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One of the best ways to learn how to manage your employees is to ask them questions. If you pose the right questions, you'll get to know what motivates your employees and what their goals are. You can then use this information to manage them more effectively and help them succeed in their jobs. To help you figure out which questions to ask, 12 business leaders from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) respond to a question of their own:

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Profit isn’t a dirty word, and neither is cash flow. Any customer who’s unwilling to talk about the terms of payment upfront may not be worth taking the risk on.

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Don't damage your business by overlooking the basics.

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As a new entrepreneur, you might battle limiting beliefs or unrealistic expectations that you’ve yet to flag or identify. However, as you progress in your business, you’ll learn there are certain ideas and habits you’ll need to shed in order to reach your fullest potential.  The first step to doing so, of course, is acknowledging what you must set free. Below, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members shared the most important things they gave up in order to advance in their careers. Here's how letting go helped them move forward.

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One of the most fundamental skills to growing a small business is effective delegation -- but more than that entrepreneurs need to realize that it’s okay to not be great at everything. It’s okay to not be the person who does it all.

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Business partnerships can be valuable tools to help business leaders dissipate risk, share ideas and earn more money. However, some entrepreneurs only see the benefits and don’t stop to think through all the details of a partnership before they decide to set it up. There are some elements that should require a bit more consideration. Below, nine experts from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss what they believe business owners should be thinking about when considering setting up a partnership and why these points can be key to its potential success (or potential failure).

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Before we race off into a whole new revenue stream, we have to stop and think about how it will impact our existing business. Do you need this new thing, or are you just bored?

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First impressions set the stage for how someone sees you. Most human beings draw conclusions about others from the first thing they do or say. In business, that means that initial meeting is especially important.  Authenticity in your actions and speech can create a great first impression in many circles, but only if your authenticity isn't forced. To help, 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council reflect on the following question:

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If you're just getting your feet wet in business, there are many things that can be overwhelming. One of the biggest sources of overwhelm, however, is finances. With so many numbers to track, livelihoods to be responsible for and rules to follow, business finances can quickly become too much for new entrepreneurs to handle. However, following a few key steps and having a basic plan can go a long way to simplifying the entire financial process. Below, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss a few pertinent tips that may help first-time entrepreneurs get a little more comfortable with business finances and set themselves up for a successful financial future.

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For many people, networking is not a skill that comes naturally—even to entrepreneurs. But without this skill, entrepreneurs may end up developing bad networking habits that could hinder their ability to form new business relationships. Because cultivating good connections is crucial for any entrepreneur, breaking those bad networking habits is a necessary undertaking. To help, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council list some of the bad networking habits that entrepreneurs need to ditch immediately if they intend to improve the quality and quantity of their business connections and master the art of networking.

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Finding revenue in any business is step one -- without revenue, nothing else matters. But, in the hyper-competitive home-improvement industry, revenue can be hard to acquire without breaking the bank.

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Our journey of implementing a proper and efficient morning huddle took time, iteration and uncomfortable conversations.

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Entrepreneurs often find themselves swamped by work, with little or no time to be mindful of themselves and what is happening around them. Mindful moments aren’t always easy to come by, so business leaders need to take advantage of them when they show up or learn to be intentional about making the time for them. To help you find easy ways to incorporate a mindfulness practice into your daily work routine, 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council explore how you can be mindful during work and how vital it is in keeping you productive and focused on your tasks.

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Many companies set goals for the year, but can often lose track of them as other problems and priorities arise. Ensuring each department has its own goals to work toward is one way to help prevent this issue. But how can a leader figure out if each department is on track with its goals? Leaders need to determine the most effective way to track department goals and ensure each unit is working in harmony with the others and helping to achieve the company’s overarching objectives. To provide some guidance on how to do this, seven members of Young Entrepreneur Council share valuable advice for leaders who want to track department-specific goals throughout the year, as well as explain why these methods are so successful.

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Establishing a personal brand is something many professionals do to get noticed by the right people and make themselves available to the right opportunities. Unfortunately, with all the different information sources out there, it's easy to get confused about how exactly to do that. Where one source would advise you to do one thing, another article may recommend the complete opposite. Therefore, it's not uncommon to see people drawing conclusions about personal branding that are simply wrong. Below, nine contributors to Young Entrepreneur Council look at the most common mistakes you might make when it comes to developing your personal brand and how you can fix those errors before they have a significant impact.

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When doling out praise, leaders never expect it to have a negative effect on the team culture. But if a leader offers praise to one employee and not the others, those employees may begin to resent their teammate or even the leader themself. This envy can end up causing a negative domino effect that could impact the whole team. However, that’s not to say that excellent work should go unrecognized. To offer guidance on how to praise employees the “right” way, 11 members of Young Entrepreneur Council weigh in on how leaders can showcase an employee's good work without eliciting resentment or generating feelings of favoritism among team members.

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The home-improvement and home-service market is full of people who believe their business is worth six or seven figures, and who can blame them? Often their entire life savings is tied up in the equity of the business, and very few options exist for these entrepreneurs.