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Leadership

Leadership Exposed: Things You Thought You Knew About Leadership

Much has been written about leadership: rules, pointers, styles, and biographies of inspiring leaders throughout world history. But there are certain leadership ideas that we ourselves fail to recognize and realize in the course of reading books. Here is a short list of things you thought you knew about leadership.

1. Leaders come in different flavors.

There are different types of leaders and you will probably encounter more than one type in your lifetime. Formal leaders are those we elect into positions or offices such as the senators, congressmen, and presidents of the local clubs. Informal leaders or those we look up to by virtue of their wisdom and experience such as in the case of the elders of a tribe, or our grandparents; or by virtue of their expertise and contribution on a given field such as Albert Einstein in the field of Theoretical Physics and Leonardo da Vinci in the field of the Arts. Both formal and informal leaders practice a combination of leadership styles.

o Lewin’s three basic leadership styles – authoritative, participative, and delegative

o Likert’s four leadership styles – exploitive authoritative, benevolent authoritative, consultative, and participative

o Goleman’s six emotional leadership styles – visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and commanding.

2. Leadership is a process of becoming.

Although certain people seem to be born with innate leadership qualities, without the right environment and exposure, they may fail to develop their full potential. So like learning how to ride a bicycle, you can also learn how to become a leader and hone your leadership abilities. Knowledge on leadership theories and skills may be formally gained by enrolling in leadership seminars, workshops, and conferences. Daily interactions with people provide the opportunity to observe and practice leadership theories. Together, formal and informal learning will help you gain leadership attitudes, gain leadership insights, and thus furthering the cycle of learning. You do not become a leader in one day and just stop. Life-long learning is important in becoming a good leader for each day brings new experiences that put your knowledge, skills, and attitude to a test.

3. Leadership starts with you.

The best way to develop leadership qualities is to apply it to your own life. As an adage goes “action speaks louder than words.” Leaders are always in the limelight. Keep in mind that your credibility as a leader depends much on your actions: your interaction with your family, friends, and co-workers; your way of managing your personal and organizational responsibilities; and even the way you talk with the newspaper vendor across the street. Repeated actions become habits. Habits in turn form a person’s character. Steven Covey’s book entitled 7 Habits of Highly Effective People provides good insights on how you can achieve personal leadership.

4. Leadership is shared.

Leadership is not the sole responsibility of one person, but rather a shared responsibility among members of an emerging team. A leader belongs to a group. Each member has responsibilities to fulfill. Formal leadership positions are merely added responsibilities aside from their responsibilities as members of the team. Effective leadership requires members to do their share of work. Starting as a mere group of individuals, members and leaders work towards the formation of an effective team. In this light, social interaction plays a major role in leadership. To learn how to work together requires a great deal of trust between and among leaders and members of an emerging team. Trust is built upon actions and not merely on words. When mutual respect exists, trust is fostered and confidence is built.

5. Leadership styles depend on the situation.

How come dictatorship works for Singapore but not in the United States of America? Aside from culture, beliefs, value system, and form of government, the current situation of a nation also affects the leadership styles used by its formal leaders. There is no rule that only one style can be used. Most of the time, leaders employ a combination of leadership styles depending on the situation. In emergency situations such as periods of war and calamity, decision-making is a matter of life and death. Thus, a nation’s leader cannot afford to consult with all departments to arrive at crucial decisions. The case is of course different in times of peace and order—different sectors and other branches of government can freely interact and participate in governance. Another case in point is in leading organizations. When the staffs are highly motivated and competent, a combination of high delegative and moderate participative styles of leadership is most appropriate. But if the staffs have low competence and low commitment, a combination of high coaching, high supporting, and high directing behavior from organizational leaders is required.

Now that you are reminded of these things, keep in mind that there are always ideas that we think we already know; concepts we take for granted, but are actually the most useful insights on leadership.

