when he or she has a genuine desire to hear the organizations goals, challenges, and vision.”

Halverson adds, “It’s not the role of a manager to tell the organization what to do — Instead, it’s to listen and guide the team into actionable strategy that will empower innovation and drive results.”

Kelseys quote on good leadership

Taking the time to tailor your communication style for each direct report goes a long way towards establishing strong relationships with them. To do this, ask each direct report to complete a DiSC assessment, which will help you better understand each team member’s personality, how they respond to challenges, and how they prefer to communicate.

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3. Foster deeper relationships with your team members.

Taking the time to learn who each of your team members are outside of work is vital for fostering a deeper relationship with them and establishing trust and understanding.  

Consider using icebreaker questions during team meetings, or creating opportunities for the team to bond outside of work. Additionally, ask your direct reports about their preferred way to work — including communication styles, how they like to receive feedback, and what their professional goals are.

Finally, building rapport is about taking the time to get to know each direct report. In 1:1s, rather than jumping right into your meeting’s agenda, consider beginning the conversation more naturally by asking about your direct report’s weekend plans, or what she enjoys doing outside of work, all of which helps you both relate on a more human-to-human level. 

4. Encourage professional development.

According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Workforce Learning Report, 94% of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it simply invested in helping them learn.

Providing your team members with learning and development opportunities can help you reduce turnover rates and increase employee engagement.

Being a good leader is all about seeking out learning and development opportunities for your direct reports, encouraging them to learn, grow, and face new challenges.

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Additionally, it will help you make your team more successful in the long-run if you can help team members up-skill in certain areas, or nurture their own leadership skills as your team expands.

5. Show appreciation for a job well done.

Feeling recognized for a job well done can help boost an employee’s morale, engagement, and productivity.

For instance, consider the last time your boss gave you specific and positive feedback, such as, “You did a great job on your presentation on Tuesday. You gave fantastic context into the problem we’re trying to solve on the team, and you were clear and articulate about your proposed solutions.”

Not only would that make you feel great, but I’m willing to bet it would encourage you to work just as hard on your next presentation for more of that positive reinforcement.

Research has shown positive reinforcement is incredibly effective at ensuring people’s behaviors are repeated. So, if your employees do a good job, you’ll want to praise or reward them for their efforts to ensure your team continues to stay engaged and motivated.

6. Remain creative and open-minded.

Good leaders are innovative, creative, and open-minded to new ideas or processes. Rather than adhering to the status quo, a good leader constantly looks for ways to streamline processes, create new opportunities for their team, and increase impact on the bottom-line.

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Good leadership includes taking a big-picture vision or strategy, and assigning specific tasks to individual team members to inspire, motivate, and challenge your team.

For instance, last year my manager recognized we needed a new process when it came to working with guest contributors. Once she’d recognized this big-picture challenge, she assigned the project to me. I was excited to own the creative process of brainstorming a new strategy, which kept me engaged and motivated at work.

How to Be a Positive Leader

People with positive moods have been proven to be more creative and collaborative, so if you’re able to spark positivity among your team, you’ll see a real impact on results.

Positivity is contagious, so being a positive leader can go a long way towards instilling confidence, pride, and happiness in your team members.

To be a positive leader, you’ll want to:

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  • Focus on an employee’s strengths and provide positive feedback in 1:1s
  • Cultivate positive relationships with your team members
  • Ignite hope by painting a picture of an exciting vision for the future, and consistently reminding employees of why their work matters

However, it’s important to note: You don’t want to prioritize positivity over reality.

As Senior Manager of HubSpot Blog Program’s Karla Hesterberg told me, “I think the best leaders balance realism and optimism really well. You want to keep your team feeling positive about the direction you’re headed, but you can’t gloss over challenges — you have to acknowledge when things are tough and give your team space to feel those things.”

Hesterberg says, “You can’t try too hard to put a positive spin on everything or you’ll end up minimizing real challenges.”

Hesterberg adds, “The best leaders I’ve worked with are really skilled at acknowledging the tough things but then convincing everyone to stay on the train anyway because where you’re all headed is great.”

what is a good leader according to karla

Good leadership doesn’t happen overnight, and a good leader is humble enough to admit they’re not always going to get it right. There are setbacks in any leadership position.

Being self-aware, open to feedback, and flexible in your approach will set you up for more success in the long-run, particularly as your team grows, or your business’ needs change. 

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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