Leadership

What Is Your Leadership Style?

Leadership takes many forms, but there are three styles of leadership that are the most prevalent. Good leaders do not take one form and stick to it – they look for the right situations for each style. However, good leaders do know what their dominant style is and capitalize on the benefits of that style. Let’s look at the three leadership styles, and the potential pitfalls of each. Think about which style is yours – and how you can modify it in various situations.

Autocratic leadership is also referred to as authoritarian leadership. In this style, the leader normally outlines what he or she wants and how this is to be achieved. In many ways, autocratic leadership isn’t leadership at all but a form of disciplinarian management. Are there situations where this style is effective? First of all, look at the organization. If the organization is well motivated and mature, an autocratic situation may be effective. Let’s say you have most of the information you need but the time to achieve a certain goal is very short. In a well-motivated organization, you can probably give an autocratic order and not be concerned about how it will be taken – as long as this does not become your dominant style. If you are a consistent autocratic leader, you’re probably not getting a good response from your organization. One of the pitfalls of autocratic leadership is the possibility of falling into an abusive or demeaning pattern – this is why you should only use an autocratic stance in rare situations and certainly not regularly. If you identify with a dominant autocratic style, consider transitioning into a more participative style of leadership.

Participative or democratic leadership is a style in which the leader still outlines a goal but allows some input from the organization as far as how the goal will be achieved. But a democratic leader still makes it necessary to obtain approval for decisions by any member of the team. In situations where information is spread out between the leader and the team members, a democratic style may work. This style can also be an appropriate way for an autocratic leader to transition out of that style – without giving total control to the team. This leadership style is very empowering to teams that have not felt empowered before. It’s also a great way to test the knowledge and ability of a team before transitioning into a much less controlling leadership style. Because this leadership style is basically one step up from autocracy, it may be easy for a leader to fall back into an authoritarian stance. If the team fails or falls short, democratic leadership allows them to re-formulate plans and activities – without telling them exactly what to do.

The third, and most empowering form of leadership is the laissez-faire or delegative style. The delegative leader sets an overall priority, goal, or instruction, but then stands out of the way to let things happen. Using this style, a leader takes responsibility for all decisions that are made – but leaves the decision making to the team. This also means that team members are expected to analyze, evaluate, and change issues and problems as they move along. This style of leadership is definitely appropriate with mature or more senior teams – the ones who have had the time to prove themselves to the leader and have the confidence to handle all issues. One of the biggest pitfalls of this type of leadership involves failure. If something goes wrong, this is not the place for a leader to blame the team – and this is more than likely a natural reaction for a laissez-faire leader.

Now that we’ve seen the three dominant leadership styles, which one are you? Remember that the mark of a good leader is the ability to use various styles depending on the situation – a bad leader sticks with the same style at all times. So what are some of the situations where each style is appropriate? If you have a new team, you may want to use the autocratic style as a means of assessing the group and its members. But what if you are placed in a position where most of the teams know their tasks well and would not react well to an autocratic stance? Use a participative style in this situation – allow the teams to have input in the decision making process. Remember that you can empower yourself as a leader as well as a team using this style. Finally, what if your team members know more about the situation than you do? Take a delegative approach and let the teams make their own decisions, all the while reminding them that you will be responsible for the outcomes.

When you’re deciding what leadership style to take, there are a few things to consider. First of all, how much time do you have? If you’re very limited in time, participative or autocratic may be the best style. Of course, this also depends on the team and its makeup – if you have an experienced team and limited time, there is no need to use an autocratic stance. Simply explain and emphasize that time is limited. You should also take into account who has the information related to the project or task at hand – if information is divided amongst you, the leader, and the team, you may want to take a participative stance. If your team has all of the information, take a delegative stance – let them use their information to come up with the best solutions. Also consider the type of task you’re looking at – how complicated is it? Compare this with the skill of the team and you should be able to choose an appropriate leadership style.

If your dominant style is more autocratic, you may want to examine what’s keeping you from moving into a participative stance. If you are one of the other two types, you’re probably getting a good response from your teams. Just remember to alter your leadership style based on situations – and don’t stick to one style regardless. When you begin to move around the different styles, you’ll find that your teams will respond.

