Great Leaders Say These Things

 

The “Why” and The “How”

1. What do you think about...?

   • Shows you value their input.

   • Regularly ask team members for their thoughts on projects.

2. It's okay to make mistakes

   • Reduces fear and nurtures innovation.

   • Share your own mistakes and what you learned from them.

3. I have complete confidence in you

   • Boosts morale and self-confidence.

   • Delegate tasks and offer support instead of micromanaging.

4. I'm proud of you

   • Reinforces positive behavior and hard work.

   • Give specific examples of what they did well when offering praise.

5. I noticed you've improved in...

   • Shows you are paying attention and appreciate their development.

   • Regularly track and mention individual progress.

6. How can I make your job easier?

   • Demonstrates you care about their workload and well-being.

   • Follow through on suggestions to remove obstacles.

7. I appreciate your hard work

   • Motivates and maintains high performance.

   • Be sincere and timely with your appreciation.

8. How do you like to receive feedback?

   • Ensures feedback is received effectively.

   • Tailor your feedback approach based on their preferences.

9. Your ideas are welcome here

   • Encourages creativity and engagement.

   • Create brainstorming sessions where all ideas are heard.

     • Pro tip - use “Silent Brainstorming” where you have everyone write down their ideas before the meeting.

10. How can I improve?

    • Shows humility and a willingness to grow.

    • Actively listen to their suggestions and make necessary changes.

11. What can I do to support you better?

    • Enhances team support and performance.

    • Regularly check in with team members to identify new needs.

12. Your contributions make a difference

    • Reinforces the value of their work.

    • Highlight specific examples of how their work benefits the team or project.

13. Thank you

    • Shows appreciation and creates a positive environment.

    • Frequently express thanks for both small and large contributions.

14. I was wrong, you were right

    • Builds trust and respect.

    • Own up to your errors promptly and learn from them.

It’s Okay to Make Mistakes

One of my teams was working on a critical project with a tight deadline.

A team member made a mistake that caused significant delays, and the team's fear of making additional errors created a tense and unproductive atmosphere.

Everyone was on edge, second-guessing their decisions, and this hesitancy slowed down progress even more.

I knew something needed to change to get us back on track.

I called for a team meeting and addressed the issue head-on.

I emphasized that "It's okay to make mistakes" and shared a personal story of a past error I made and how it led to valuable learning.

I assured them that mistakes are a natural part of the learning process and crucial for innovation.

Here are the steps I took to solve the issue:

Open Discussion:

We had an open discussion about the mistake, focusing on what we could learn from it rather than assigning blame.

This helped to diffuse the tension and created a more supportive atmosphere.

Encouragement of Risk-Taking:

I encouraged everyone to take calculated risks and assured them that any mistakes made would be viewed as learning opportunities.

This helped to reduce the fear of failure.

Support System:

I set up a peer-review system where team members could review each other’s work before final submission.

This collaborative approach ensured that mistakes could be caught early and fixed without fear of individual blame.

Positive Reinforcement:

I made it a point to acknowledge and appreciate the efforts and progress of each team member regularly, reinforcing that their contributions were valuable even if mistakes occurred along the way.

By implementing these steps, we not only resolved the immediate issue but also created a more positive and productive work environment.

Here's how you can make it real over the next 4 days:

Day 1: Observation and Reflection

• Choose one of the 14 phrases you want to work on this week.

• Pay attention to your interactions with your team today.

• Note instances where you could have used your chosen phrase.

  • Reflect on how using it might have changed the interaction.

• Keep a small notebook or use your phone to jot down these moments.

  • Reflection will help you understand the impact of your words.

• ChatGPT Prompt to Help: "Today, I want to focus on observing my interactions with my team. Help me identify moments where I could have used the phrase [insert chosen phrase]. How can I reflect on these moments to understand their impact?”

Day 2: Intentional Practice

• Use your chosen phrase at least once today.

• Plan a specific conversation or meeting where you can naturally incorporate the phrase.

  • For example, if you chose “How can I support you better?”, find a moment to ask a team member this question and listen carefully to their response.

• ChatGPT Prompt to Help: "Today, I plan to use the phrase [insert chosen phrase] in a specific conversation or meeting. Give me advice on how to naturally incorporate this phrase and tips on how to make it feel authentic."

Day 3: Seek Feedback

• After using the phrase, seek feedback.

• Ask the person you interacted with how they felt when you used the phrase.

  • Did it help them feel more supported or valued?

