“We must become the change we want to see” Mahatma Gandhi

LEADERSHIP IS a big issue. There are zillions of books about it, and pretty much an infinite number of ways to describe what makes an effective leader. Sure, everyone has its own opinions, and people respect their opinions, and there are lot of ways to achieve certain things. What makes an effective leadership is that: what’s right for one situation isn’t right for another – and good leader knows the difference and can react differently depending on the context and circumstances.

The way you lead helps shape your culture. Therefore, your leadership style should be informed by the culture you’re trying to cultivate. And of course, the way you lead most effectively depends mostly on whom you are, and effective leaders listen and have compassion. Good leaders are made not born. If you have the desire and willpower, you can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience. This guide will help you through that process.

1. Be Technically Proficient.

As a leader, you must know your job and have a solid familiarity with your employees’ tasks.

2. Seek Responsibility and Take Responsibility For Your Actions.

Search for ways to guide your organization to new heights. And when things go wrong, they always do sooner or later — do not blame others. Analyze the situation, take corrective action, and move on to the next challenge.

3. Make Sound and Timely Decisions.

Use good problem solving, decision making, and planning tools.

4. 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.

5. Know Your People and Look Out For Their Well-being.

Know human nature and the importance of sincerely caring for your workers.

6. Keep Your Workers Informed.

Know how to communicate with not only them, but also seniors and other key people.

7. Develop A Sense of Responsibility In Your Workers.

Help to develop good character traits that will help them carry out their professional responsibilities.

8. Ensure That Tasks Are Understood, Supervised, and Accomplished.

Communication is the key to this responsibility.

9. Train 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.

10. 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.

Focus, Attention, and Persistence.

As a leader, you must never lose focus on values. Look for the value. Point it out and remind people how their work is an important expression of values in action. It is your job as a leader to constantly teach, recognize, reward, and help course corrections where necessary. Every member of your workforce is responsible for values-driven business practices, but they look to you, the leader, for living examples of how the values translate into action. You set the tone. When you take a cavalier approach to values or lose sight of them—even if temporarily—you give your team members permission to do the same. When you refuse to give in to pressures and obstacles and remind everyone of the important values at stake, your people will have an excellent model to follow. The greatest challenges leaders in top positions face are ethical dilemmas—for example, questions of choosing between long-term and short-term gains. It is often a problem of choosing between right and right. There are no easy answers to some business problems. Using values will help you with clarity and decisiveness.

Character

YOUR CHOICES AND actions help define who you are. They illuminate your character. You can talk till you’re blue in the face about your values, but they’re meaningless if you do not live up with them. Companies have character, too. The culture and spirit of the company reflects its character, as do its processes, procedures, and interactions with the outside world. And all of that comes from its shared core values. The core values of a company are a key factor in its identity. They are the handful of values or guiding principles that are at the very heart of the company that are essentials to its very spirit. These values make the company what it is, and they are a major part of what each person agrees to live by, which joins them together in a meaningful way. This meaning is what drives many employees, and it is the most effective way for the leaders to motivate them.

Integrity

INTEGRITY IS THE cornerstone of business because business is based on trust. Trust between you and your employees, your clients, your suppliers, your partners, the media, and the community. If trust is broken, it’s awfully hard to recover. Integrity is one of those bottom-line, deal-breaking kinds of requirements. While you can emphasize and encourage specific values, teach laws and regulations, and communicate your expectations, you cannot teach someone integrity. You can only hire people whom you believe have it and separate yourself from those who don’t.

One of the less obvious ways we determine the integrity of a company is by assessing what the company stands for, and how well it lives up to its value as we understand them.

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 self-study, formal classes, reflection, and interacting with others.

“The leader shows that style is no substitute for substance, that creating an impression is more potent than acting from one’s center” Lao Tzu

Good moods stimulate good performances, but it doesn’t make sense for a leader to be happy as a blue jay at dawn if sales are taking or business is going under. The most effective leaders display moods and behaviors that match the situation at hand, with a healthy dose of optimism mixed in. They respect how other people are feeling – even if it is glum or defeated - but they also model what it looks like to move forward with hope and humor.

This kind of performance, which is called character, is for all intents and purposes the four components of emotional intelligence in action.

1.Self-awareness.

