What Makes a Good Leader?

Leadership. That elusive quality that employers want and business owners need. But what makes a good leader? As you are starting your own lawn care business, working on your leadership skills is a must because leadership is an important quality that will help you succeed in your career. Military members learn leadership as one of many facets of their training because being able to lead a team on to a successful mission is crucial in the armed forces.

Here are three traits of a good leader and how you can develop them in your lawn care business.

Sharing a Mission

A good leader has a mission: A set of goals that they are constantly working toward. But simply determining the mission is not enough, you need to be able to communicate that to your employees. Sharing your mission with your employees creates a sense of comradery and demonstrates to them that they are valuable parts of achieving the company’s goals.

Get your employees involved in your business. Good leaders seek input from their employees and establish good lines of communication to motivate, inspire, and lead their teams. In short, communication is the key to sharing your mission and being a good leader.

Investing in Yourself

A good leader sets an example for his team on everything from work ethic to charity to self-improvement. Taking the time to improve and take care of yourself makes you a better leader because it helps you to more effectively serve others. If you are in a good place personally and you have a healthy balance of work and life, you can assist your employees with both their professional and personal lives.

In addition, investing in yourself means taking the time for your own professional development. Hone your skills, learn new ones, and stay motivated to show your employees how to do the same. When it comes to investing in yourself, you have to make time for it or it will never happen, but great leaders know their limits and work on pushing them. Starting your own lawn care business requires a lot of work, so be sure to invest in yourself to make that work easier.

Valuing Your Crews

It’s not enough to simply say you value your employees. Actions speak louder than words, and employees can tell when you truly value their contributions. As we have already mentioned, one way to show your crews that you value them is by sharing your company’s mission with them so that they fully understand their role in making that vision come to life.

Another way to value your crews is to train them well on the services they offer and then trust them to perform quality work for your customers. Training is key to helping them do their part to accomplish your business’s mission. Once you have trained them, you can trust them to do the kind of work that you will be proud of, which shows them even further that you value them.

Starting your own lawn care business requires more than just good leadership; you have to be willing to work on yourself to improve. At U.S. Lawns, we work closely with each of our lawn care franchise owners to help them hone their ability to lead as well as a host of other important skills. All this in addition to our proven systems that make opening and expanding their businesses easy.

Download our e-book to learn how we help our franchisees succeed.