Tim Maher is interested in personal development in all its facets and has read many books on this topic. It is an interest that is fed and nurtured by listening to audio books and seminars when possible. To assist your own personal growth journey get your audio resources at ==> [http://www.magillaudiobooks.com/list.aspx?catId=137]

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Leadership

The Lead Wolf Model of Leadership

Effective leaders are driven by a model. A model is a tool used to predict future outcomes of current decisions. Effective leaders build their models on the sum of their experiences, knowledge and deeds as well as their mistakes. This truth is at the core of learning how to be a winner instead of a survivor.

o Servant-leadership encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment.

o Recognition and praise raises self-esteem. Positive feedback and ample communication allow employees gratification and a newfound confidence in the organization. Command and control works for the military but leadership in the business environment must be built on dignity and respect. Remember, employees are your most precious asset. Respect them, train them, coach and mentor them, trust them and they will create competitive advantage for your company.

o Companies today are increasingly characterized by a large and incredibly complex set of independent relationships between highly diverse groups of people. To be successful, you must determine how to get active involvement, innovation and creativity out of your employees. Success depends on more than just “best practice” success drivers. Success demands a superior level of leadership–a level that requires deep commitment. This commitment will not flourish in workplace environments that are still dominated by the “slap & point” or the “carrot and stick” method of management often used in the past

o People cannot “Live to Work” they must “Work to Live”. This is about keeping family life and personal values in perspective.

o People are the most important ingredient to every organization and the organizations behavior. People and how they are treated will reflect the organizational characteristics, the way it acts and interacts with its own people.

o Leadership —- Make no mistake – leadership is about Trust – Respect & Integrity.

Employees won’t start respecting you as a leader until you start respecting them

Employees will not trust you as a leader until you start trusting them

Gaining trust and respect from your employees is built on a platform of integrity.

o Ethics are the breeding ground for trust. Do the right thing – always and commit to conducting yourself with the highest standards of ethics and integrity.

o An effective leader is only as good as the people he/she surrounds themselves with.

o “It’s not about power and politics; it’s about principle and process.”

o Employees want to take pride in their leaders. They are eager to give their trust, but demonstrating the kind of leadership character that deserves that trust cannot be over-emphasized.

o Character is built around a true concern for the people within the organization. It is based on fairness and consistency.

o The culture and environment of the organization are going to have a major impact on leadership’s self-expectations. This is a critical element that executives who are not successful fail to recognize. Organizational culture is extremely important to successful growth.

o Problems with staffing and retention may not be due to bad hires or a low unemployment rate. In fact, they may be related to poor leadership insight by not recognizing employees as a core competency in the business strategy. Although employees may not fit the strictest definition of a core competency, it is a fact that employees are the ones responsible for creating many of the core competencies. It is an undisputable fact that failure to recognize the importance of employee contributions will lead to failure regardless of your business strategy.

o The leader has to be an agent of change. Most people in most organizations prefer not to change, It’s scary. One of the roles of leadership is to cause change, to create change, to force change, to instigate change. Whatever verb you want to use.

o Creating change, managing during turbulent times, or fostering growth after restructuring all depends on a balance of leadership. No one person can make a company successful. It takes a lot of people, but one person with a command of leadership can transfer enough influence, creating enough leadership amongst the management group to guarantee success

o Change really occurs more easily when everybody sees the need for it.

o Communication is key in creating an environment that encourages employee retention. Respect, belief in employees, empowerment and involvement are key factors in retaining employees. Effective leadership & respect must be demonstrated at every level in the organization.

o Leadership without communication is like a gun without a bullet. It looks impressive but it can’t do anything.

o Next to people, communication is the most critical element to success, whether the company is in a growth mode or facing challenges to maintain market share. Failure to communicate is like a virus that can lead to total failure.

o Communication is essential to developing trust. Trust is necessary to get people to reach down deep inside and give everything they have under the most difficult circumstances. Trust will allow people to give their discretionary energy to meet objectives.

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Leadership

Can Leadership be Measured?

Leadership matters. Any one person may have an effect on the behavior of others at any time. The nature and intent of that effect determines the influence, direction and outcome of leadership. Organizations depend on leadership for direction, momentum and a plan for sustainable success. How do we recognize leadership exists? How do we develop leadership? How can leadership be measured? These are questions this article seeks to explore.

