Someone's workplace boss is often the most important person in the employee's life.  

To some extent, the boss influences compensation, promotions, quality of work life.  If you are a boss, or if you aspire to be a boss, here are some ideas on how to be a great one:

1.  With your people, be fair, firm, and friendly, but not a friend.  You are the boss, not a personal friend, not a confidante.  You can be friends later in either of your careers.

2.  You will get what you inspect, not what you expect.  If you expect office people, for example, to turn off the coffee pot before leaving work they may or not do it.  If you ask to see the sign off sheet indicating who turned off the pot, or who was last to leave, they will turn off the pot.

3.  Look to the "D's."  If you have a proven performer who suddenly, or gradually, goes into decline, look to the "D's:" divorce, disease, drinking, drugs, dice, depression, deviance, daillance.  Something may be negatively impacting the employee or his or her family.

4.  Don't allow mediocrity to creep into the organization.  Mediocrity is a cancer.  Mediocrity lowers the performance bar for everyone.  Tolerating mediocrity diminishes the boss in the eyes of the organization.  Mediocrity is malevolent.

5.  Only hire A-players.  Don't let C-players hire anyone.  A-players hire A-players.  C-players hire D-players.

6.  Hire slow.  Take your time to find the best person for the job.  Don't rush the process even if it means adding heavy managerial responsibilities on yourself or on others.  The more important the job, the more important it is to go slowly.  Hiring mistakes are enormously expensive to the organization.

7.  Fire fast.  When you have completely and correctly determined that you made a hiring mistake, release the mis-hired employee.  Don't fret; don't dawdle; don't procrastinate.  The longer a mis-hire is allowed to remain, the bigger the problem grows.  You know, the organization knows, and, almost always, the employee knows that he or she should be working elsewhere.

8.  Invest ten to fifteen minutes every day teaching someone something.  Continuous training, and continuous learning, are hallmarks of fierce competitor companies.  A constant focus on showing people how to do things better raises the productivity and performance of the entire organization. 

Training sales people on the basics of selling must be never ending.  Training sales people on how to increase profitable revenues generates the highest return on training investments.  Teaching manufacturing people how to make more units, with zero mistakes, in fewer hours, without personal injuries or accidents creates a strategic advantage.

9.  Hold daily five-minute company-wide sales meetings.  Hold the meetings in person, by phone, by email, on-line, over Skype, however.  There are endless sales topics: how to pre-call plan; defining a good sales call objective; customer service ideas; and so on.  A daily sales meeting rivets the organization on that most important of all business functions: getting and keeping profitable customers.

10. "W-A-D-A-D-A-D."  ("Wack-ah-dad.")  Words are cheap, and deeds are dear.  Don't just talk.  Do things.  Don't analyze something to death.  Act.  Don't preach.  Lead by example.  If you say you are going to do something, then do it.

ABOUT OUR GUEST AUTHOR: Jeffrey Fox is the founder of Fox&Co, a marketing and management consulting firm in Chester, Ct. Fox&Co helps clients increase profitable revenues and gross margins.  Jeffrey Fox is consigliere to senior executives.  His eleven best selling books have been published in over 35 languages.  There are over 200 international editions of his books.  This article is inspired by Jeffrey's "How to Become a Great Boss." His newest book is "How to Be a Fierce Competitor:  What Winning Companies and Great Managers Do in Tough Times." Website: www.foxandcompany.com