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How to Be an Inspirational Leader

Posted: 14 Jul 2019 06:00 AM PDT

That's it. Two steps that are recursive and endless. But, a lifetime of learning stems from engaging in these steps.

Step 1: Deconstruction

The first step to being an inspirational leader is to give up on the idea of being either inspirational or a leader. While counterintuitive, I believe the idea of being a quote-unquote leader misguides people and takes them in the opposite direction that authentic leadership requires.

Leadership, to me, is about authenticity. Consciously trying to behave in a given socially constructed way creates shallow inauthentic behavior that is readily perceived by those around us. It may not be at a conscious level, but I believe people do pick up on this. 

So there's a socially constructed archetype for an inspirational leader: brave, decisive, tall, relentless, committed to the vision, charismatic, down to earth, thoughtful and creative. The list of adjectives could go on and on. The problem is that no one is entirely like that. We may behave ascribing to these adjectives occasionally, but no one is a robot who can fulfill all of those characteristics all of the time. And even if someone does manage to come across like that all the time, I don't think that pretending to be beyond human comes across as inspirational. That's just demanding and taxing of oneself and others. Ultimately, people will feel pressured rather than inspired by such behavior.

So how do you rise above this problem? Deconstruction. 

Real people are not at their best 100 percent of the time. Real people don't feel like working all the time. Real people have shitty and panicky moments, and that does not make them less inspirational. Quite the opposite actually.

People become inspired by getting rid of the masks and the veils of obligation and stepping into a place of vulnerability. And again, you can't try to be vulnerable because that would put you back in the same paradoxical state of trying to be inspirational. You have to find a place where you are comfortable with your shortcomings and embrace them. Not because you read it in a book or heard it in a seminar. But because you have found out just how liberating it is to be you. 

That's the most inspiring thing you can do. You can't demand anything of others because that's not inspiring: that's pressure. Inspiration is breathing, and breathing is about freedom. 

You can't believe that you are going to change people. You can't want that either. You have to see the best in everyone and try to shape and orchestrate the organization in a way so that it leverages the best that each person brings to the table. While at the same time helping bridge their shortcomings through how you organize the team, rather than through pressure towards self-improvement.

As long as you are trying to be inspirational, as long as you are trying to lead, you will never be either inspirational or a leader. Leadership comes from the way you behave, and the way you behave is a reflection of your habits and values that are carved out like glaciers over long periods of time. Superficially changing these habits or behaviors will only take you so far. If you emulate compassion, thoughtfulness, or creativity, that may work at first but will slowly become a cage that engulfs your expected behavior.

Step 2: Rebuilding

If you have successfully given up on the constructs of leadership and inspiration, your glass is now empty and you may begin to fill it up again with your own self-brewed tea.

Some people can lead by being very vocal, while others by being very quiet. Some might lead by being creative and others highly methodical. Some might lead by being challenging and inquisitive and others by being acquiescent and thorough. Some might be exceptional at micromanagement and others at empowering and releasing others.

People don't all value the same things. Some may find a partner who is always calling to check up on them. Others may find the same behavior annoying and smothering. Now that you are momentarily released from the social conceptual shackles of leadership you can begin to identify who you are. Not who you think you should be based on theory, but who you feel comfortable being. 

This may seem like something trivial but it's not. Embracing yourself means accepting all of the thousands of things you are not. For every little thing that we are, there are thousands of things that we are not. Take me for instance. I am great at starting things and changing things. Conversely, I am not great at just keeping things running, not great at incrementally fixing things, not great at promoting stability, not great at producing clarity and not great at introducing predictability in the workplace. I could go on endlessly. The point is that for one thing that I am, there are thousands of other things that I am not. It's not easy being ok with that.

When confronted with the social construct of what it means to be a CEO for instance, I naturally expect that I should be able to do things that are not natural to my form of being. I expect that I should be more structured in my thought process, better at running long meetings, or at being cold and clear-headed about my decision-making process. But I am not any of those things. I can't bear meetings that last for more than 10 minutes unless we are brainstorming about something. I don't like sitting down to work or engage in days where my schedule is jammed with meetings all laid out before my day has even begun. Conversely, I enjoy feeling like every day is packed with intuitive discovery, that one clue from one conversation could set the stage for the next, and that some conversations literally require two minutes while others may require one hour. 

The point is that as I give up on socially constructed notions of leadership, inspiration, or "CEOness", I can begin to learn what I am really about. And rather than patching up my shortcomings through extra work and going against my grain, I can surround myself with people who have those characteristics that I am missing. That's the beauty of a team. Not everyone has to be everything. Most amazing teams, in fact, have people who are wildly different from each other, but that somehow all coalesce to complement each other.