• Be open and listen without defending your actions.

  • Feedback will help you understand the effectiveness of your communication.

• ChatGPT Prompt to Help: "After using the phrase [insert chosen phrase], I want to seek feedback from my team. How can I ask for feedback in a way that is open and non-defensive? What questions should I ask to understand the impact of using this phrase?"

Day 4: Feedback

• Reflect on the past three days and plan for the future.

• Write down what you’ve learned about using the phrase and its impact on your team.

  • Plan how you will continue to use it.

• Set a goal to use the phrase consistently in relevant situations.

  • Regular use will reinforce positive behaviors and improve your leadership skills.

• ChatGPT Prompt to Help: "Today, I want to reflect on the past three days of using the phrase [insert chosen phrase] and plan how to continue using it effectively. Help me create a plan to keep integrating this phrase into my leadership style."

Your words have the potential to inspire, motivate, and uplift your team.

By thoughtfully integrating these phrases into your daily interactions, you create a culture of support and positivity.

Each of these phrases is such a small thing for a leader to say.

But such a BIG thing for a team member to hear.

Years from now you might not remember that kind thing you said to your team member.

But that team member will remember it forever.

This Week’s Growth Recommendations

Book To Read:

"Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't" by Simon Sinek (see it here)

TED Talk to Watch

"How Great Leaders Inspire Action" by Simon Sinek (see it here)

https://tinyurl.com/4nrfzsz7

World's Biggest Economics in 2075

 

The best free marketing tools that every hands-on marketer should use

Our recommended free online tools for understanding your customers, competitors and campaign, and how you should use them - across 8 marketing analysis activities

I've found that when running training courses, the tools I recommend to help marketers are always popular content, especially free tools...

There's a diverse mix of free tools available, particularly to support marketers gain insight to plan their campaigns, one of the enjoyable aspects of working in digital marketing today.

I originally created this list in 2012, but have kept it updated since it's popular and new tools are released, and some features become paid... Revisiting it shows that many of the tools are well established, despite the many lists of essential Generative AI tools.

In this article, I'll cover 8 marketing analysis activities that hands-on digital marketers need to follow to optimize their reach activities, kicking off their RACE marketing strategy. There are 25+ links to alternative tools in all covering all the major digital marketing channels from search to social media marketing to email and websites.

Our RACE Growth System is a popular marketing structure framework for startups, SMEs, and international corporations, since it can scale up or down according to your short-term and long-term digital marketing objectives.

Simply put, RACE guides marketers through a planned, insight-driven strategy to acquire and retain more customers. All our marketing tools and templates are integrated across our RACE Growth System, so you can confidently adapt and apply marketing strategies and techniques across your marketing funnel to drive growth.

You can find out more about our RACE Growth System when you download your free RACE marketing plan template, complete with recommendations for digital marketing tools and techniques to generate growth across each stage of your marketing funnel today.

OK, now onto the free tools...

1. Understanding customer search behaviour

The Google Keyword Planner has been an essential tool for hands-on marketers since it launched since it enables you to get into the minds of your audience, seeing what they are searching by how popular different search terms are. There are equivalent tools from search tools providers like SEMRush, but these are limited in that they don't use the insights direct from Google.

So, it's really useful for forecasting where you should be focusing your SEO and Google Ads. We recommend using this insight to do an SEO/Google Ads gap analysis with our premium members template to see where you are getting results and where you need to focus your improvements.

No longer a standalone tool, it's part of Google Ads, for which you need to register. It's free, but you get more specific figures on number of searches per month if you have active campaigns, and also insights on your Google Ads visibility (ad impression share).

As the example shows, you can use it to discover new keywords based on an existing page (your own, or for competitors).

The Keyword Planner doesn't give you info on which search terms drive visits to your site, so a related essential tool is Google Search Console, which also feeds into our gap analysis. When linked with your Google Analytics, it gives you invaluable insight into your conversion rates for different keywords too.

While I'm talking SEO, I have to give honourable mentions to these two SEO tools I still use regularly. First, Screaming Frog , a site crawler that indexes small sites for free and highlights errors and insights on articles and Yoast - useful if your site is running on WordPress.

2. Reviewing brand mentions and the latest developments in your industry

Google Alerts

Many marketers still use Google Alerts for reviewing mentions of their brand, campaign hashtags or competitor names by entering keywords, so it’s still widely used. However, it's mainly based on the analysis of sites and misses out on social media mentions.