How do we recognize leadership or know that it exists? Generally, leadership is defined by characteristics and results. Yet formal leadership development nearly always focuses exclusively on characteristics, relying on hope that results will ensue. Unfortunately, leadership is seldom really measured beyond an intuitive or anecdotal approach.

For example, a person in a leadership role is deemed “successful.” We want to replicate the leader’s success, so we try to replicate the characteristics, skills, values, competencies, actions and behaviors of the leader. We edify and attempt to emulate these qualities in others, but we seldom get the same results. Corporate America is full of “competency-based” leadership development programs, what one might call the “injection-mold” approach. Competency-based leadership development has an effect on organizational culture, no doubt, but not always the desired effect. Leaders who somehow “measure up” to the desired competencies do not always produce desired results.

Ultimately, producing results is the reason we study leadership, the reason we seek to develop leaders, the very reason we need leaders. So it stands to reason that leadership also has been measured based on the results produced, regardless of how those results were achieved. We need look no further than Richard Nixon or Kenneth Lay to recognize the down side of such one-dimensional measures.

The leader’s role is to establish the conditions (the culture, the environment) under which others can take right action to achieve desired results. “Desired results” are best defined by the vision, mission, values and goals of the team or organization. Therefore, leadership is best measured by the how well followers execute the vision, mission and goals while “living out” the desired values. This leads us to a new premise: that leadership should be measured by the results produced and how they are produced, as so often stated. However, there is a critical third element, that is, by whom are the results produced. If it is the leader that produces the desired results, then this should rightfully be attributed to individual action without any contributing effect from the behavior of others.

There is an obvious link between communication and leadership — the basic reason for communication and for leadership is to prompt some form of behavioral response or action. Leaders must communicate by speaking, listening, reading, writing and action. Leaders produce results and as other authors have stated, “Leaders get results through people.” Follower behavior, not leader behavior, defines leadership. This might lead one to argue, wrongly, that there is little difference between leadership and coercion. Coercion, or creating an environment using fear or incentives as motivational tools, may work temporarily yet is seldom sustainable. Performance declines, conflict ensues or people leave.

Ultimately, the brand of leadership we seek in contemporary life is best defined, developed and measured based on whether intended results are achieved, how they are achieved, the value of these results to others, and whether followers take discretionary action to achieve the leader’s vision, mission and goals. Leadership depends on the achievements of followers. Leadership development must be tied to intended results of those who are lead more than competency sets of those who lead. Evidence of effective leadership can be found in the daily attitudes and habits of followers. Ultimately, leadership can be measured by the achievement of discretionary goals by followers.

Mark A. Sturgell, CBC, is a Certified Business Coach and president of Performance Development Network. Mark helps build the capacity of individuals, teams and organizations ranging from small non-profits to global 100 corporations by helping them achieve the measurable results they really want. Mark helps individuals discover their own potential and achieve more. He helps organizations develop cultures where continuous learning and improvement, higher levels of achievement, standards of excellence and exceeding customer expectations prevail…because organizations don’t fail, people do.

Visit http://www.pdncoach.com to learn more about how Mark can help you. Typical clients include growth-oriented individuals, domestic and global businesses (or business units), non-profits and government agencies. Services vary depend on customer needs, but generally involve customized solutions, goal achievement and problem-solving strategies that improve management, team, individual or organizational performance.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Mark_Sturgell/97023

 

Leadership

How Can the Role of Leadership Be Best Understood in Organizational Change?

Leadership as the Head

The Head offers a prescriptive long-range strategic framing of the role of leadership in organisational change, common in bureaucratic approaches to organisational theory. The Head may take a normative re-educative approach influencing bodily reactions to stimuli; asserting power with mind over matter to affect change in a power-coercive approach; or making decisions to improve the wellbeing of the body to perform better by employing an empirical-rational leadership approach.