Copyright 2008 Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved.

Bryant Nielson – Managing Director and National Sales Trainer – assists executives, business owners, and top performing sales executives in taking the leap from the ordinary to extraordinary. Bryant is a trainer, business & leadership coach, and strategic planner for sales organizations. Bryant’s 27 year business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering.

Subscribe to his blog – and learn the legendary secrets of top business training programs at:

[http://www.BreathtakingLeadership.com] & [http://www.BryantNielson.com]

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Bryant_Nielson/142446

 

Leadership

Leadership Exists at All Levels of the Organization

When we think of leadership, many times we immediately think about senior and executive level managers. Although this is true, leadership exists at many levels below the senior one. First of all, you should examine your functional levels for emerging and existing leaders. This means that the very lowest levels of your organization will grow leaders – and you must look for them there. A functional leader is someone with a great deal of knowledge in a functional area, such as assembly lines or bank proof operators. The difference is that the functional leader uses that knowledge to empower others, solve problems, and develop his or her career. You may find that these functional leaders even exhibit more of a leadership role than their direct supervisors – and it’s up to you to decide what to do with them.

You can also look for leadership in the middle supervisory or management areas, as well as the functional supervisors. Many times our inclination is to leave this group out – they are productive, happy, and get good feedback from the people who report to them. Therefore we think that they’ve achieved their career goals – but think again. You’ll find that these middle management leaders are solving problems, championing your vision without being asked, and taking the time to motivate and inspire their workers. These leaders can be ready for advancement – and advanced leadership training. Take the time to seek them out. Obviously your senior and executive management teams are full of leaders – but it’s still your responsibility to keep them motivated, inspired, and in a leadership stance. In fact, it may be that this group is your biggest challenge – you’ve got to find a way to keep these leaders motivated even though they may have reached a staying point in their career with the organization.

So if you’ve identified these various levels of leaders, what can you do to develop, motivate, and retain them? At the functional levels, you should always offer additional functional training, whether it’s in the same area of expertise or across functions. Consider adding management and leadership courses within the function. For example, if you’ve got emerging leaders on the assembly line, develop courses that teach these leaders how to coach and motivate within the assembly line environment, using specific examples and scenarios from that area. The middle management and supervisory areas are the best places to begin leadership development in earnest. Offer management and leadership courses and seminars for anyone in these roles or anyone who is aspiring to or recommended for these roles.

These learning interventions include coaching, human resources management, and leadership. Open these courses and interventions up to the functional leaders at various times, as well. In fact, you may want to consider using a leadership assessment tool to prove the leadership aptitude at the functional levels – and open the leadership development program to those individuals. This level of development motivates the functional and middle level leaders to continue working hard and developing their skills. At the executive or senior level, leadership development should take on a much more “intense” tone. For example, leaders could undergo intense team building, such as ropes courses or survival type interventions to solidify the team. Or, leaders at this level can be placed into work groups to solve real organizational problems and lead the project teams. Development at this level should be real-time and use real problems – and you can gauge the leaders’ abilities in numerous competencies. This isn’t necessarily something you or your training department should tackle alone – there are numerous consultants and firms that can help you with leadership development at the senior levels.

Now that we’ve discovered where leadership exists and how to develop it, let’s talk about why you should take the time and money to do it. First of all, you’re creating a culture of leadership. In fact, this could be one of your values – the ones you want to pass into the organization’s culture. By identifying leaders and developing them, you’re showing that the organization is dedicated to maintaining leaders – and finding new ones at all levels. Not only this, you’re extending your culture of development. Your organization may offer training of many kinds, but adding leadership development shows a high commitment to excellence.

Any time you invest in leadership development, it gives you the opportunity to create and maintain a talent pool. You’ll be amazed at how your leaders react to their development – and how you begin to put together the puzzle pieces related to talent management and succession planning. As development grows, you’ll have a constant talent pool – and the ability to rest easy knowing that your leadership needs, planned or unplanned, are already met. Finally, and most importantly, identifying and developing leaders at all levels creates and maintains a level of motivation. You’ve taken the time to outline the competencies you look for in leaders, so aspiring leaders have a way to grow. They will strive for recognition as leaders – and inspire their direct reports to do so, as well. And the fact that you recognize leaders at all levels will inspire a motivation that’s hard to achieve.