Talkwalker

To help here, I recommend the free Talkwalker Alerts service from the social listening service Talkwalker (now part of Hootsuite). Talkwalker’s free social search also monitors mentions of your brand, hashtags and competitors on social media.

Feedly

Although RSS isn’t “in vogue” as it was 10+ years ago, I still find there’s no substitute for using this as a listening post for developments in your industry. I am recommending Feedly because it's the most popular - so you can see by the 'voice of the crowd' which posts are most popular.

Although feed readers aren't in fashion they are the most efficient way to scan the latest news in different categories.

• 3. Managing social media updates

Hootsuite and Buffer

I’ve used Hootsuite for posting updates to social networks and reviewing what others are saying for many years now. Hootsuite and also Buffer are comfortably the most popular free tools for posting and reviewing social media updates.

Hootsuite is great as a way of keeping tabs on competitors and influencers too, with integrations to enable social listening and monitoring content trends.

• 4. Finding influencers

There is no single free tool that works well for this. Often using Google or LinkedIn manually is the best way.

A long while ago you could use reputation tools like Klout, Kred or Peerindex, but these have faded.

For B2C influencer sourcing, most free tools are freemium, aimed at encouraging you to hire influencers through a paid plan. Still, free tools such as Collabstr can give you a good idea of micro-influencers in different sectors and locations. Impulze.ai also has a free Influencer Marketing Tool.

For B2B, LinkedIn sector skills used to be the best source for finding business influencers because of grouping by narrower topics - but LinkedIn killed this - monetization again. LinkedIn Navigator is probably the best replacement.

Followerwonk

Followerwonk is still available as a free service that can be used to find influencers via their X bio, but this limits it, as these examples show. Most marketers I know wouldn't know of the top 3 'influencers' listed here. Instead, they are being rewarded for the use of auto-follow bots.

• 5. Competitor site benchmarking

It used to be that Google AdPlanner was unbeatable for comparing audience size and dimension. That's been folded into Google Ads as the Campaign Planner and now limited to media sites, but it's still useful for finding size and quality of audience for partner and media sites. Also, don't forget about the related Google Placement Targeting Tool, which is useful for remarketing and research.

Today, my 'go to' tool for benchmarking is SimilarWeb, a freemium tool launched in 2013 which offers free stats on all sites, including referrers.

When it comes to benchmarking, our RACE Framework offers marketers, managers and business owners a simple structure to measure and optimize the key marketing activities across the customer lifecycle. Our Free Member templates for benchmarking your marketing support you through the step-by-step process of improving your marketing effectiveness.

• 6. Free CRM and Email marketing tools

Email is still an important communications tool, particularly for interacting with customers and leads. Some email and CRM providers still provide a free tier which can support free businesses.

This category was really invented by free tools from Mailchimp and Hubspot, but these are now so limited that they can't be recommended.

For new businesses, with a small customer base, I instead recommend Mailerlite or Brevo which both give the opportunity to send several emails to up to 1,000 subscribers for free.

• 7. Online writing support tools including Generative AI tools

Since marketers spend so much of their time in content management systems or online SaaS MarTech, it's important to check copy and grammar automatically. Grammarly has  become the de facto standard here - it's a plugin you install into Google Chrome. Personally, I use Language Tool since it's just as good and less intrusive - the nags to upgrade in Grammarly became too much for me!

We also routinely use the Chrome Extension CheckMyLinks for spotting broken links.

Of course, since 2022 and the launch of ChatGPT, every marketer uses Generative AI tools of which ChatGPT is the best known and most widely used tool. This could change since, with GPT 5 the number of prompts has been limited and I expect many will switch to Google Gemini which is now much more capable as a free tool. We subscribe to the Plus version of ChatGPT, so for now, I mainly use that, just using Gemini when following up on AI Overviews and when looking for more up-to-date summaries of trends.

Since the launch of ChatGPT many of our free and paid resources cover how marketers can make the most of GenAI tools, if you're looking to improve, I recommend our article recommending the best prompts for using ChatGPT for digital marketing and our free ChatGPT Cheatsheet.

• 8. Understanding overall online marketing effectiveness

Finally, I still believe that Google Analytics or an equivalent is essential for all who work in marketing to master. With the launch of Google Analytics 4, being seen as a step backwards by me and most marketers I speak to, due to usability, insights and privacy concerns, there are good free options to consider of which Matomo and PiwikPro are the best known and recommended.

By Dave Chaffey

https://tinyurl.com/4c4nbhev