Tag Archives: Leadership Qualities

Leadership

Making Leadership Everyone’s Business

Community Readiness. Leadership is Everyone’s Business.

History has demonstrated that it is easy to get others to do something. All we need is the promise of a promotion, and award, or favorable review. If the incentives don’t work we can report them, demote them, or impose some other consequences. But what happens when you don’t have bonuses or promotions to offer and you don’t offer compensation (at least not monetary) for your team?

Leadership is the ability to mobilize others to want to do or act toward a shared aspiration. This article discusses the 4 most cited leadership characteristics that mobilize others to want to do things and provide strategies to integrate these characteristics into your daily experience.

You do want leadership to be everyone’s business in your community, right?

Characteristic #1: Honesty In Leadership

People want to be led by someone they can trust, someone who does what they say they are going to do and someone who is personally invested in the direction of the future. Community members need to believe in the messenger or they won’t believe in the message.

Characteristic #2: Forward-Looking Leadership

Forward-looking leadership guides the team to a better tomorrow. Foreword leadership promises a sense of direction and confidence. Visions are about possibilities. Only when people understand how they are truly different will they want to be a part of the journey. Think about it like this, “welcome to our place. We are just like everyone else.” This is not how you want to be viewed by your community and forward focused leadership reads more like, “welcome to our place. We are different than everyone else and offer something unique.”

Characteristic #3: Inspiration In Leadership

What makes something intrinsically motivating? What inspires people to form their best and wants to reach their greatest potential? Research shows that intrinsic motivation and inspired by a “clear set of challenges.” Many studies uninspiring intrinsic motivation show that the key to getting others involved in something that requires us to look at a situation in a new way. Leadership lessons identify the exceptional leaders know the abilities of their constituents.

 

  • Do you know what the members of your team can do?
  • Do you recognize what others find to be challenging opportunities and identify their skills and abilities?

 

As leaders we have the responsibility to create opportunities and support that allow extraordinary things to be accomplished challenging opportunities and the ability to identify one’s skills and abilities that people don’t know they have is a key leadership characteristic.

Characteristic #4: Innovation In Leadership

Quality leaders search out challenging opportunities to change, grow, innovate and improve. Innovation and change must be identified as opportunities rather than threats.

 

Action strategy: Here’s an action strategy idea that can help you foster innovation in your community and with your team. Send people on your team shopping for ideas. One of the top strategies for innovation is gathering information from customers, employees, stakeholders, suppliers, others, etc. Putting idea gathering, as a priority, demonstrates an openness to continuously improving. We recommend that you dedicate at least 25% of each meeting (that’s 15 minutes per hour) to gathering new ideas for improving your processes and becoming more efficient. Where can you get these ideas? The ways are numerous: focus groups, advisory boards, mystery shoppers, mystery guests, evaluation forms, customer suggestions, suggestion boxes, breakfast meetings, brainstorming sessions and more.

 

Exemplary leaders learn from their mistakes and encourage others to do the same. They also promote hardiness and foster risk-taking. Most importantly exemplary leaders take action.

The 4 most cited leadership characteristics are honesty, forward-looking leadership, inspiration and innovation. How do you foster these characteristics of leadership in your day-to-day experiences with your team?

Five Reasons to Demonstrate Leadership Qualities

Leaders know where they are going and when they showcase these qualities and characteristics they provide a long-term vision and direction for the team. When your team perceives that you have these characteristics they are significantly more likely to:

 

  • be proud to tell others they are part of your organization or team
  • feel a strong sense of team spirit
  • see their own personal values is consistent with those of the organization or team
  • feel attached and committed to your efforts
  • have a sense of ownership of the organization or community group

 

When your team perceive their leadership to have low credibility and not demonstrate these 4 key characteristics they are significantly more likely to:

 

  • produce only if there watched carefully
  • be motivated primarily by financial compensation
  • say good things about the organization and public but criticize it privately
  • consider looking for another job if the organization experiences the problems
  • feel unsupported and unappreciated

 

These differences provide clear reasons why leaders should seriously consider the perceptions of their team and the community in which they work and strive to demonstrate these key leadership qualities.

