Archive for the ‘Management Development Secrets’ Category
What Is That ‘Sense’ of Leadership?
It’s an age old question. Are leaders born – or can they be made? The answer, as ever, is not that simple.
It’s almost inherent in those who lead that they step forward naturally in many informal moments in their lives to lead. They have an inbuilt inclination to take charge and be the headline act in social and workplace groups.
There are others who have the capacity to lead and still find it difficult to be forward enough to step up.
They need nurturing and encouragement from someone who notices and takes the time to help them, so that their talents are not wasted.
Forced leadership is a big ask of anyone who has not got the natural instinct for it.
In many cases the route to seniority in any organization is through technical expertise into leadership, which is not necessarily the appropriate growth for many.
On the other hand, there are those whose natural tendency is not along this path.
For those we celebrate what they do bring to the party and ensure they are rewarded both materially and in how they are fulfilled.
How To Become A Leadership Legend – Part 2
Yesterday, we looked at the requirements of leaders. To create legendary status as a leader, there are three key steps that go beyond the ‘good’ and become legendary:-
1. Deliver Results
Legendary leaders go beyond delivering for the short-term, vitally important though that is – especially in the climate of right now.
Focus on results for today is simply not enough to get your legendary badge. You have to go further.
Legends are constantly considering the needs to be even better in the future. To develop their people through challenge and support that encourages risk-taking for employees – but in an environment where they feel safe enough to give it a go.
Results for today are who we have become as a society – as good leaders – the greatest and the legends do more to focus on the today – and the tomorrow.
2. Create Relationships
Legendary leaders are well thought of by their people. Indeed they are memorable and would often feature on that most famous of lists – three people who have been the biggest influences in your life.
They don’t really need to work at it – except perhaps at first – because it’s something they do naturally. Building relationships is about being out there with your people. Talking with them and much more importantly, listening to them and valuing them because of that.
Relationships are also about fairness, equality, trust, rapport, keeping promises and more. Relationships are that togetherness where each would – and will – go the extra mile. Leader and employee – together.
3. Vision for the Future
Legends come from having a motivation and drive that is irresistible. An ability – a charisma – where their people can’t help but come along with them.
To get there requires inspiration and the skill to see the possibilities and share that energy with your people. When you dream for yourself, you sense that it’s possible. When you dream together, it IS possible.
Having a vision is a great idea. Co-creating a vision together with your people is unexpected and unbelievable – they will love you for it.
Being a leadership legend is simply an amazing opportunity not only to deliver the results you want, but also to do that with purpose. The purpose of being with your people on their journey too.
How To Become A Leadership Legend – Part 1
When you look at the quality of leadership out there in the real world right now, you might find that being a legend is not that difficult.
Here are three prerequisites of leadership:-
A good leader is able to deliver the required results. Indeed it isn’t hard to drive employees hard and for a while to run any business or team in an environment of fear.
Yet legends are more than this.
Any old leader is able to make friends with the employees in their team and be that ‘Good old boy (or gal)’ for a while. Being a good buddy for those you manage isn’t hard.
And legends are more than this too.
Some good leaders are able to come up with a bit of a plan for the foreseeable future (and there are less even of these than you might think). It’s something of a plan on the ‘back of an envelope’ sort of thing, but it’s better than nothing.
The legendary leaders are different to this too.
Check in tomorrow for how to make that leap!
Steve Jobs Talks About Managing People
Creating More Time
When I work with clients, one of the things that most often comes up is that they want more time. In the busy, challenging world where we try to shoe-horn more into our days, the cry for ‘more time’ has never been louder.
Yet when you think of it, the demand for more time to do the things we do, is actually an impossible dream. No-one can have more time.
There is only one lot of time any of us have, because time is finite. You cannot make more time.
We just have to be smarter with the time each of us has available to us and the challenge is to do with our time, that which makes it more effective.
Before looking at how we do this in the workplace, it’s also – in fact probably more – important to ensure that we have the balance between work, play and home just right.
If one is out, then the others suffer and usually make the one we are spending more focus on than we should suffer too. Just a thought.
In the workplace, when we want to ‘make more time’, we need to re-evaluate what we are doing with the finite time we have.
So, it’s worth considering just what we need to do more of; do less of and indeed, stop doing altogether (whether this means actually stopping doing some things that really add no value at all, or delegate this work to people who will variously:
a) benefit from learning new skills
b) be better at it than us anyway
c) be a better value proposition (i.e. cheaper than us) to deliver the same (or even better) standards than we could.
So, what will you do less of, do more of and stop doing today.
That’s how you make ‘more’ time.
When You Lose, Don’t Lose The Lesson
Eventually – some might say, regularly – things don’t go completely to plan in our world. Getting over this can be challenging, and it’s always vital that we do, so that we can move on in good spirits.
To help us on our way, ensuring that we understand why the plan didn’t work as we would have wanted and learning from it, enables added value to be gained from losing positions.
Rarely do we get a perfect result from the experiences we have in our lives.
So by ensuring that we add value back in from what we can appreciate to do differently next time, we can make the outcome 100%, even if the goal we achieved was less so.
For the very enlightened, the lessons we learn from the experiences we have, however painful, can be even more enriching than the achievement of the goal we seek.
And the additional benefit is where we take a constructive and productive position when we might be feeling disappointed or let down, we gain focus, energy and emotional strength too.
Which puts a much greater ‘win’ slant on the ‘lose’ it might have been.
