As a manager,
you already know that your most important asset is the other
people on your team. The better they perform, the more success
you will all enjoy together. So your role in all of this is
to find ways to inspire and encourage them to be the best they
can be. But, because people are people, your job is definitely
not a simple one. As a participant in our Managing People Workshop,
you will learn the skills to work with the strengths and weaknesses
of each team member, responding to their needs and releasing
their gifts in ways that will bring to all of you the success
for which you are working so hard. Become
an Effective Leader
"The miracle power that elevates the few
is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance,
under the promptings of a brave determined spirit." -
Mark Twain
Many motivational experts like to say that leaders
are made, not born. I would argue the exact opposite. I believe
we are all natural born leaders, but have been deprogrammed
along the way. As children, we were natural leaders - curious
and humble, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge, with
an incredibly vivid imagination; we knew exactly what we wanted,
were persistent and determined in getting what we wanted,
and had the ability to motivate, inspire, and influence everyone
around us to help us in accomplishing our mission. So why
is this so difficult to do as adults? What happened?
As children, over time, we got used to hearing,
No, Don't, and Can't. No! Don't do this. Don't do that. You
can't do this. You can't do that. No! Many of our parents
told us to keep quiet and not disturb the adults by asking
silly questions. This pattern continued into high school with
our teachers telling us what we could do and couldn't do and
what was possible. Then many of us got hit with the big one
institutionalized formal education known as college or university.
Unfortunately, the traditional educational system doesn't
teach students how to become leaders; it teaches students
how to become polite order takers for the corporate world.
Instead of learning to become creative, independent, self-reliant,
and think for themselves, most people learn how to obey and
intelligently follow rules to keep the corporate machine humming.
Developing the Leader in you to live your highest
life, then, requires a process of unlearning by self-remembering
and self-honoring. Being an effective leader again will require
you to be brave and unlock the door to your inner attic, where
your childhood dreams lie, going inside to the heart. Based
on my over ten years research in the area of human development
and leadership, here are ten easy steps you can take to awaken
the Leader in you and rekindle your passion for greatness.
1. Humility. Leadership starts with humility. To be a highly
successful leader, you must first humble yourself like a little
child and be willing to serve others. Nobody wants to follow
someone who is arrogant. Be humble as a child, always curious,
always hungry and thirsty for knowledge. For what is excellence
but knowledge plus knowledge plus knowledge - always wanting
to better yourself, always improving, always growing.
When you are humble, you become genuinely interested in people
because you want to learn from them. And because you want
to learn and grow, you will be a far more effective listener,
which is the #1 leadership communication tool. When people
sense you are genuinely interested in them, and listening
to them, they will naturally be interested in you and listen
to what you have to say.
2. SWOT Yourself. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats. Although it's a strategic management
tool taught at Stanford and Harvard Business Schools and used
by large multinationals, it can just as effectively be used
in your own professional development as a leader. This is
a useful key to gain access to self-knowledge, self-remembering,
and self-honoring. Start by listing all your Strengths including
your accomplishments. Then write down all your Weaknesses
and what needs to be improved. Make sure to include any doubts,
anxieties, fears, and worries that you may have. These are
the demons and dragons guarding the door to your inner attic.
By bringing them to conscious awareness you can begin to slay
them. Then proceed by listing all the Opportunities you see
available to you for using your strengths. Finally, write
down all the Threats or obstacles that are currently blocking
you or that you think you will encounter along the way to
achieving your dreams.
3. Follow Your Bliss. Regardless of how busy you are, always
take time to do what you love doing. Being an alive and vital
person vitalizes others. When you are pursuing your passions,
people around you cannot help but feel impassioned by your
presence. This will make you a charismatic leader. Whatever
it is that you enjoy doing, be it writing, acting, painting,
drawing, photography, sports, reading, dancing, networking,
or working on entrepreneurial ventures, set aside time every
week, ideally two or three hours a day, to pursue these activities.
Believe me, you'll find the time. If you were to video tape
yourself for a day, you would be shocked to see how much time
goes to waste!