How are you making leadership everyone’s business? How are you demonstrating these four key characteristics to build a strong, healthy, and resilient team?

Are your ready to take your leadership to the next level? Are you looking for new and exciting ideas to inspire and motivate your team toward optimal performance?

The Office of Community Research, Inc. provides consulting services that strategically evaluate your strengths and areas of opportunity. To learn more about building your team and community through evaluation consulting visit [http://www.officeofcommunityresearch.com].

On our website, you can sign up for our free CD, “3 Keys to Successful Program Evaluation” and learn more about how to promote and support key leadership characteristics and principles today!

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Jennifer_L_McGahan/1493579

 

Leadership

Leadership Lessons From President Obama

In our examinations of various leadership styles and leadership qualities, none could possibly be more apt than Barack Obama as a case study. His refreshing ideology and brilliant execution certainly bestows us with many leadership lessons to draw from.

Who is He?

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th President of the United States. As an African American born in Hawaii, Obama took interest in being a community organiser in a low income neighbourhood, and served as a church based community organiser before studying Law at Harvard Law School. He was eventually sworn in as senator of Illinois in 2004 and inaugurated as the President of the United States in 2009. He was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.

Leadership Style

Among the most apparent style of leadership that can be seen from President Obama is its transformational nature. Being highly charismatic and exceedingly eloquent, President Obama is easily able to influence the people he lead to work towards a common goal and achieve something larger than themselves. His persuasive and diplomatic style contrasts starkly with the more aggressive and confrontational measure of his predecessor President Bush, and it would definitely play an important role in forging international cooperation and inspiring action at home.

As much as it is ideological, President Obama’s leadership is also highly pragmatic, focusing on concrete issues such as non-insurance of healthcare and relationship with the Muslim world. This leadership trait is integral in his success in translating his noble ideas into reality.

President Obama’s leadership is also characterised by strong communication with the citizens of America and the people of the world. In this new world of information and knowledge, President Obama is able to capitalise on the media to communicate his views and messages to the American citizens. This fact is evident from his presence in talk shows. Being at the top of the any large organisation, it is crucial that messages and ideas get translated clearly right down to the last man so as to ensure congruency in intent. In this aspect, Obama has excelled in his keeping the people he governs in the know.

Leadership Qualities

Being one of a kind, President Obama epitomises several leadership qualities and these can be valuable leadership lessons to take away.

Foremost, he listens. One would think that for such an outstanding orator, speaking well would be his key tool to influence and gain consensus. However, we must realise that communication starts with listening, and President Obama proves to be as good at listening as he is at speaking. As he proves to the world that he, along with the United States is finally willing to listen, the flame is reignited for further relationships to be forged and diplomacy to take place. When asked by a German reporter about his designs for the NATO in 2009, he humbly replied, “I don’t come bearing grand designs, I’m here to listen, to share ideas and to jointly, as one of many NATO allies, help shape our vision for the future.”

This leads to the second quality of empathy. The ability to put himself in the shoes of others so naturally allows President Obama to be able to feel for his people, and this helped shape many of his policies, such as his healthcare reform. The president once said, “The world doesn’t just revolve around you.” This highlights his strong belief that one need to learn to see things through the eyes of others. As leaders, it is pertinent to be able to see issues via the eyes of those we work with in order to understand their concerns. The ability to do so would certainly allow us to become a more understanding and empathetic leader.

President Obama also scores well in terms of being able to delegate tasks to more capable hands, and concerns himself more wit the direction setting and visioning of the nation. In higher management, delegation is a crucial skill to master in order to be effective. It allows us to focus on what we are paid to do, that is to LEAD and MANAGE our team, rather than to micromanage and be take on the jobs of our whole team.

President Obama’s frankness is also another key that sets him apart from countless other politicians. By communicating his goal honestly and clearly, listeners are able to sense his sincerity and will tend to trust him more. This is opposed to many others who choose not to come clean regarding certain ulterior motives, apparent as they may be, and this only mean that listeners are less willing to trust them wholeheartedly.

