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Leadership

Building Leadership on Natural Strengths

In the first article in this series, I defined leadership development from the Your Talent Advantage (YTA) perspective. We describe six distinct leadership profiles in YTA, but believe that the unique leadership aspects of each profile notwithstanding, all six are developed to their highest level of effectiveness by growing five skills that are common to all leaders.

These five common leadership skills are:

 

  1. Leaders build on their natural strengths.
  2. They are aware of their limitations, and seek input from people with perspectives different from their own.
  3. They are aware that any group of followers contains people who see the world differently than they do, and they find ways to communicate effectively to each of them.
  4. They recognize the talents of others, and seek to build teams based on complementary skill sets and perspectives.
  5. They learn to accept/own their natural limitations and develop techniques to mitigate them.

 

This and the subsequent four articles will focus on these skills, and how each is developed, one by one.

Leaders Build on Their Natural Skills

The core belief of Perceptual Style Theory (PST) is that everyone has the innate capacity to lead, but that the skills associated with that innate capacity vary depending upon which of the six Leadership Strengths Profiles (LSP) an individual has.

Before a person can begin to grow and develop their innate leadership capacity into actual, usable leadership skills they must recognize, understand, and claim their LSP. What determines a person’s LSP is their Perceptual Style (PS). PS describes the way in which they perceive the world around them; therefore, understanding one’s unique PS is the first critical step to becoming a leader.

Another way to state this is that in order to be an effective leader it is important that there is comfort and acceptance of one’s unique strengths as well as comfort and acceptance of one’s blind spots and short comings. Both sides of this equation can be challenging.

Too many times, would be leaders focus their leadership growth and development efforts on strengths in areas that are outside their innate skill set. It is our experience that many people are unaware of and discount what they do naturally well. Rather than focusing on discovering and working on developing their natural strengths to their fullest expression, they spend precious time focused on trying to acquire skills that are not an innate part of the way they see the world.

Working on one’s weaknesses or those skills that are missing from one’s skill set is a common approach to personal growth and its goal is a “well rounded” individual or, in this case, leader. Unfortunately, the end result of this approach is mediocre rather than outstanding leadership. It is impossible for any individual to master all six different LSPs, and, in fact, it is truly only possible to master the specific LSP that each person already has as an integral part of whom they are.

The LSP program takes a strengths based development approach with an emphasis on getting better at those leadership skills that are innate to the individual. Those who wish to lead; indeed, anyone who wants to perform at their highest level of effectiveness needs to begin their development time on learning how to do more of what they do best and delegating the rest to others for whom the skill is an innate skill.

In order to accomplish this first step of leadership development and master the skill of building on one’s natural leadership strengths, it is necessary to know what those strengths are. The challenge to strengths discovery is that people find it easier to identify what they don’t do well than to recognize and claim their natural strengths. Simply asking, “What are your natural leadership strengths?” is not an effective method.

While there are multiple ways to discovery one’s natural leadership strengths and blind spots, most require more effort and time than most people are willing to invest. The LSP program provides a quick and easy assessment that identifies the user’s LSP, describes the profile experience, lists behavioral leadership skills, identifies optimal leadership situations and leadership challenges, and describes ways to mitigate leadership weaknesses. The concise summary delivered by the LSP assessment results provides a solid base from which to begin the crucial first step to developing one’s leadership strengths to their maximum level of effectiveness.

Gary Jordan, Ph.D., has over 32 years of experience in clinical psychology, behavioral assessment, individual development, and coaching. He earned his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology – Berkeley. He is co-creator of Perceptual Style Theory, a revolutionary psychological assessment system that teaches people how to unleash their deepest potentials for success. For more free information on how to succeed in life and business doing more of what you love, visit http://www.YourTalentAdvantage.com.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Gary_M._Jordan/22166

 

Leadership

Leadership Training Courses – A Unique Experience

It is true that leaders are born not made, but it is equally true that most leaders need a helping hand to discover the power within them. Leadership guidance cannot be replaced by any other training or course. Realizing the importance of proper guidance, leadership training courses have seen a sharp incline in the recent years amongst most people. Even top companies and colleges have started including these leadership training courses in their employee development program and course curriculum in order to groom leaders from the very beginning.

