It is commonly accepted that there are three main types of leader:
1. There is the Great Man theory, sometimes called the Trait theory. It is based on the belief that some people are born leaders. It’s in them. Wherever they are, whatever they do, they will be recognized as natural leaders.
2. Then there is the Great Event theory. Cometh the time, cometh the man. This is about major events bringing out the leader for that event. Winston Churchill was an example of Great Event leadership. He had been prominent in politics for a long time, but was not very popular. However, when things were going badly for Britain in the Second World War, although he was aged 65 at the time, he was asked to become Prime Minister. The Romans believed in Great Event leadership. In times of crisis they would appoint someone dictator with total power to sort out the problem. Julius Caesar was one example of that.
3. Finally, there is Transformational Leadership theory. This is based on the belief that leaders are made, not born. It is the most widely held theory, and it forms the basis for training in leadership skills.
Of course, there are leaders in our day to day lives, when there is no crisis or great event. Politicians and company directors, for example. Such leaders make decisions, provide guidance on procedures, on the law, on social behaviour, and formulate policies. I would call them Transactional leaders, because they deal in the everyday transactions of a society.
I have lilttle interest in them. I prefer Transformational leaders, because they are the people concerned with bringing about change. How they go about it, and how they connect with their followers, is the essence of The Voice of Leadership, which is one of the key training programmes in my portfolio.
Leadership can be developed, but it is not simply a technique that you can acquire, like learning to play the piano. It’s about who you are, what you know and what you do. Who you are means your beliefs and character. It’s about the essential you. Can you inspire trust and respect? I don’t think you can fake it. Anyone can bluff their way to admiration, but integrity has to be real.
You need to understand what leadership is, and how it affects those who are led. You need to recognise that the most important tool in a leader’s armoury is the right communication skill. As Churchill once said, "The difference between leadership and mere management is communication." And that can be taught.
Monday 7 March 2011
Sunday 6 March 2011
11Leadership Guidelines
Leadership is about what you be, know, and do. Here are 11 guidelines that will help to establish or enhance your leadership abilities and communication:
1. Know yourself and seek self-improvement. In order to know yourself, you have to understand your "be, know, and do" attributes. Seeking self-improvement means continually strengthening your attributes. This can be accomplished through reading, self-study, classes, etc.
2. Be technically proficient. As a leader, you must know your job thoroughly and have a solid familiarity with your employees' jobs as well.
3. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions. Search for ways to guide your organisation to new heights. And when things go wrong, as they will sooner or later, do not blame others. Analyse the situation, take corrective action, and move on to the next challenge. That's the mark of a good leader.
4. Make sound and timely decisions. Use good problem solving, decision making, and planning tools. If necessary, get training.
5. Set the example. Be a good role model for your employees. They must not only hear what they are expected to do, but also see. You know the saying, Monkey see, monkey do.
6. Know your people and look out for their well-being. Know human nature and the importance of sincerely caring for your workers.
7. Keep your people informed. Know how to communicate with your people, seniors, and other key people within the organization. Work on your presentation skills.
8. Develop a sense of responsibility in your people. Develop good character traits within your people that will help them carry out their professional responsibilities and encourage them to take charge of what they do, and not wait to be told.
9. Ensure that tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished. Communication is the key to this responsibility.
10. Train your people as a team. Although many so called leaders call their organization, department, section, etc. a team; they are not really teams...they are just a group of people doing their jobs. Everyone needs training.
11. Use the full capabilities of your organization. By developing a team spirit, you will be able to employ your organization, department, section, etc. to its fullest capabilities.
If you want to discuss this further, call me.
Phillip
1. Know yourself and seek self-improvement. In order to know yourself, you have to understand your "be, know, and do" attributes. Seeking self-improvement means continually strengthening your attributes. This can be accomplished through reading, self-study, classes, etc.
2. Be technically proficient. As a leader, you must know your job thoroughly and have a solid familiarity with your employees' jobs as well.
3. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions. Search for ways to guide your organisation to new heights. And when things go wrong, as they will sooner or later, do not blame others. Analyse the situation, take corrective action, and move on to the next challenge. That's the mark of a good leader.
4. Make sound and timely decisions. Use good problem solving, decision making, and planning tools. If necessary, get training.