In this context the role of leadership relies heavily on the bureaucratic position, political power, authority and an implicit assumption that all change is a result of a planned change strategy, whether continuous or episodic. It also assumes that it is driven from the top in a linear way influencing how the Body responds. This enables the change process to be modelled, simplified and implies that the Head knows what is going to happen and can control events and how the Body changes based on rational decisions-making. Thus the Head offers a normative approach, which can determine the beginning, middle and end of the change process and the Body is a socially constructed entity regulated by domination, control and power.

The biology of the Human Body exposes the limitations of this perspective. Bodily responses to circumstances are often subconscious. Mind over matter does not account for the complexity of system responses. Leadership as Head does not account for context or causality and implies organisations operate in a vacuum. It also concentrates the power to drive change programmes on senior management without recognizing minority influence, the reality of incremental strategy and ignores success achieved from mistakes and high level of failure in planned change programmes.

Leadership as the Heart

The Heart positions the role of leadership as the change agent. Focusing on charisma and leadership traits the Heart delivers organisational change through individual power and adaptation more often associated with emergent change and an interpretative paradigm. The Heart positioned at the centre of the Body remains sensitive to the environment, connected and responding to the needs of each member part of the Body. Although the Heart provides support for followers, it may put concern for itself above others metaphorically withdrawing support from extremities to protect the core organs.

The term ‘raison d’etre’ is often used to describe the vision, values or purpose of an organisation. The Heart has its own rules, draws strength from within and uses discourse to create desire for or a fear of organisational change. Adopting the tenets of Human Relations and post Bureaucratic Theory Heart as Leadership humanizes and individualises organisational change to include notions of fairness and consistency reducing resistance. However the Heart may resist change and it is difficult to evidence the interactions and processes between Heart and Body.

The physiology of the Body demonstrates the difficulty of the post Bureaucratic argument. The Heart is still in a position of power and control. The Heart assumes that charisma provides energy for change and suggests Heart failure results in failure of the vision expounded by the Heart. But a charismatic leader may only be able to lead because the followers share the vision, values and purpose in the first place. If the change the Heart wants does not fit the Body, failure will occur despite the charisma of the Leader. Unlike the Head that changes methods of control to gain acceptance, the Heart’s role as leader may, like a donor organ, be accepted or rejected by the Body.

The Body

It is the sum of the parts of the Body operating together that delivers healthy organisational change, every part an equal part of a system that relies on and impacts other elements of the Body. The Body represents a socio-technical approach to organisational change requiring consideration of not just the role of Leadership but its affect and impact of and on the organisation’s stakeholders, processes, context, leadership and employees. But this panoramic framing can make the study of organisational change abstract and impractical.

Positivist approaches to the role of Leadership rely on the Body remaining constant, enabling a mechanistic method of control that can be cloned. However a determinist view of the Body suggests it has its own DNA, system interactionism, controls and capability that create a unique context for organisational change.

Invoking an OD perspective, every element of the Body is part of, a determinate of and a product of the system. Change any one part of an organisation, deliberately or by accident, and the organisation changes. Work against the Body and resistance, drag and natural barriers affect the opportunity for healthy change. Work with the Body and participative change becomes self-sustaining.

Like the Body changes occur both inside and outside the control of the organisation. Organisational change happens by planning for the changes that can be controlled and adjusting to unplanned changes.

Rather than fighting against organisational context, trying to impose unnatural order, the role of Leadership seeks to find balance and use naturally occurring resources, cycles and controls in driving organisational change.

Headless or Heartless

The metaphor of the Human Body uses a unitarist construct of the organisation and a realist assumption that organisational change is inevitable, continuous transformation is necessary for organisational health and that the momentum of change will continue. But organisational change, like leadership, is a social construction. Without knowledge of whether organisational change would have occurred anyway it is difficult to understand what influence the role of leadership does or does not have on its significance, explanation or cause. Identifying organisational change as healthy assumes there is evidence that no change would be more or less healthy, than the organisational change that results from Leadership actions.