What leadership training courses offer?

Leadership training courses offer you the essentials of becoming an effective and popular leader. They help you to harness the talent within you by focusing on the various aspects of leadership skills necessary to become an effective leader. Two of the most important leadership skills are given below.

Leadership skills: Effective communication

The importance of communication can never be overstated. Its sheer power has been witnessed time and again. Communication can be of various kinds, but its power only increases with an increase in its effectiveness. Effective communication is a hallmark of leadership and so, it is the first stepping stone for any future leader. Leadership training courses help you develop the art of communication so that every time you speak, you impact your audience in a positive way.

A few things leadership training courses focus on when they work on making your communication effective are guiding you to choose the right message, consider the audience perspective, use and benefit of constructive reframes and the most important part of effective communication, which is good listening skills.

Leadership skills: Focus on others

A leader is called so because they ‘lead’ others. The focus on “others” is crucial for being an effective leader. The two most important facets are firstly, to get to know your audience well and understand their perspective, needs and desires. Secondly, you will have to understand what motivates them and develop an in-depth understanding of how you can drive those factors.

Leadership skills: Handling issues

It is one thing to give a speech, and a completely different ball game to handle the most dynamic factor in any organization – its people. Handling people comes naturally to a great leader. But for many, this is a factor that needs to be worked on. Leadership training courses guide you on how to handle different people in different situations. This is a great skill that will be of use to you for the rest of your life.

Benefits of leadership training courses

Now that you have a glimpse of what leadership training courses have to offer, let’s focus on the other benefits.

Company, institutes and individuals may have to spend some amount on these training courses but the returns they offer make them worth every penny invested in them. These training programs return leaders who are ready to make a significant contribution in their field of work. These leaders then act as catalysts in spreading the aspirations to others, and converting more employees and students into leaders in your institute or company.

Leadership training courses are the best investment that you can make for growth.

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results. Various leadership and management training institutes prepares you in leading the world. For more information, click here.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Isiah_M_Vincent/1586642

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7740812

Leadership

Effective Time Management For Profitable Business Leadership Results in Strategic Innovative Actions

A strategic way to boost your business leadership results, along with its profits, productivity and growth is through effective time management practices. Because time, as it is in any profession, is a critical resource in making business leadership actions profitable, innovative and transformative.

Before we continue, you need to appreciate this important fact about business leadership – whether we’re talking about market, innovative, strategic, situational, transformational, project or organizational leadership – leadership in any form is always a social activity.

So with that understanding, we can look at business leadership in three generic ways: as market leadership, organizational leadership and human capital leadership.

In business organizations, entrepreneurs may choose to invest their time in human capital related leadership activities, that is in leading, coaching or soliciting and recruiting the support of their associates and trading partners.

Entrepreneurial leaders also have opportunities to use their time to contribute to the quality, quantity or significance of life for their customers and clients. I call these actions a form of market leadership.

Business leadership tasks demand that leaders analyze, plan and re-order their budgets, cash flows, operational systems or their schedules, where their sole objective is to manage their time as profitably, effectively and creatively as possible. We can call these activities organizational leadership.

A fact-of-life for those professionals charged with business leadership responsibilities – which includes the executives, entrepreneurs and managers – they will usually encounter the most disruptions, interruptions or other forms of distractions to their scheduled activities. Unfortunately in the face of that reality, this business leadership personnel tend to immediately discount, ignore or underestimate the potential value in those unanticipated events.

If you ever hope to become an effective leader you should never focus your attention on the management of accomplishing tasks against a daily allotment of your time, you should however concentrate your energies on the management or maximizing the allocations of your significance.

We know that being effective means doing the right things. We also know that being efficient is doing things the right way. Are you doing the “right things” or are you doing things “the right way”?

The problem with the focus of most time management strategies is this, we are told to be efficient in our use of time, that is, we’re taught that the right way of doing time management is to plot whichever tasks we feel or believe we need to accomplish in a certain amount of time segments.

And in the case of business leadership, the right things for your usage of time must be based upon your contributions of quality, quantity or the value of your significance.