5. Set the example. Be a good role model for your employees. They must not only hear what they are expected to do, but also see. You know the saying, Monkey see, monkey do.
6. Know your people and look out for their well-being. Know human nature and the importance of sincerely caring for your workers.
7. Keep your people informed. Know how to communicate with your people, seniors, and other key people within the organization. Work on your presentation skills.
8. Develop a sense of responsibility in your people. Develop good character traits within your people that will help them carry out their professional responsibilities and encourage them to take charge of what they do, and not wait to be told.
9. Ensure that tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished. Communication is the key to this responsibility.
10. Train your people as a team. Although many so called leaders call their organization, department, section, etc. a team; they are not really teams...they are just a group of people doing their jobs. Everyone needs training.
11. Use the full capabilities of your organization. By developing a team spirit, you will be able to employ your organization, department, section, etc. to its fullest capabilities.
If you want to discuss this further, call me.
Phillip
Thursday 3 March 2011
Can we afford to lose our sole traders?
Unemployment is officially now at nearly 2.5 million (7.9%), but that’s not the full story. Many thousands more are without work. They are not on the dole figures and they don’t as yet cost the nation any quantifiable cash, but there is a cost, a significant one, that may be hard to define, but which will be felt in the very near future. These are the self-employed, the folks who decided to ‘go it alone’ or ‘get on their bikes’ and set up rafts of micro businesses. Many are facing ruin.
A micro business is, typically, a one-man band – trainers, journalists, freelance salesmen, home helps, mobile mechanics, plumbers, electricians, management consultants, among many more. They have worked on the fringes of mainstream business, mopping up spare capacity, often providing lower cost alternatives to better-known corporates. For many of them, work has dried up and they are, in fact if not officially, currently jobless.
Any official help?
There was a summit in Glasgow on the effects of the economic downturn, designed ‘to better support individuals and business facing hardship due to the economic downturn’. It brought together the Minister of State for Welfare Reform, the Education Minister, and representatives of various trade unions and others. That was two years ago. Since then what has happened?
At about the same time, a Think Tank called Race on the Agenda concerned itself with the effects of the downturn on minorities. Racial minorities. Mervyn King has spoken of the mounting misery in households facing the biggest decline in their living standards since the 1920s. But spare a thought for two groups whose misery is even more palpable: middle class dole claimants and the self-employed who have no work.
No one is immune
Talk to a former middle manager who has had to clear his desk and surrender his gleaming company car. In the good times, he mortgaged himself to the hilt and entertained at home, living up to the image of a successful businessman. Now, aged 50 or more, he has little prospect of a job. When his savings dry up, he’ll wonder whether he should stack shelves in the supermarket or offer to do odd jobs like painting and decorating – anything to bring in some cash. Some even take up mini-cabbing. A colleague of mine called for a minicab one evening and was embarrassed when the man who turned up used to be his senior in previous years, a man he used to call Sir.
It’s pretty much the same for the sole trader whose work has dried up. Competition is fierce for whatever work there is, and price cutting is sharp. Everyone is uncertain where the point of balance lies – the point at which they are disregarded because they are too cheap and therefore cannot be any good.
The real cost is to self esteem. When you sit at your desk all day, every day, trying to market yourself and no one buys, you rapidly start to doubt yourself. One new business getter for management consultants, wondered if he had any value in the market place. He started to describe himself as a one-trick pony that no one wants. As one who has made and lost a fortune in the past, he has what it takes, and he’s a highly skilled wheeler-dealer, but he was last seen looking for a job. Back in full-time employment.
Sadly, it’s a vicious spiral. When work stops coming through the door, you have to swallow your pride and go looking for it. But you are already feeling rejected by the market and past customers, so you put off writing those prospecting letters or picking up the phone. Fear of rejection is a paralysing force. And when you are working as a sole trader, there is no one to bolster you, remind you of your strengths, encourage you to keep trying.
Huge fund of potential
The number of people in this situation is very large. In 1999, there were 3.7m firms in Britain. Two thirds of them were sole traders. By 2007, that proportion had risen to three quarters of the 4.5 million firms. It was just before the start of the economic slowdown and the drying up of credit, and those 3.3 million sole operators turned over a massive £1,440 billion.