4. Dream Big. If you want to be larger than
life, you need a dream that's larger than life. Small dreams
won't serve you or anyone else. It takes the same amount of
time to dream small than it does to dream big. So be Big and
be Bold! Write down your One Biggest Dream. The one that excites
you the most. Remember, don't be small and realistic; be bold
and unrealistic! Go for the Gold, the Pulitzer, the Nobel,
the Oscar, the highest you can possibly achieve in your field.
After you ve written down your dream, list every single reason
why you CAN achieve your dream instead of worrying about why
you can't.
5. Vision. Without a vision, we perish. If you
can't see yourself winning that award and feel the tears of
triumph streaming down your face, it's unlikely you will be
able to lead yourself or others to victory. Visualize what
it would be like accomplishing your dream. See it, smell it,
taste it, hear it, feel it in your gut.
6. Perseverance. Victory belongs to those who
want it the most and stay in it the longest. Now that you
have a dream, make sure you take consistent action every day.
I recommend doing at least 5 things every day that will move
you closer to your dream.
7. Honor Your Word. Every time you break your
word, you lose power. Successful leaders keep their word and
their promises. You can accumulate all the toys and riches
in the world, but you only have one reputation in life. Your
word is gold. Honor it.
8. Get a Mentor. Find yourself a mentor. Preferably
someone who has already achieved a high degree of success
in your field. Don't be afraid to ask. You've got nothing
to lose. Mentors.ca is an excellent mentoring website and
a great resource for finding local mentoring programs. They
even have a free personal profile you can fill out in order
to potentially find you a suitable mentor. In addition to
mentors, take time to study autobiographies of great leaders
that you admire. Learn everything you can from their lives
and model some of their successful behaviors.
9. Be Yourself. Use your relationships with
mentors and your research on great leaders as models or reference
points to work from, but never copy or imitate them like a
parrot. Everyone has vastly different leadership styles. History
books are filled with leaders who are soft-spoken, introverted,
and quiet, all the way to the other extreme of being out-
spoken, extroverted, and loud, and everything in between.
A quiet and simple Gandhi or a soft-spoken peanut farmer named
Jimmy Carter, who became president of the United States and
won a Nobel Peace Prize, have been just as effective world
leaders as a loud and flamboyant Churchill, or the tough leadership
style employed by The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher.
I admire Hemingway as a writer. But if I copy Hemingway, I'd
be a second or third rate Hemingway, at best, instead of a
first rate Sharif. Be yourself, your best self, always competing
against yourself and bettering yourself, and you will become
a first rate YOU instead of a second rate somebody else.
10. Give. Finally, be a giver. Leaders are givers. By giving,
you activate a universal law as sound as gravity life gives
to the giver, and takes from the taker. The more you give,
the more you get. If you want more love, respect, support,
and compassion, give love, give respect, give support, and
give compassion. Be a mentor to others. Give back to your
community. As a leader, the only way to get what you want,
is by helping enough people get what they want first. As Sir
Winston Churchill once said, "We make a living by what
we get, we make a life by what we give."
By Sharif Khan
"Leadership is Earned"
Leadership Skills Quote:
“Leadership can be thought
of as a capacity to define oneself to
others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the
future.”
Edwin H. Friedman
Leadership Books
Management: 2003 Update, Seventh Edition
by Stephen P. Robbins
101 Biggest Mistakes Managers Make and How to
Avoid Them
by Mary Albright
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
(PMBOK Guide) -- 2000 Edition
by Project Management Institute
Marketing Management
by Philip Kotler
Operations Management for Competitive Advantage
with Student-CD
by Richard B Chase, et al
Strategic Management : Concepts and Cases (10th
Edition)
by Fred David
Management Information Systems, Eighth Edition
by Kenneth C. Laudon, Jane P. Laudon
Fundamentals of Financial Management
by Eugene F. Brigham, Joel F. Houston
Management (8th Edition)
by Stephen P. Robbins, Mary Coulter
Operations Management with Student DVD and Power
Web
by William J Stevenson
Fundamentals of Financial Management : Concise
by Eugene F. Brigham, Joel F. Houston
Financial Management : Principles and Applications
(10th Edition)
by Arthur J. Keown |
