Leadership - A discussion of traits, characteristics, and current news of leaders.

Cyber Monday - the most profitable day of the shopping season for online retailers. Most managers will be monitoring their employees today, ensuring that they don't spend corporate dollars and time surfing the web, looking for deals. Without fooling ourselves, we know that some employees are going to be looking online and purchasing those deals they couldn't find over the weekend or on Black Friday. But, as leaders and managers in our companies, we have a responsibility to our investors to ensure that their dollars and man hours are well spent. If only ten employees at 2 hours each slacked off today doing nothing but cyber-shopping, that's 20 hours we lose in productivity, equivalent to a part-time work week for one person! Here are tips you can employ to ensure that the work gets done and things don't get out of hand while your employees are shopping online - which they're going to do whether we're watching or not:

1. Be upfront with them. Let them know you are aware that they will be shopping online or at least already are by the time they get your email or global voice mail. Being up front about it takes the mystery and presumption from both sides.

2. Make it clear to the employees that the time they're using is not to be abused. Meaning, you understand they will want to surf for a short period of time, but don't use the whole eight hours. We are not paying them to shop all day!

3. Give them a reasonable time limit that they can do this. For instance, shop on their lunch hour (1 hour), breaks (2 fifteen minute breaks) and any other downtime during the day. If given reasonable limits, they are more likely to honor that than if told not to do it all.

4. Finally, be a leader and exemplify leadership by observing these limits as well. Employees tend to emulate what they see. Make sure they see good things.

Happy Cyber Monday!