Strong leadership is preferable within any economic climate, but it is clearly an essential quality in times of economic and commercial uncertainty. It is easier to be an effective leader in a time of plenty than one during a challenging period, because you have the luxury and time to make mistakes, and yet it is often the experience of challenging periods that makes a leader all the more effective in the long run.

Leadership skills are highly prized within companies and organisations, as they can genuinely affect the productivity, motivation and performance of employees, and thus add to the company’s bottom line as a whole. In addition, true leadership skills can, and arguably should be developed by virtually everyone within an organisation, and can really enhance an employee’s career prospects. As we head into an uncertain 2009, here are some tips on becoming a more effective leader.

Start with yourself
No person can expect to influence and earn the respect of others if they are not demonstrably in full control of their own professional lives. This is not just about setting a good example to others, although that is important, but it is also the realisation that an effective leader should also lead themselves as an integral component of the company, rather than being a distant figure that simply delegates orders and workloads. It is only through being on top of your game that you can begin to start developing the tones, qualities and skills to inspire and motivate others.

Calmness is a commodity
In a world of commercial uncertainty, calmness becomes a diminishing and therefore valuable resource. We have all been at positions within our careers where we have benefited from the cool-headed thinking of others, and great leaders tend to exude a confidence and calmness regardless of the turmoil around them. If you want to lead and motivate others, especially during tough commercial times, you must first establish a reputation for calm, clear thinking yourself.

Build a team around you like a house
It is generally true that leaders, even talented ones, will fail to create the impact that they desire unless a significant part of their leadership strategy is devoted to surrounding themselves with good people. A good leader leaves their own ego at the door, and concentrates instead on developing teams that are more than fit for purpose. You should encourage a diverse variety of talent to flourish around you, and fuel their ambitions whilst feeling confident and secure of your own role as facilitator within the process.

Create a vision that others can see
To be a true leader amongst your colleagues, you must first develop a vision of the commercial future that you might ultimately communicate and lead them towards. Your vision must be as shrewd as it is coherent, as comprehensive as it is inclusive, and as achievable as it is far reaching. Look around you at people that you believe to be effective leaders, and you will find that they generally have a single-minded grasp of both the current situation and the desired outcomes of the future. This ability to perceive actions that will make a positive impact on your company’s future performance and achieve agreement amongst your colleagues to work towards shared goals is at the core of professional leadership.

Open people’s minds by being open minded
Particularly during times of commercial and economic pressure, an open mind and a flexibility of approach are key components of your leadership skills. There will be pressure to deliver results, although an open mind is a creative mind, and a creative, innovative approach may well pay dividends in today’s challenging conditions. By keeping an open mind, and being encouraging towards your colleagues ideas, you will not only inspire them to innovate further, but you may well also find that a collaborative effort often yields the best results.

Decide what you can and can’t live with
Setting the boundaries of what you consider to be acceptable levels of performance amongst both your colleagues and yourself is key to effective leadership. In doing this, and doing it as early as possible, you should ensure clear guidance is laid down as to how you expect people to operate. It is also wise to be a realist however, and to accept that there may be some things that you may wish to, but cannot change in the short term. But then that is what the mid and long term is for.

Praise with a loud voice, criticise with a soft one
As with many aspects of management and leadership, it is quality not quantity when it comes to dealing with both colleague praise and criticism. Too much praise and your words will diminish in value, too much criticism and you risk de-motivating the very people that you need to be positive. Instead, work on a strategy that is consistent across all your colleagues, because the rule of law only works if applied equally, and measure your tone and approach accordingly. Encourage with magnified enthusiasm, admonish with quiet authority.

Back it all up
A position of power without authority, or one of authority without power, is not a platform from which to successfully further your leadership ambitions. Both elements must be present in order to develop the respect of colleagues, and a key to ensuring this is your establishing your commitment to backing up what you say. If people come to depend on your word, and your judgement, then they are more likely to trust your vision and get behind it. Similarly, you must take responsibility for ensuring that your company’s promises to its consumers and clients are kept. There is no point in telling people that your company has unbeatable levels of service if you’re not prepared to pull out all the stops to make that claim a reality.

