leadership – Personal Growth Cafe

What can you do to do to be heard, respected, and well liked?

It may be true that some people are born leaders.

There’s something about them that makes people want to follow them – their charm or charisma – but you can learn how to be an effective leader!

Whether you’re a natural born leader or not, there are a number of behaviors you can practice and use to become a leader that will make people want to listen to you, respect you, and like you.

We all need leaders to guide, inspire, and encourage us.

A good leader can leave us feeling inspired and uplifted.

But how can you become a positive leader?

Simply put, leaders help their employees feel good about themselves.

Leaders ensure that staff feels appreciated for the hard work they do day in and day out.

You can do this by getting actively involved with your colleagues.

After all, it’s difficult for you to make someone feel good about themselves if you have no idea what exactly they do, so pay attention!

You also need to learn how to communicate effectively with others.

Let others know that they can freely voice their opinions and ideas to you.

If you actively listen to each and every person, they’ll all feel like valuable players on your team.

Be professional, but be personable. When you’re introducing employees to visitors or senior managers, always introduce them by their first name.

Refer to them as your team members, colleagues, or associates.

Never ever refer to them as your subordinates or by their job titles.

Leadership Involves Being A Positive Role Model

Good leaders do more then talk the talk; they actually walk the walk.

By setting a good example and understanding the needs and pressures of the team, a leader can help others see the big picture and help them understand why their roles are so important to the team’s success.

Here are a couple ways to lead by example:

If you’re trying to get your employees to be more involved in their jobs and help others when they need it, what are you doing to set a good example?

Good leaders roll up their sleeves and get down to business with the people that are working for them.

Good leaders fight for the rights of their team at all levels.

If you show your team how much you respect their needs, you’ll gain their respect, too.

For example, if a pay raise is stalled, actively investigate why it’s stalled and keep your team updated.

Taking a Individual Approach

To be a good leader you also need to understand that different people are motivated in different ways.

People naturally like to see a positive outcome for the work they do and the key is to find out what motivates the people you work with.

Is the motivation to get a pay increase?

Is it recognition for a job well done?

Or is it being named employee of the month?

Motivation can be very individualized.

Take the time to get to know the people working with you so you can figure out the best way to motivate them.

Even if you own a small business and can’t afford expensive employee rewards, sometimes a nice dinner or a thoughtful gift is enough to show your employees your appreciation.

Good leaders know that each person is essential to the success of the team as a whole.

Don’t take the people working for you for granted. Remember that getting the respect you desire first starts with respecting others.

What are the characteristics of a good leader?

What skills do you have that makes you a good leader?

Talk about that in the Personal Growth Cafe Community!

Also, as your gift for taking this to heart – and this is profoundly important… to us ALL – go to UnitingPlanetEarth.com/ignition/ and do the Uniting Planet Earth 7-Day Quick-Start Ignition Program… and Allow it to Transform Your Life.

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July 17, 2012

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.
· Lewin’s three basic leadership styles – authoritative, participative, and delegative
· Likert’s four leadership styles – exploitive authoritative, benevolent authoritative, consultative, and participative
· 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.

July 15, 2012

Why Coaching is the Way to Go in Team Management

When you hear the word “coach”, what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a basketball team with a man/woman shouting out directions? Or perhaps a football team with a man/woman pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players?

Coaching is no longer reserved to sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular?

Coaching levels the playing field.

Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staffs’ personal values and goals with that of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence.

Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual’s level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.

A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.

Coaching produces valuable leaders.

Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization’s vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

Some words of caution though: coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.

June 14, 2012June 18, 2012

Walk the Talk – Practicing the Principles You Preach

How often have you run into a leader who’s been successful at guiding others by saying one thing and then doing something different? Not very often, right? That’s simply because it doesn’t work!

It’s highly likely that principles taught without the right examples being put into practice will eventually fall by the wayside.

Especially if you’re in a position of authority, it is of utmost importance to lead by example if you expect to gain compliance.

Leading by example will ensure these benefits:

Support of the principles based on results. For example, if you’re teaching honesty, when people see for themselves that you gain the trust of others by being honest, they will likely see the benefits of being honest themselves.
Full understanding of the principles. Just imparting principles to others isn’t always enough. In fact, the majority of people may have a completely different understanding of what’s expected of them.
Cohesion and cooperation. This is particularly true whenever team effort is required. When everybody is on the same page, processes, departments and families run more cohesively.
Respect. When others can see that you are fully complying with the principles you teach, you’ll ultimately gain their respect.

Disastrous Results of Not Practicing What You Preach

So what happens when you try to teach certain life principles but allow your actions to dictate otherwise?

You’re bound to run into any or all of the following situations:

Those you expect compliance from will very soon grow to resent you, especially if the principles you’re teaching are a challenge for them to perform.

You may end up with a negative reputation asan ineffective leader or teacher as you lose sight of the very actions you teach.

Cases of rebellion will continue to grow as more and more people feel they’re being dictated to instead of led.

How to Start Leading By Example

It’s very easy to outline your expectations; it’s the simplest part of the equation. And that’s a start, because at least you know what the principles are. As they say, “Knowing is half the battle” but in this case, it’s the smaller half!

It may take a lot of effort to really walk the talk and practice the behaviors that you want others to emulate. However, you can get started practicing this positive principle on a daily basis with only a small effort:

Start small and stick to your immediate circle of influence.

Give yourself the opportunity to impart morals and good belief systems on your immediate family and close friends.

Tackle each principle one at a time.

Work hard at allowing it to become an integral part of your everyday life.

Once you’ve mastered one, move on to something else. However, it’s important to be able to give testimony to the fact that there are actually greater benefits to adhering to that particular principle than not adhering. There is an element of fulfillment when you can show others just what kind of actions, thoughts and behaviors contribute to a better, more wholesome outcome.

Walking the talk is a lifelong journey. There may be times that you’ll fall below your own expectations and the principles you aspire to uphold. However, what’s important is that you recognize it and take the necessary steps to get back on track!

Make sure you’re effectively using your power to manifest everything you want. Do the “Crash Course on Creating Your Ideal Life” video training for free at the Personal Growth Cafe.

Tag: leadership

Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things. – Peter Drucker

Not the cry, but the flight of the wild duck leads the flock to fly and follow. – Chinese Proverb

How to Be a Leader at Work

Leadership Exposed: Things You Thought You Knew About Leadership

Why Coaching is the Way to Go in Team Management