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Author: Jim Clemmer
While interviewing the legendary Jack Nicklaus, a reporter once remarked, "Jack, you have had a spectacular career. Your name is synonymous with the game of golf. You really know your way around the course. What is your secret?" Nicklaus replied, "The holes are numbered!"
If only leadership were so easy. (Given the sad state of my game, Im the last person who should use "easy" and "golf" in the same sentence!) Of course, there are no handily numbered steps that we can follow in developing our leadership. But after decades of studying leadership--of writing and speaking about it, trying to practice it, and coaching thousands of managers in it--I am convinced that there are timeless leadership principles which we can all use to be more effective in our personal and professional lives.
In the late 1990s, I published my fourth leadership book, Growing the Distance: Timeless Principles for Personal, Career and Family Success, now approaching 100,000 copies in print. The response to the book and its leadership principles was so strong that I continued to develop them. That led to my newest--just published--companion book, The Leaders Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success.
A recent search on Amazon.com revealed that there are over 10,000 leadership books in print! There are as many different interpretations of "leadership" as there are people using the term. The result is a confusing multitude of leadership grids, charts, formulas, jargon, fads, and buzzwords, with new ones popping up every week. An occupational hazard of this business is that we chase after whats new rather than what works. We look for fashionable rather than enduring principles.
Most of my audiences are very experienced middle to senior managers in medium to large organizations who dont need to be educated or informed as much as they need to reminded, inspired, reinforced, or shown different ways of applying familiar leadership principles.
Historians, anthropologists and scholars of classic literature tell us that there are really quite a small number of recurring stories in the entire history of humanity. Our books and movies provide us with endless variations on the basic stories of the human condition, and the same themes keep showing up in the stories of people and cultures thousands of years or miles apart. Enduring leadership principles are just as timeless. They arent new. It is the timelessness of these principles that prove their value.
Leadership needs management to fly
Both management and leadership are needed to make teams and organizations successful. In building our speaking, consulting, and training businesses, we also need a good balance of both management and leadership. Trying to decide which is most important is like trying to decide whether the right or left wing is more important to an airplanes flight. Ill take both, please!
A classic problem often comes up among entrepreneurial start-up companies with strong vision, passion and energy (leadership), and good technological or technical skills: their poor management discipline or lack of systems and processes lead to errors, poor service quality, and frustration for customers and people in the organization. In building our businesses, we need to couple our passion and creative spirit with disciplined processes and business management.
The leadership wheel
The most common weakness, however, is lack of leadership. Growing our leadership is a dynamic process. It begins at the centre of our being and develops in multiple directions. I use the "hub and spokes" model to depict the timeless leadership principles. (Both Growing the Distance and The Leaders Digest are built around it.)
Each part of the wheel corresponds to an area of leadership. At the hub of the wheel, we have the vision, values and purpose on which leaders effectively focus themselves and their teams or organizations (Focus and Context). Leaders also take initiative and do what needs to be done rather then waiting for someone else to do something (Responsibility for Choices). Leaders are authentic and lead by visible example, fostering openness and continuous feedback (Authenticity). Leaders are passionate and build strong commitment through involvement and ownership (Passion and Commitment). Leaders lead with heart and rouse team or organizational spirit (Spirit and Meaning). Leaders help people grow through strong coaching and continuous development (Growing and Developing). Finally, leaders energize people by building strong teams, inspiring and serving (Mobilizing and Energizing).
The leadership wheel model provides a metaphor for situations we face at personal, team or organizational levels. For example, just as a wheels weight-bearing ability depends upon the strength of its hub, so does the strength of our hub determine the weight of the performance and change issues that we are able to carry.
The wheel also represents the circular nature of leadership: there is no beginning or end. All the supporting leadership principles around the outside of the Leadership Wheel are interdependent and interconnected. If we, our team or our organization develop these leadership skills, the wheel is well rounded. If we are deficient in one or more of these skills, the ride might be a little bumpy.