That’s a considerable amount of wealth creation, even if it is not mainstream. It derives from a huge bank of energy, drive and creativity. The more successful ones go on to create jobs and build larger firms. They are known as entrepreneurs. Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Sir Richard Branson are examples of sole traders turned entrepreneur. In the current economic wilderness, such people are a threatened breed.
Why are they important? Because their drive comes from doing the things they love, and that’s so much more important than just doing a job for a salary. Steve Jobs once said, “The only way to do great work is to do what you love.” We need people who do great work. Sole traders are, in effect, CEOs -- men and women with the drive, tenacity and creativity to solve problems and deliver successful outcomes rather than going through the motions.
Can the nation afford to lose them?
A micro business is, typically, a one-man band – trainers, journalists, freelance salesmen, home helps, mobile mechanics, plumbers, electricians, management consultants, among many more. They have worked on the fringes of mainstream business, mopping up spare capacity, often providing lower cost alternatives to better-known corporates. For many of them, work has dried up and they are, in fact if not officially, currently jobless.
Any official help?
There was a summit in Glasgow on the effects of the economic downturn, designed ‘to better support individuals and business facing hardship due to the economic downturn’. It brought together the Minister of State for Welfare Reform, the Education Minister, and representatives of various trade unions and others. That was two years ago. Since then what has happened?
At about the same time, a Think Tank called Race on the Agenda concerned itself with the effects of the downturn on minorities. Racial minorities. Mervyn King has spoken of the mounting misery in households facing the biggest decline in their living standards since the 1920s. But spare a thought for two groups whose misery is even more palpable: middle class dole claimants and the self-employed who have no work.
No one is immune
Talk to a former middle manager who has had to clear his desk and surrender his gleaming company car. In the good times, he mortgaged himself to the hilt and entertained at home, living up to the image of a successful businessman. Now, aged 50 or more, he has little prospect of a job. When his savings dry up, he’ll wonder whether he should stack shelves in the supermarket or offer to do odd jobs like painting and decorating – anything to bring in some cash. Some even take up mini-cabbing. A colleague of mine called for a minicab one evening and was embarrassed when the man who turned up used to be his senior in previous years, a man he used to call Sir.
It’s pretty much the same for the sole trader whose work has dried up. Competition is fierce for whatever work there is, and price cutting is sharp. Everyone is uncertain where the point of balance lies – the point at which they are disregarded because they are too cheap and therefore cannot be any good.
The real cost is to self esteem. When you sit at your desk all day, every day, trying to market yourself and no one buys, you rapidly start to doubt yourself. One new business getter for management consultants, wondered if he had any value in the market place. He started to describe himself as a one-trick pony that no one wants. As one who has made and lost a fortune in the past, he has what it takes, and he’s a highly skilled wheeler-dealer, but he was last seen looking for a job. Back in full-time employment.
Sadly, it’s a vicious spiral. When work stops coming through the door, you have to swallow your pride and go looking for it. But you are already feeling rejected by the market and past customers, so you put off writing those prospecting letters or picking up the phone. Fear of rejection is a paralysing force. And when you are working as a sole trader, there is no one to bolster you, remind you of your strengths, encourage you to keep trying.
Huge fund of potential
The number of people in this situation is very large. In 1999, there were 3.7m firms in Britain. Two thirds of them were sole traders. By 2007, that proportion had risen to three quarters of the 4.5 million firms. It was just before the start of the economic slowdown and the drying up of credit, and those 3.3 million sole operators turned over a massive £1,440 billion.
That’s a considerable amount of wealth creation, even if it is not mainstream. It derives from a huge bank of energy, drive and creativity. The more successful ones go on to create jobs and build larger firms. They are known as entrepreneurs. Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Sir Richard Branson are examples of sole traders turned entrepreneur. In the current economic wilderness, such people are a threatened breed.
Why are they important? Because their drive comes from doing the things they love, and that’s so much more important than just doing a job for a salary. Steve Jobs once said, “The only way to do great work is to do what you love.” We need people who do great work. Sole traders are, in effect, CEOs -- men and women with the drive, tenacity and creativity to solve problems and deliver successful outcomes rather than going through the motions.
Can the nation afford to lose them?
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