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Being able to remain calm under fire is something that gets easier with age and experience. You know you have survived everything. I don’t know how to impart this serenity to those who don’t have it other than to personally demonstrate it yourself and hope that they can model your behavior. “Business hates uncertainty. There’s no doubt that change creates winners and losers in the pool of firms that make up our industry.” 8. Set a good example for everyone else. Expecting others to do what you say but not what you do never works. I have been saying this for years. If you want your key people to make sales calls, you have to be willing to do it yourself. If you want people to do their timesheets on time, you have to do yours on time. If you want people to be responsive to calls and emails after normal working hours, you need to be yourself. This is fundamental and there’s no way around it. Business hates uncertainty. There’s no doubt that change creates winners and losers in the pool of firms that make up our industry. The quality of your leadership will make the determination of which side of the line your firm ends up on. Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
MARK ZWEIG, from page 5
their effectiveness. They aren’t worried that they won’t have anything to do if they give something up, or that someone else will do it better than they do. That is the goal! And when they (the leader) does have more time, they will figure out how to use it in new ways to advance the goals of the company. 5. Constantly upgrade the team. The best leaders are doing two things: confronting non-performance and recruiting new talent. No one likes dealing with people who aren’t performing up to standard – it’s not fun. But it is essential. And so is looking for and hiring new team members to improve capabilities and move things ahead to the next level. It’s just like being the manager of a sports team. They never rest on the critical responsibility of upgrading the team, even when the team is winning games. 6. Keep their priorities straight. Ineffective leaders get pulled in many different directions and devote their days to fire-fighting. Effective leaders can fight fires but they don’t fight every fire. They know which ones can spread. And at the same time they are also still working on building the firm of the future. That takes real discernment of what the priorities are and concentration of effort over extended periods of time versus the immediate gratification that comes from solving a problem, no matter how small. 7. Stay calm under fire. This may be an extension of No. 2 above, but seems worthy of some individual attention.
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THE ZWEIG LETTER FEBRUARY 24, 2025, ISSUE 1574
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