A Body needs both a Head and Heart to survive. Power and politics are often portrayed as bad rather than appreciating that politics and power help address the competing demands for stability and change.

The role of Leadership in directing and managing organisational change necessitates both Head and Heart. Heart without Head may result in unsuitable or unnecessary change but Head without Heart may result in resistance.

The metaphor of the Human Body accepts Leadership rationality and control are important, which is more appropriate to classical approaches to organisational change and Leadership.

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Leadership

The Fundamental Purpose of Leadership

It’s time to question the traditional assumption of leadership’s fundamental purpose. The textbook account focuses on the leader’s role in maximizing employee performance. All the decades of writing about leadership style beginning over 50 years ago focuses on how different styles affect the motivation and productivity of employees. When we question the conventional purpose of leadership and offer a different foundation, we get a very different conception of leadership. Until we recognize the need for a radical shift in perspective, our vision of leadership will remain stuck in the past.

Having an internal focus on employee performance was acceptable for leadership prior to the 1970’s. But since the success of the Japanese commercial invasion, business has increasingly operated in an era of hyper-competition where rapid innovation changes whole markets overnight. In the old days of leadership theory, business was not so competitive. Then, business’s only task was to execute as cost effectively and profitably as possible. Today, there is also the need for businesses to be constantly re-inventing themselves, to be continuously creating new futures. For leaders to be successful now, they must have an external focus.

The new purpose of leaders is to ensure that new futures are created as rapidly as their external markets evolve. All organizations now have two equally important tasks: to deliver today’s results and to create the future. The principle of division of labor suggests that we need two separate functions for these very different tasks. Management needs to be upgraded from a narrowly controlling, mechanistic function to take care of today’s business, leaving leadership to champion changes to enhance competitive advantage.

So, what are the implications of this shift in emphasis? Well, if your sole reason for being is to maximize employee productivity, you need to be in charge of the people whose performance you want to improve. You need a formal position of authority over them. You need the authority to promote, move, develop, train and pay in accordance with merit. People can be motivated by informal leaders but none of the other productivity-enhancing decisions can be made without formal authority.

Not so with the new leadership. Promoting new products, services or better processes can be done by anyone, regardless of their formal roles. Even a consumer group criticizing an existing product line could show leadership from the outside to the organization. This new conception of leadership is the only way to make sense of bottom-up leadership. If leadership is merely the successful promotion of new products, then front-line employees can do it. The Sony employee who invented PlayStation is a good example. He showed bottom-up leadership to the senior executives at Sony whose initial reaction to the idea of PlayStation was to protest that Sony doesn’t do toys.

The role of senior executives is now more multifaceted. They need to both lead and manage. But leadership, as conceived here, has nothing to do with motivating employees to perform better, contrary to the textbook account. So-called transformational leadership became popular because it was felt that employees needed to be really inspired to give of their best. But now, we need to shift everything to do with motivating employees to management, leaving leadership free to promote enhancements to competitive advantage. Why? Because we need a definition of leadership that makes sense of how leadership can be shown bottom-up which has nothing to do with motivating employees to work harder. The sole purpose of leadership, therefore, is to promote new directions. It is management’s job to execute them.

Leaders must have an external focus to be effective; managers can focus internally. Both leadership and management are equally essential organizational functions, but only management is a formal role. Leadership is an informal, occasional act, like creativity, not a role. Senior executives are managers by virtue of their roles, not leaders. If their businesses are operating successfully and don’t need innovation or process improvements to succeed, then these organizations don’t need any leadership. This is a second radical implication of the new vision of leadership, the first one being that leadership has nothing to do with managing people or getting things done through them.

Keep in mind that, if leadership equates to the successful promotion of new products, services or process improvements, and if anyone can do it regardless of position, then employees with no one reporting to them can show leadership. This is a liberating conclusion, but one that has revolutionary implications for our understanding of leadership.

See http://www.leadersdirect.com for more information on this and related topics. Mitch McCrimmon’s latest book, Burn! 7 Leadership Myths in Ashes was published in 2006.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Mitch_McCrimmon/79532