The last and certainly not the least of his qualities is his willingness to make tough decisions. Despite preaching cooperation and mutual agreement, President Obama is aware that gaining a majority of consensus is not possible and economic, and tough calls may have to be made at times. Right or wrong, it is more important to make a decision and take action, rather than to delay and shriek the responsibility to successors.

President Obama’s leadership style is certainly a fresh beginning for further realignment of the United States in terms of political, economic and social aspects. For aspiring leaders, his leadership qualities can be likened to valuable gems that we can model from, adapt, and use as our own, allowing us to take ourselves to greater heights.

Lucas Lin is a renowned expert in the field of leadership and management. Having held leadership positions ranging from management executive to operations manager, Lucas is in the prime position to offer advice on leadership and consulting services to leaders across the hierarchy. His years of experience in leadership render his advice highly sought after. Having served in leadership positions in various organisations, including a country club, a school and the military among others, Lucas developed an intimate knowledge of value-based leadership, which can be applied to all vocations.

Visit Lucas Lin for Timeless Leadership Lessons at [http://leadership-lessons.com]

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Lucas_Lin/517142

 

Leadership

Define Leadership and Exercise it – The Missing Key Success Factor in Change Management

How you define and exercise leadership in the present climate will be a significant determinant in your organisation’s fortunes – and especially in the context of change management.

Let’s define leadership: Leadership is the process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective. Leaders have a vision that they share with others. It is the leader who binds the organisation together with beliefs, values and knowledge… and who makes it more cohesive and coherent.

Leadership is also defined as a process that…motivates people to excel in the field in which they are working.

Is this you? Is this your direct up-line report?

So can leadership be taught?

Many would say that leadership qualities are not inborn but can be developed gradually through education and self-study. Personally I am not so sure about that.

The current assumption is that leadership can be taught. There are very many many courses, seminars and books on leadership and a big demand for training to develop leadership skills.

On the basis of my life experience and as I define leadership – it is my view that you can only teach leadership skills to someone who has the latent [and maybe unrecognised and unacknowledged] potential to be a leader.

Management skills can be taught to just about anyone of at least average intelligence and education [and in saying that I am not denigrating management]. However, a brief review of the differences between leadership and management suggests that leadership owes as least as much to “nature” as it does to “nurture”.

It may not be a popular thing to say but in my experience – most people would rather be led than lead. In my experience – the vast majority of people are followers and not leaders and very happy to remain so. Leaders are a very small percentage of the population maybe less than 1% and really strong leaders with the potential to really change things [for better or worse] probably less than 0.1%.

Leadership versus management – some useful points of comparison

– Leaders are apparent – Managers are appointed
– Leaders cope with change – Managers cope with complexity
– Leaders set direction – Managers plan
– Leaders press for change – Managers promote stability
– Leaders are visionary, inspirational and have eye to the future -Managers are operational, hands on, and based in the ‘now’
– Leading is concerned with future direction – Managing is concerned with uncertain conditions: implementation, order, efficiency and effectiveness
– Leadership is strategic – Management is operational
– Leaders set the direction – Managers develop the capacity to achieve the plan
– Leaders motivate and inspire – Managers control and problem solve
– Leaders need to ‘get on the balcony’ to spot operational and strategic patterns within the organisation – Managers get caught up on the field of action.
– Leadership defines the culture of the organisation – Management instills the culture in the organisation

Leadership in change management

Clearly both sets of skills are needed.

But so often in change management situations the emphasis is on the process and the management of the situation and not the leadership.

The leadership characteristics outline above are crucial for the fulfillment of a change programme director / leader role – leading [and being seen to lead and own] the whole change initiative.

How we define leadership, how we understand it and how we exercise it, is of paramount importance in the current economic and business climate as the quality of your leadership could be a major factor in determining your company’s fortunes – and especially in a change management situation. And this is where the properly applied leadership skills are exercised to best effect when employing the holistic and wide view perspective of a programme based approach to change management.

For more on this: “Define and exercise leadership”

Equip yourself to avoid the 70% failure rate of all change initiatives with the “Practitioners’ Masterclass – Leading your people through change, putting it all together and managing the whole messy business.”

Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Stephen_Warrilow/361805