Copyright 2008 Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved.

Bryant Nielson – Managing Director and National Sales Trainer – assists executives, business owners, and top performing sales executives in taking the leap from the ordinary to extraordinary. Bryant is a trainer, business & leadership coach, and strategic planner for sales organizations. Bryant’s 27 year business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering.

Subscribe to his blog – and learn the legendary secrets of top business training programs at:

[http://www.BreathtakingLeadership.com] & [http://www.BryantNielson.com]

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Bryant_Nielson/142446

 

Business Strategy, Capital Markets, Market News, MyOrbit Blogs

JPMorgan buys Bear Stearns for $2 per Share!

$2 a Share for shares that were trading about $60 last week! Amazing things you can do with $2 per share in a bearish market.

Over the weekend Bear Stearns showed its empty wallet to the Fed and managed to convince US Treasury Secy Henry Paulson for a bailout plan.

And over the weekend, the Federal Reserve cut its discount rate by 25 basis points and offered to lend money to several financial firms, in an effort to prop up the US financial sector. Well, a lot of props have been put already (refer our previous posts on US Banking sector crisis).

With the help of further cut in discount rate, JP Morgan Chase offered to buy rival investment bank Bear Sterns for $2 a share, with a total value of $236 million.  It could have been 99 cents per share as well, but no, that would look too bad! The deal occurred Sunday night, with the US federal government acting as a catalyst to avoid a bankruptcy.

For anyone who’s been looking at Bear Stearns, Cash flow problems have been brewing for the last few months – they had clearly over leveraged themselves – and this weekend did it.

To quote AP news:

JPMorgan Chief Financial Officer Michael Cavanagh did not say what would happen to Bear Stearns’ 14,000 employees worldwide, or whether the 85-year-old Bear Stearns name would live on after surviving the Great Depression and a slew of recessions. He told analysts and investors on a conference call that JPMorgan was most interested in buying Bear Stearns’ prime brokerage business, which completes trades for big investors such as hedge funds.

This CNN report has more info:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/03/17/world.markets/index.html

JPMorgan inherits some liabilities as well. For example, about $16.5 million property liability in the form of lease rental agreement that Bear Stearns had signed in London with the Canary Wharf Group (CWG).

This news over the weekend has resulted in hard falls of various stock indices across Asia as well. The Indian Sensex fell 951 points today (6% drop in one day).

Leadership

Executive Leadership Training Builds Leadership Skills 3 Ways

Executive leadership training can yield better returns on your investment than taking a few leadership skills training courses or buying 10 or 12 good business leadership books.

When conducted over long periods of time, a reasonably priced executive leadership program can be more effective than the popular 2-day, 3-day or one week formats used in many less expensive leadership training courses.

Educational experiences which segment, focus on and support the delivery of lessons in a modular format usually yield better results than reading tons of business leadership books.

An effective executive leadership training program contains skills development exercises and courses which are designed to energize your leadership performances. However, there is no secret to becoming a better leader, you simply need to employ your strengths, practice your skills and adjust your path towards progress.

You don’t have to take my word for it but ask anyone in business or government services. The truth is this, long term, personalized, multi-modal executive leadership training programs are the very finest educational investments you can make.

Your leadership training program works best when it includes all of these elements:

 

  1. The intensity, volume and focus of subject matter covered
  2. The level of coaching, mentoring and consulting support provided
  3. The variety of practical applications and relevant exercises specified
  4. The abundance of powerful tools and resources supplied
  5. The energy of interactivity involved between the student and training provider.

 

The more frequently organizational professionals, managers and entrepreneurs engage in and are held accountable for their executive leadership training experiences, the better their leadership skills and their organizations become.