In a word, your contributions have to be acts that you take for the purpose of being of benefit to all the actors, artifacts or artifices, attributes and audiences engaged in your social activity. On the other hand, your significance must add a form of excellence, emphasis, essence, elevation, eminence, effectiveness, efficacy, efficiency, execution, elucidation, explanation, exposition, expression or esteem to your actions.

“Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.” – Edward de Bono, creativity expert

I advise my business leadership clients to keep strategic questions in mind whenever they engage in any activity. I call these mini-evaluations strategic because being strategic means being decisive, deliberate and dexterous – meaning leaders who wish to be strategic thinkers or questioners have to think through, think about and think with their actions, don’t they?

The purpose of those questions isn’t to generate answers consisting of one-word or a single idea. And leaders shouldn’t use these questions to judge a moment-in-time as being either significant or worthless. Rather than making those types of value judgments, these questions should ensure you have competent, strategic responses prepared, organized and ready to go in advance, so that you can optimize, leverage or otherwise make the best use of those planned-for or unplanned-for periods of time.

Here is one set of example questions you could ask to help you make more effective use of your time, regardless of any interruption, or unexpected or distracting event.

“Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.” – Pablo Picasso, artist

(Can I Make This) Quality Time?

 

  • Is it pure? [resulting in no distractions, disruptions, delays from your goals or mission]
  • Is it sweet? [warm, refreshing and enjoyable experience or environment or forum or venue]
  • Is it absolute? [secure, or obligated to my relationship, or persuasive or memorable]

 

“We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.”
– USA President Barack Obama

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Leadership

Leadership – Do You Have It

If you could improve your results by 25-30% what would that mean to you?

There is no magic formula or product to offer. However, sustainable, measurable results of 25-30% increase in productivity IS possible–the answer lies in one word…leadership. Sales are important, marketing is important, PR is important, but without leadership they will all eventually fall short.

Leadership is a word frequently misunderstood and misused. Dr. Creflo Dollar has said “If you don’t know the purpose of a thing, abuse is inevitable.” The same holds true for leadership. Leadership is not based on position or even job function. There are often people who are in positions of “leadership” that do not exhibit leadership skills. Likewise, there are “leaders” throughout an organization who, because they lack the “title,” are not given the opportunity to lead. Everyone has leadership potential; however, it must be developed and true leadership must be understood.

Of all the definitions of leadership, Peter F. Drucker says it best,

“Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not “making friends and influencing people”, that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.”

Why is leadership so important? John Maxwell calls it the “Law of the Lid:” a business or organization can only grow to the limits of its leadership. If the leadership is weak, it doesn’t matter how great the concept, product or service, it will never achieve financial greatness or market dominance. Fail-Safe Leadership authors Linda Martin and Dr. David Mutchler identified symptoms of ineffective leadership, some of which are listed below (take the full leadership test to see how your organization fares):

 

  • Excessive meetings
  • Lack of personal accountability
  • Difficulty terminating poor performers

Other symptoms include:

 

 

  • Unclear (or complete lack of) organizational goals
  • Cliques (among management/leadership team)
  • Declining customer/membership base

An organization that reflects any combination of the above symptoms may have a leadership challenge. That is not to say there are no leaders, or that you, the reader, are an ineffective leader, it does mean a leadership challenge exists. While these symptoms have dire consequences if not corrected, they can be changed.

 

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR LEADERSHIP

Before you can expect improved results, there must be a positive behavior change. Any change in behavior is a result of goals that are set (the best goal setting process includes the five critical core elements of goal setting). However, the key to achieving goals rests in our attitude. You may have heard this poem:

Watch your thoughts, they become words.

Watch your words, they become actions.

Watch your actions, they become habits.

Watch your habits, they become character.

Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. (Unknown)

You can not expect sustained, measurable improvement in your results without first changing the attitudes of your leaders. The many “New Year’s Resolutions” that have been set and failed is a perfect illustration. Goals were set, intentions were good but two things happened: 1) you didn’t change your attitude about the habit being changed, and 2) you failed to use all five of the critical elements of goal setting, primarily the consideration of obstacles. Think about it, nothing truly changes until we change our attitude about it.

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