Tag Archives: Leadership Potential

Leadership

The Role of Leadership in Business Success

The role of leadership in achieving business success is indisputable. Great leaders who create great businesses are “made” not “born”. You know why? True leadership is learned; it is not automatic. To answer the question whether leaders are made or born, great theorist, Mr. Bass, postulated the all time Bass Theory of leadership (1989 &1990). He said that there are three theories of leadership.

Firstly, the Trait Theory, which says that some personality traits may lead people naturally into leadership roles. Secondly, Great Event Theory, which believes that a crisis or important event may cause a person to rise to the occasion. And thirdly, the Transformational Theory, which says that people can choose to become leaders and learn leadership skills. This third theory is the bases for this article.

In other words, you don’t have an excuse to say you are waiting to locate your leadership traits before you can become a leader or wait for a crisis situation to arise before you assume leadership role as the Great Event Theory asserts; but that you choose to become a leader by learning leadership skills as the Transformational Theory stipulates.

You see, we are all born with leadership potential wrapped in us. But it is our responsibility to develop it, nurture it, and birth it out. It won’t just come out on its own. It requires your attention to develop it and it is about you choosing to become a leader.

A philosopher once said that there are five domains of leadership: self-leadership, leading another person, leading a group, leading an organization or business, and finally, leading a nation. If you look critically at the five domains as outlined above, you can see vividly the progressions that one undergoes to become a leader. You cannot lead others talk less of leading an organization if you cannot lead yourself.

All that your business is today and all that it will become tomorrow will be as a result of your state of leadership in directing the course of the business. As Warren Bennis, a leadership expert said, “A business short on capital can borrow money and one with poor location can move; but a business short on leadership has little chance of survival.”

What is leadership? What does it mean to be a leader? And how does leaders and leadership impact on business or organization? Let’s begin by looking at definition of leadership. Leadership is an influence relationship between leaders and followers who intend real changes and outcomes that reflect their shared purposes.

Leadership involves influence, it occurs among people, those people intentionally desire significant changes, and the changes reflect purposes shared by leaders and followers. An important aspect of leadership is influencing others to come together around a common vision. Thus, a leader is a visionary who influences, motivates, communicates, and energizes the followers to do what ordinarily they may not be willing to do themselves.

The impact of leadership in building a successful business is quite enormous. Firstly, leaders make things happen—They are the catalyst for business success; they challenge the status-quo; they are vision-driven; they think differently. Secondly, leaders manage through times of change—They determine direction; they are goal-setters and goal-getters; they move organizations from where they are to where they need to be. And thirdly, leaders are revolutionaries—They face reality and mobilize appropriate resources; they encourage others to do the same; they leave a footprint that cannot be erased.

These are the Jack Welch of the 21st Century who turns a dying business to a multi-billion dollar business. In his quest to better define the roles leaders plays in their business or organisation, Leadership expert, John Maxwell, stipulates the five levels of leadership: The positional leader, the relational leader, the result oriented leader, the people development leader, and finally the respected leader. The big question now is: what level of leader are you in your business?

Elvis Ukpaka provides impact-FULL Leadership, Self-Improvement and Business Development training and coaching solutions to high profile individuals and organisations. His reputation for helping people achieve peak performance at work, and in life, derives from a burning passion to deliver unparralleled value, by empowering his audience to actualise their potentials to become successful leaders and high performers.

To gain access to more of Elvis’ tested wisdom and insight, on how to achieve peak performance – and leadership – that gets the NEEDED results, go to http://www.elvisukpaka.com, to signup for his Peak Performance Leadership Newsletter. You can reach Elvis directly via Email: elvis@elvisukpaka.com or Phone: 234-802-367-1070.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Elvis_Ukpaka/324568

 

Leadership

Leadership Is More of a “Practice” Than a “Theory”

Lessons from our recent Leadership Academies with clients.

Summary of article key points:

Leadership is more about practice than theory, even if theory can inform some relevant insights as part of a leadership development programme.

Leadership is a blend of art and science. Some leaders are born / pre-equipped better than others (nature), but intelligent training and development (nurture) can enhance virtually anyone’s leadership capability.

Theories and models have a use, but only to underpin “practice” in leadership and real world outcomes.

Functional skills and previous performnace are no guarantees of future leadership capability.

You will only get the leadership qualities that you select and train for.

The cost of promoting without leadership skills and then desperately seeking to equip people with adequate leadership skills can be high in human and economic terms.

Well-designed internal leadership academies can help when they match enhanced leadership awareness and capability to actual business needs.

Main article:

For centuries much has been written about the “science” and the “art” of leadership.

Most of us have read and absorbed elements of this wisdom (and too often perhaps some of the come and go fads rather than wisdom). Many of us have subsequently pondered that age-old question about leadership; “are great leaders born, or are they made”?

Based on our experiences we have found that effective leadership capability tends to arise from a little of both in terms of settling that ‘nature versus nurture’ debate? Sabre’s recent work on a number of high-level leadership academies (including one that was integral to the Coles turnaround) has confirmed that whilst there are many valid theories and models for the “science” of leadership, it’s often the “art” of leadership that still evades adequate capture and definition.

Many businesses simply don’t get it right, but it’s reassuring to see those that do reap the positive rewards that flow so evidently from putting in the effort.

It is certain that nature does equip some people better than others in terms of their leadership traits (from a genetic, neurological and thence a behavioural perspective). There are those who just seem pre-loaded with healthy measures of IQ, charisma and also enough EQ to meld it all together in a way that gets their people to where they need to be.

Arguably though the honing of these skills that may at first glance seem to be gifted from “nature” can be attributed in at least part also to a degree of “nurture.” For example, the development of complex neurological systems and patterns that drive much of our behavior (social systems of the brain, core belief patterns and embedded personality) can be traced to responses to external stimulus over the course of a lifetime.

It is however equally certain that proper approaches to ‘nurture’ can be used to raise the bar for virtually anyone who wishes to play the leadership game by enhancing awareness of their own strengths, areas of struggle and weakness as they manifest day to day.

Discipline is then required to act upon those insights of self-awareness to help cultivate better leadership capability for their own personal and professional circumstances.

One thing we often see is that being gifted in a particular functional skill or specialization, even to the point of genius, is no assurance that you can then lead a group of former peers in that field (or indeed any other).

Regular experiential “practice” of leadership comes into play as a valuable tool for enhancing the quotients of leadership talent that are gifted or acquired from our own recipe of nature and nurture. In the cut and thrust of day to day work life we don’t always have adequate time to discern the true source of, and impact of our leadership and team role styles.

Current research and models from such emerging fields as neuroscience confirm some leadership theories and debunk others, and are often very useful in framing approaches and delivering ongoing insight. They are at the end of the day however just more tools for the toolbox, with leadership capability itself something that needs to be lived and developed day to day and powerfully linked to real world outcomes.

One of the clearest examples that I have observed was in the military when being selected for and subsequently entering into Army Officer training. Now whilst not all attributes of military leadership are relevant to commercial or non-military endeavors, it’s safe to say that many are with respect to the human dynamics of leadership (particularly leading amidst complexity).

For Officer selection the emphasis was first and foremost upon personal leadership capability (and the potential to hone it further for a military environment). It was only much later after rigorous training in general military skills and leadership that relevant specialist streaming was done into various specializations and functional skills.

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