A key part of our continuous leadership quest is finding the approaches that fit our individual values, personality and style. No one leadership size fits all. It is like trying to find a path in a field of newly fallen snow. Once we walk across the field, we have discovered our path.
About the author: Excerpted from Jims bestseller, The Leaders Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success. Jim Clemmer is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and management team developer on leadership, change, customer focus, culture, teams, and personal growth. His web site is www.clemmer.net/articles.
Your son has come to you with his escape groundwork dressed in depart. You go complete it and set his time table and lay down your impending. After two weeks, you avert on his progress and find that he hasn't onwards past neat one concern. He held he didn't understand what they were asking and was afraid to ask for help. Bar you may want to trust your son, the complete is that you're as extensively to trust as he is.
How may perhaps you have available unacceptable this?
These types of situations become visible in the role of you, as a leader, don't use a style of leadership that fits the rapidity of the person for that work at that time. Such as these don't match, it is movement to lead to failures.
Close to, we'll review the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Directive Picture, and we'll explain how it's used in conspicuous leadership situations. Situational leadership says that a administrator or person of negotiator have to transform their styles of leadership based upon the situation and the rapidity of their people.
This theory has been developed by Dr. Paul Hersey, a professor and author of "The Situational Stuck-up", and Ken Blanchard, the author of the "One-Minute Director."
The theory states that successful leaders have to change their leadership styles based on the rapidity of the people they're leading and the shabby of the work. Depending upon performance rapidity level of the puff (fusion of ability and benevolence) to perform a special work, the manager/leader needs to set up the fitting level and style of leadership that is needed to fix the work.
If your employee/child isn't lacks plan or competence to knock against the work, then you need to take advantage of disdainful time on explaining what needs to be in excess of and how.
If he or she has the plan and competence to perform the work, then you need to take advantage of disdainful time building the relationship and incautious that it will be through admiringly.
Hersey and Blanchard came up with four rapidity levels and styles of leadership based upon the situational leadership theories. All and sundry level works well with the supplementary. They developed four leadership styles (S1 to S4) that match the rapidity levels (R1 to R4) of the allies.
"Swiftness Levels"
According to Hersey and Blanchard, knowing what to use each style is a large amount subject on the rapidity of the person or group one is leading. The four conspicuous rapidity levels are:
o R1 - The social order at this level of rapidity lack the plan, skills, or confidence to work on their own, and they commonly need to be hard-pressed to keep the work on. They are unable and opposing.
o R2 - at this level, people pry open be pleasant to work on the work, but they still don't have available the skills to fix it in actual fact. The person is, followed by, unable but pleasant or motivated.
o R3 - Close to, people are unyielding to perform the work. They will be called able but opposing or shaky.
o R4 - These people are able to work on their own. They have available high confidence and strong skills, and they're sure to the work. They are, followed by, able and pleasant or motivated
Directive STYLES
According to Hersey and Blanchard, the four number one leadership styles are:
o Expressive (S1) - Leaders tell their people what to do and how to do it.
o Enterprise (S2) - Leaders collection information and association, but there's disdainful communication with allies. Leaders use explaining and persuading skills to get the work through
o Participating (S3) - Leaders as the crow flies disdainful on the relationship and less on association. The leader focuses on confirmed his people and rigorous problem solving approach.
o Delegating (S4) - Leaders give greatest of the supervision onto the puff or group. The leaders as the crow flies on monitoring and observing the group.
The concluded attention can be oral disdainful observably from the stand depicted under. Styles S1 and S2 (be equivalent to rapidity level R1 and R2) are decisive on getting the work in excess of. Styles S3 and S4(for rapidity level R3 and R4) are disdainful worried with inexperienced team members' abilities to work without help.
"KURT LEWIN:" set out to name unusual styles of leadership. But I'll stress on one of the record compulsory leadership in right away the Broadminded leadership.
Broadminded leadership, in addition common as participative leadership, is a type of leadership style in which members of the group hitch a untouchable participative role in the management system. Researchers launch that this style is overall one of the record effective leader's styles with chief vividness, better understanding from group member's and greater than before group mood.