Leaders in many of the world’s prestigious companies, universities and professional firms, encourage their promising employees to:

 

  • Participate in executive leadership training, development and coaching programs;
  • Read and study business leadership books and stories about effective leaders;
  • Update their leadership skills with ad hoc, shorter-term, topical training courses.

 

If your executive leadership education helps you to deal with, work through and guide others in overcoming your real-life challenges, you will evolve into a truly excellent leader. Discovering ways to help you assess, improve and correct your performance, means you must:

  • Boost your awareness or understanding of and confidence in your strengths, natural talents and abilities;
  • Invest time in applying, practicing and mastering the lessons learned in your leadership skills training courses;
  • Ingest a steady, meaty diet of business leadership books describing methods, strategies and processes used by other successful leaders.

 

This article suggests you use these three strategies to quickly, competently and confidently improve your executive leadership training.

Your leadership training. development or coaching provider may suggest you employ a system to help you record, reflect upon and realize:

  1. How much progress you are achieving,
  2. How far you’ve gone towards reaching your full potential
  3. What you need to do to keep your weaknesses from impacting your effectiveness

 

Best-in-class executive training programs include daily readings of classic and newly published business leadership books, articles and news stories to keep important leadership skills, various situations or challenges and enduring principles in front of the student’s mind.

Effective leadership development programs offer modules of skills-based courses and application workshops featuring weekly lessons of not more than one to two hours. Breaking up the vast field of team or organizational leadership practice into sizable chunks gives the student time to absorb, try-out and perfect the fundamentals of leading.

Executive leadership training is a viable option for you if you are a knowledge professional, a manager or supervisor, an executive or director or if you are an entrepreneur or entrepreneurial professional.

When choosing your development program be sure it offers a large collection of skills training and exercise sessions on the crucial tasks and duties you’ll need. Of course, you should be given access to a vast library of business leadership books, articles and similar resources.

Executive leadership training is a journey on the road less traveled. If you are willing to follow the many twists and turns found in your leadership skills training courses and business leadership books, you will succeed and find your bliss!

Copyright © 2008, Mustard Seed Investments Inc., All rights reserved.

Bill Thomas conducts executive leadership training programs for Awesome Leaders and Innovative Leaders – he provides professionals, managers at all levels, entrepreneurs and directors with intense, focused leadership subjects, coaching and consulting support, practical exercise sessions, tons of powerful tools and energetic interactions with clients.

His programs are cost-effective and guaranteed to maximize your success.

Awesome Leadership Programs and Innovative Leadership Training Programs

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Bill_Thomas/462

 

Business Strategy, Internet, Market News, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media, Online Marketing

Google completes DoubleClick acquisition

A lot has been talked about Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, and whether they can show tangible improvements or new services as a result of it. DoubleClick has a strong platform for display advertising, and that’s the main reason Google bought it, so that it can give a good offering for a variety of media advertisements. Yesterday, Eric wrote this note on Google’s blog:

3/11/2008 09:48:00 AM
Posted by Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO

I’m pleased to share the news that we completed our acquisition of DoubleClick today. Although it’s been nearly a year since we announced our intention to acquire DoubleClick last April, we are no less excited today about the benefits that the combination of our two companies will bring to the online advertising market.

Because we have been waiting for regulatory approval for our acquisition, we’ve been limited by law in the extent to which we could conduct detailed integration planning to map our way forward. That work will begin in earnest now. Although we don’t have detailed plans to announce today, we will communicate regularly with you about our progress in integrating our two companies.

An immediate task we’ll undertake over the next few weeks is matching and aligning DoubleClick employees with our organizational plan for the business. This will involve determining the right staffing levels for all functions and will ensure that we have the right people assigned to the right responsibilities within Google. We plan to complete this process in the U.S. by early April.

Outside the U.S., the steps we will propose are subject to consultation with employee representatives where applicable, and of course any decisions will be made in accordance with local law. The exact timing of the process outside the U.S. will vary based on the needs and requirements of each region.

As with most mergers, there may be reductions in headcount. We expect these to take place in the U.S. and possibly in other regions as well. We know that DoubleClick is built on the strength of its people. For this reason we’ll strive to minimize the impact of this process on all of our clients and employees.

For more, read Google’s blog post here.