Cultivate a leadership culture
In successful companies, you will often find a devolved structure of leadership that encourages individual ownership and responsibilities within particular areas. This is a great characteristic to foster in your teams, because it is empowering and motivating for individuals to feel that they have a degree of autonomy and freedom in their work. Within your own leadership strategy, the ability to create leaders amongst you will get you to where you want to go faster. Be it through mentoring, personal guidance or specific training, a team built of leaders is a formidable force in any commercial climate.

In times of economic volatility, the job market can seem a truly intimidating place. With reports of industry cutbacks, redundancies and general uncertainty spreading through many sectors, many employees are starting to feel the pinch. Regardless of the prevailing economic downturn however, the job market remains a fruitful and exciting place of opportunity, particularly if you can make it work in your favour. Below are some tips on how to get the job market working on your behalf.

Work out what you’re selling
Appraising your skills and experience for their worth within the marketplace can be a daunting task, particularly if it has been a while since you were last required to do it. Within times of economic uncertainty, employers become increasingly interested in specific, specialised skills and experience, so the more clearly you can analyse and communicate your key strengths the better.

Some of your strengths may be industry specific, whilst others may be more generalised, transferable skills, and it is important to appreciate the difference between the two, particularly in a tougher job market. A good grasp of the former allows you to present yourself as a needed specialist, whilst understanding the latter may present you with opportunities within a more diverse variety of sector roles.

Work out whom you are selling to
Before you begin to target both possible sectors and potential employers, it helps to know who they are. Conducting some thorough research into commercial areas that professionally interest you, and the key players within these sectors, can pay dividends when it comes to applications, and could save you a substantial amount of time and energy in finding your next role.

Researching relevant companies and markets also enables you to ask yourself what these types of businesses are looking for in a potential employee. The current economic conditions are affecting everyone, so an ability to understand what employers want from new employees at a time like this is a must. In the short term, and generally speaking, many companies will be mainly interested in recruiting people who can make a demonstrable difference to the bottom line or enhance the performance of their business in some other manner. Worth bearing in mind when you emphasise the strengths in your CV.

Refine your skills
Within any period of economic decline, you can greatly enhance your career prospects and increase your motivation by becoming engaged in some skills training. An interesting way to visualise this is to see yourself as a company, and to consider your individual skills as assets. Each time you acquire new and valuable skills you are like a company that seeks to diversify through acquisition and development, so don’t be afraid to branch out into new and rewarding areas.

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Develop a close relationship with your recruitment consultant
Recruitment consultancies are by far the most popular way of finding temporary or permanent jobs. A recent survey by The Guardian newspaper found that 87% of companies and 89% of candidates use a recruitment consultancy to fill roles, so it pays to find a good and relevant one and keep them close. A good consultant will be one of your closest allies in finding a new role, because you both have a shared objective in finding you a position that suits you and that you are happy with.

Consultants are aware of a far greater range of job opportunities than would be accessed if you were going it alone, and can provide you with useful objective advice regarding your own skills base, aspirations and career opportunities. Good consultants will also give you an invaluable briefing regarding the companies that you are targeting before you meet them, and may well know key figures within the companies, giving you an additional inside track.

Be flexible, motivated and positive
Just because the UK economy may be currently uncertain about its future path, doesn’t mean that you have to be. There are always opportunities to be had within any economic climate, even a negative one, although the steps that you might need to take in order to realise them may be different. In today’s commercial landscape, the ability to be flexible will be a key differentiator, because your prospective employer’s needs will be changing too.

Above all, remain motivated and positive about your worth in the commercial marketplace and don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. With the right attitude and support around you, the job market can still be an exciting and rewarding place.

Within the current economic climate, it is highly likely that the atmosphere at your workplace is not as enjoyable as it may have been in the past. Financial pressures and market uncertainty have created a need to focus on the bottom line that is, in turn, translating into increased pressures on employees to deliver. All of this means tighter budgets, more difficult trading conditions and even the possibly of redundancies, none of which are likely to make the workplace a more enjoyable place.