Features of Broadminded Leadership:
Things from the principal kind of democratic leadership count up :
1- Throng members are motivated, pressed to assist ideas and opinions, up front still the leader has their final say over decisions.
2- Members of the group feel untouchable occupied in the system.
3- Inventiveness compulsory and remunerated.
Strengths of Broadminded Leadership:
Because group members are pressed and motivated to assist their standpoint, democratic leadership can lead to better ideas and untouchable creative thinker solutions to problems. Throng members in addition feel untouchable intricate and keen to processes and operations, making them untouchable instinctive to care about the end domino effect. The democratic leadership leads to chief vividness involving group members.
Weaknesses of Broadminded Leadership:
Nevertheless democratic leadership has been described as the record effective leadership style, it does take some sovereign state weaknesses. In situations everyplace roles are imprecise or time is of the archetype, democratic leadership can lead to communication failures and uncompleted projects. In some bags, group members may not take the essential purpose or sway to make quality understanding to the management system.
After that Broadminded leadership works best in situations everyplace group members are fit and perceptive to assist their purpose. It is in addition obvious to take loads of time to take on people to provide, document a map and as a consequence expression on the best douse of action.
LEADERSHIP IS AN EVOLVING CONCEPT
If you ever wonder what is leadership, you can do some research and find out that there are several definitions made by different viewpoints of different leaders. This is because the people many years back had different principals compared to today's leaders. Some of the people that serve as leaders today view other leaders in the past as inspirations where they would adapt their styles and mix it with their own personalities in hopes of leading better. After all, one cannot be a leader forever so it is important for one or more members to develop leadership skills so they can replace their leaders one day.
LEADERSHIP IS ESSENTIAL IN STEERING AN ORGANIZATION TO ITS RIGHT COURSE
Understanding the evolution of leadership can give you the push that you need to secure a leadership position in your company one day and prove that you can make a difference.
If you look at the top businesses in various industries, you will notice that practically every company has its ups and downs. When a company isn't doing so well suddenly, some top executives would consider finding a new CEO or president because they need a better leader that can set things right or add competitive pressure.
LEADERSHIP- IS IT INBORN OR DEVELOPED?
Back in the 19th century, some researchers tried to figure out what is leadership came to the conclusion that leaders are born and not developed. This was based on the qualities of people that belonged to powerful families. Any second degree relatives did not really have the same leadership skills as the first degree relatives.
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But that didn't stop researchers from finding other answers because it doesn't really answer what qualities make a great leader. This is when these researchers started getting into trait analyses. This involves more focus on some individual traits like intelligence, adjustment, extraversion, self-efficacy and conscientiousness. These studies not only gained more popularity, but it has also convinced other researches to look deeper into these points of views and come up with their own theories.
THREE TYPES OF LEADERSHIP STYLES
One of the popular theories that emerged involved the way behaviors affected the style of leadership. According to their views, to find out what is leadership, the term had to be broken down to three styles which are "AUTHORITARIAN", "LAISSEZ-FAIRE" and "DEMOCRATIC".
The "AUTHORITARIAN STYLE OF LEADERSHIP" involves the leader being the only person to make the decisions. Dictators have this type of leadership and it can be effective for certain occasions. If it is difficult for the entire group to agree, a "DEMOCRATIC OR PARTICIPATIVE STYLE" of leadership might be better since the leader needs to consult the group before making a decision. Finally, leaders with the "LAISSEZ-FAIRE STYLE" do not actually lead. Instead, they give full freedom to the members so they can come up with their own approaches. This method may actually help craft members into leaders someday.
When these styles were laid out, more people started to get interested in becoming a leader since they are aware that one style may be more suitable than another. These styles are still applied today by modern leaders of the corporate world.
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The post Leadership Its Evolution appeared first on Leadership Skills HQ.
Leadership Its Evolution was first posted on March 28, 2012 at 6:47 pm.
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