It's a lot easier to build a team if you are not trying to be things that you are not. It will be easier to recognize the gaps, and easier to accept these gaps in other people. If the quote-unquote leader is always trying so hard to be things they are not, they will stimulate the same behavior in others and that will promote an environment where it won't be easy to understand where the shortcomings are because people will be hiding them as something bad to be frowned upon. But shortcomings are the very foundation upon which amazing teams are built on. 

If you discover a more authentic way to relate to yourself, though, that will eventually percolate through the deepest parts of your being and will come across to others as something genuine. 

Ultimately you will be eternally dissatisfied if you are trying to lead for others. That's an impossible task because you have no control over how others will see and react to your style. You do have control over how you respond to your method of dealing with yourself, and if you figure that part out, you will create room so that a more authentic self begins to form, and with this room, you will be able to breathe and inspire. Whether others will want to follow your lead or not is irrelevant. Especially if you plan on being a leader.

 

The Pros and Cons of Hiring Your Children in Your Small Business

Posted: 14 Jul 2019 06:00 AM PDT

If you're a small business owner, it can be difficult to find and hire the talent you need. One possible solution to fill those gaps is to hire your children. As with every decision in life and business, though, there are pros and cons to consider before bringing your children on board. Here are eight pros and cons to hiring your children to work in your small business.

Pros of hiring your children

1. You may win out when it comes to paying the tax requirements for your children.

The tax requirements for family employees differ greatly from those for other employees. According to the IRS, payments for services performed by a child under the age of 18 aren't subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes if your business is a sole proprietorship or partnership where each partner is the parent of the child. Payments for services performed by a child under the age of 21 aren't subject to the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA). However, no matter your child's age, payment for their services are subject to income tax withholding.

2. There are tax benefits to hiring your children to join your small business.

If your child is of legal working age and performing work you'd ordinarily pay someone else to do, their wages are considered legitimate business expenses. Reasonable work includes data entry, filing, typing, customer service, cleaning, maintenance, and stockroom or warehouse work. Depending on your child's age, you may still be able to claim them as a dependent or get the tax credit benefit for them as well.

3. You're probably familiar with your children's capabilities and professional history.

One of the biggest complaints hiring managers have when looking for new talent is finding the time to sift through countless resumes to find the best, most qualified applicants possible. When you hire your children, you have the advantage of already being familiar with their work history, professional capabilities and skills, enabling you to shorten or completely bypass the interview process. 

4. Your children can fill a need as well as gain professional experience.

With unemployment rates low and job applicants having their pick of positions, it can be tough for small businesses to find the talent they need when they're competing against large corporations and brands.

According to Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), "owners are growing their businesses and expect that they can sell more if they can produce more with additional employees. Investment spending has been solid for the past two years, and owners are choosing to invest in their workforce as well as by creating new jobs and raising wages."

The NFIB Job Report stated that, while the percentage of owners who have reported reducing their staff is at an all-time low, 21% of owners cited difficulty finding qualified workers as their single most important business problem. Hiring your children to work in your small business may be an effective way to fill open positions, while also giving your children the opportunity to gain professional experience.

Cons of hiring your children

1. You aren't filtering through an official talent pool.

Yes, we just stated this as a potential pro above, but it's important to keep in mind that while you can shorten or bypass the interview process by hiring your child, the interview process exists for a reason. If you skip the interview process entirely when you hire your child, you have to make sure they are just as qualified as potential external candidates. You know your child's skills, talents, potential and work ethic, but if you hire them to work for your small business, you need to be sure your business won't suffer as a result.

2. Firing your children if they don't turn out to be a good fit may be impossible.

While it's easy to see the upsides to hiring your child, it's important to consider what might happen if they aren't right for the position. It may be an exciting opportunity to welcome your child into your business, but if it doesn't wind up working out, it could be one of your worst nightmares, especially if disciplinary measures are needed. Firing your child could have repercussions far beyond the office, especially if any other family members involved in your business don't agree with your decision.

3. Your children may assume they have special privileges and take advantage of you.

We've all seen movie stereotypes where the boss's kid gets away with doing whatever they want – taking off early, coming in late, or pushing work they don't want to do onto other people – all without the boss noticing or, worse, not caring. While your child may not do anything quite so dramatic, they might still assume they have privileges that your other employees don't, which can cause conflict, especially if your other employees feel as though you're indulging or endorsing those assumed privileges. It's important that your child understands they have the same rights and privileges as every other employee. 