Yet there is ample evidence to suggest that devoting part of your time to making the workplace more fun and less directly stressful can have a positive effect on your company. Recent research conducted at California State University showed that people who have fun at work are more creative, more productive, work better with others and call in sick less often.

An office environment that is less tense and more enjoyable to work within is bound to increase morale and stimulate a better professional performance from both you and your colleagues, which in turn may well reduce the commercial pressures. Below are a few tips to make your workplace a more fun place to be.

Everyone’s responsible
Even though it is often a manager’s task to facilitate or agree to fun activities, the responsibility of creating an enjoyable atmosphere lies with everyone. In addition, some of the nicest elements of your working day may come from smaller, more personal encounters with colleagues. It all begins with a smile, and the belief that sometimes the smallest details can make a big difference, even in the most challenging of economic outlooks.

Create a creative space around you
Whatever type of workspace you have, it can be both inspiring and stress reducing to engage in a little creative personalisation of the area around you, particularly when you consider how much of your working life you spend there. A few of your favourite items, photos or mementos, perhaps even a small plant or flowers: these are all things that can stimulate you through the day and make your experience of the work that you do all the more enjoyable.

Branch out
Keeping stimulated and motivated within your role can sometimes be a challenge, particularly if the business outlook is itself challenging, and it is at times like this that you should consider diversifying the elements of your role. Offer to take on any projects that capture your interest, provided it does not have a detrimental effect on your core output, and you may find the fresh stimulus rewarding. In the current climate, this is also the type of action that will send a positive signal to your employers that you want to be part of the solution.

Exercise breaks
Medical advice suggests that individuals should take a break of at least ten minutes per hour’s work in order to maintain an optimum degree of focus and productivity. With this in mind, why not orchestrate a break for the whole team if possible? Everyone can stretch out, relieve a bit of tension together, and feel more alert and connected to each other as a result.

A working philosophy
There is a long standing debate about whether people really work to live or live to work, and for most people, the truth is somewhere in between. Whatever your role, and no matter how serious the economic outlook may be, your employment constitutes a large degree of the person that you are. It can inform many aspects of your self-esteem, relationships with the people around you and general sense of well being. For these reasons alone, it is important that you take steps to try and enjoy, and get as much out of, each working day as possible.

Creative suggestions for a more enjoyable workplace
The following is a list of small, but perfectly formed, actions that could make a positive difference to your immediate working environment and day. Pick out a couple and try them, you might be pleasantly surprised at the effects they have.

• Take 60 seconds to think about your favourite moment at work.
• Volunteer to do a colleague’s most hated task.
• Have a dress down half day, in which everyone has to change outfit.
• Invite a new colleague out to lunch.
• Get everyone to write a spontaneous thank you note to their favourite client, customer, or business.
• Eat perfectly ripened grapes.
• Come up with a truly leftfield idea for selling your company’s products or services to clients - even (some would say especially) if you have never done it before.
• Buy doughnuts for everyone.
• Look round the office and work out who has made the most effort with what they’re wearing – then tell them that you think they look great.
• Smile at everyone.
• Bake cupcakes.
• Make everyone gather for a group photo.
• Make a point of complimenting everyone that you interact with.
• Ask a random colleague how they are feeling, and really listen to their response.
• Stretch at your desk for five minutes – and encourage others to do the same.
• Give a copy of your favourite book to the colleague that annoys you the most.
• Celebrate everybody’s birthday, making sure that there is a personal touch to their gift.
• Dress up like it’s a party for the day.
• Have a child paint the office a picture.
• Take time out to really celebrate any contract wins or completion of projects.
• Switch jobs with someone in your department for an hour.
• Write a letter to the most famous person in your industry asking for one piece of advice.
• Do a one minute relaxation exercise that makes you look weird (like yoga nostril breathing), but you don’t care because you’re relieving stress.
• Make a cup of tea or coffee for your entire team.
• Wear all white.
• Give everyone a small plant for their desks.
• Let someone borrow your favourite pen.
• Find out what makes the colleague opposite you laugh out loud