4. Your children may unintentionally undermine your leadership and authority.

If your child assumes they have special privileges, they could start undermining your authority. If your child feels as though the rules don't apply to them, that can trickle down to your other employees, making them feel that if your child can act without repercussions, then the rules shouldn't apply to them either. This can quickly spiral out of control, leaving you with a much bigger headache than just trying to fill an open position.  

First 5 Steps to Secure Your New Website

Posted: 14 Jul 2019 06:00 AM PDT

But, you should never roll out a personal or business website without properly securing it first. Not only is dealing with the fallout from being hacked a headache, as the owner of the website, you are responsible for the content on its pages as well as the mechanisms that people will use to interact with it.

If you plan to store user information, such as passwords or phone numbers, then it is critical that you safeguard that data appropriately. How critical? You could be subject to data breach fines under certain legislation.

Here are the five most important steps that you need to take to secure your new website.7/14/2019 10:00 am

1. Choose a reliable host.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, individuals and companies would obtain and maintain their own servers in a localized data center or office. The cloud computing movement radically shifted that model and the majority of websites are now hosted through a third-party provider.

Cloud computing reduces overhead costs and responsibilities for website owners, but it brings some security concerns along with it. Essentially, you have to trust an outside organization with the data on your website as well as with its overall stability and reliability.

If you choose the wrong cloud hosting provider, it could leave your website exposed to an array of different vulnerabilities. The provider could suffer a data breach or its entire data center could go down, in which case your website might lose critical information.

Not to scare you off of cloud computing, but it's not risk-free.

2. Obtain an SSL certificate.

If you plan to transmit any sensitive user data on your web servers, then a secure sockets layers (SSL) certificate is a necessity. SSL is an encryption protocol that occurs at the browser level and ensures that all incoming and outgoing web requests are masked from outsiders.

As a website owner, you are responsible for acquiring a valid SSL certificate from an authority organization and keeping it up to date. Once configured with your domain name, users will see the padlock symbol next to the URL in the browser. This is the universal indicator of a safe website.

Without an SSL certificate, there is a high chance that users could have their private information stolen. Consider a scenario in which your website accepts credit card transactions over an unsecured HTTP connection. Any hacker on the network would be able to spy on the web traffic and see the credit card numbers being sent.

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3. Use a content delivery network.

Although internet speeds have increased dramatically across the globe in recent years, users will still experience latency when connecting to websites on different continents. If you need to support a worldwide audience, one popular solution is to invest in a content delivery network (CDN).

A CDN functions like a highway for your website traffic. The CDN provider maintains a set of servers in different regions that cache certain portions of your content. When users load your website, their browser automatically read data from the CDN servers to make it appear as fast as possible.

When researching the best CDN providers for your new site, pay attention to the number of servers and where they're located. The biggest security benefit from this technology is that a larger network can more properly load balance and handle large spikes in traffic without succumbing to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

4. Add a software firewall.

Traditionally, firewalls have operated as hardware devices that connect to the edge of an ethernet network to help protect the systems inside of it. However, that definition has evolved over time and now firewall technology can exist solely at the software level.

This means that you can acquire and configure a web-based firewall solution to help protect your data and users. The basic concept of a firewall is to monitor incoming connections and block those that are potentially threatening, with the ultimate goal of preventing a DDoS attack.

 Managing a firewall is an ongoing activity. First, you have to ensure that the proper ports are open to allow the website to operate on the open internet. Then, you need to continuously monitor the traffic being received by the web servers and tweak firewall policies accordingly based on the threat level.

5. Maintain a backup policy.

When following best practices for IT maintenance, running bahttps://www.business.com/categories/server-backup-and-imaging-software/ckups for critical systems is a fundamental activity. Obviously, the goal is to prevent data loss or corruption, but server backups are also vital to keeping a website secure. You need your users to consider your online environment to be trustworthy and reliable.

At the code level, your website data should be managed through a configuration system that tracks each change and stores version history over time. This means you can quickly revert to an older piece of code if a security gap is found and needs to be patched right away.

At the database layer, full snapshot backups should be logged on at least a daily basis if not more often, depending on the types of changes and additions occurring. It's critical, however, to keep backup copies secure because if a hacker gains access to a snapshot, it can result in a damaging data breach. Best practice is to keep one set of backups in your cloud environment and another on hardware in your local office.

The bottom line.

Gone are the days when you could throw a website online and then think about how to secure it against hackers. One estimate claims that every website comes under attack 22 times daily, which is why it is so important to have your cybersecurity plan in place before you go live. Otherwise, there's a chance you could find yourself a victim of cryptojacking, ransomware, DDoS, phishing or worse before you even have a chance to hang out the welcome sign.
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