Self-awareness, perhaps the most important of the emotional intelligences competencies, is the ability to read your emotions. It allows people to know their assets and boundaries and feel sure about their self-worth. Resonant leaders use self-awareness to measure their own moods precisely, and they naturally know they are affecting others.

2.Self-management.

Self-management is the gift to control your emotions and act with sincerity and integrity in reliable and flexible ways. Resonant leaders don’t let their infrequent bad moods seize the day; they use self-management to leave it outside the office or to explain its source to people in a practical way, so they know where it’s coming from and how long it might last.

3.Social awareness.

Social awareness includes the key capabilities of understanding and organizational instinct. Socially aware leaders do more than sense other people’s emotions, they show that they care. Further, they are professional at reading the currents of office politics. Thus, resonant leaders often strongly understand how their words and actions make others feel, and they are sensitive enough top change them when that impact is harmful.

4.Relationship management.

Relationship management, the last of the emotional intelligence competencies, includes the abilities to talk openly and persuasively, disarm arguments, and create strong personal relationships. Resonant leaders use these skills to extend their passion and solve discrepancies, often with humor and kindness.

As successful as resonant leadership is, it is just as rare. Most people suffer through dissonant leaders whose toxic moods and disturbing behaviors wreck havoc before hopeful and realistic leader repairs the situation.

And of course, everyone knows of a rude and coercive boss who, by all appearances, symbolize the antithesis of emotional intelligence yet seems to reap business results.

In short, it’s all too easy for a cynic to argue against the value of leaders who control their moods by citing a “rough and tough” leader who achieved good business results despite his bad behavior. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, and that in some specific business cases, a boss resonates just fine. But in general, leaders who are jerks must reform or else their moods and actions will eventually catch up with them.

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“Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing.” Warren Bennis

How does a leader put values into action? What questions does a leader need to ask himself or herself to clarify what is needed to lead by, with, and through values? Here are six common sense leadership strategies to consider:

1. Know Your Values.

Develop a personal understanding of your organization’s values. Think about what the company’s values really mean to you and to your unique leadership style. You need to know which of your behaviors demonstrate those values. If the business’ beliefs and principles don’t have meaning for you, you won’t be able to make them meaningful for anyone else. You must examine your own personal set of values and see how they mesh with the organizations. In some cases they won’t. Very few people see their own personal set of values in terms of things like customer service or teamwork. However, the personal value of respecting others does fit in with these organizational values. It is critical to make sure that shared values translate into behaved values. Study your organization’s values and determine how they apply to you and to the people you lead. Make sure that organizational and personal values are in sync with one another.

2. Be A Role Model.

Show people what the organizational values mean through your behaviors. People learn by observing their leaders. You must walk your talk. Bringing values to life is a behavioral issue. You are a role model for your people. Your values show up in four behaviors: how you spend your time, where you go, what you say, how you deal with problems and crises.

Actions speak louder than words, and employees aren’t dumb. Most of your employees will follow your lead. Now, you can’t be perfect all of the time and everyone has lapses. Make sure you admit aloud whenever you find yourself off track and in breach of values. When problems or crises catch you off balance, your immediate reaction might be contrary to your personal or organizational values system. But you can slow down, and ask yourself, “What guidance do our values provide for handling this situation?” You can make course corrections to demonstrate that you are concerned with doing the right thing in accordance with values. Here are some important keys for walking your talk:

• Spend your time in a way that reflects your organization’s values.

• Get out of your office and interact with the people who work with you and for you.

• Watch what you say…or don’t say.

• When things get hot, slow down, stay calm, and use values as your guide.

3. Teach values to your people.

You have to make it very clear that you expect your people to live by your organization’s values. You have to sell them on the importance of living the values; more than that, you have to teach them. One of the most effective ways to teach values is through asking questions. When you ask people what they value, and which organizational value they use most frequently, you are pointing them in the right direction. Asking questions helps people learn how to apply critical thinking skills on their own. It also helps people articulate what they already know.

4. Remove obstacles to working with values.

Your most important job as a leader is to help your people succeed. You must smooth the way for them because there are always obstacles and barriers to values driven performance. You must identify roadblocks, eliminate or minimize them, or show team members how to deal with those that can’t be removed.

5. Reward and recognize those who live the values.

Most leaders know that effective feedback must be specific and timely. It’s not effective to tell someone that he or she is “doing a great job and working with the values of the company.” What does that mean? How can people do more of it, if they aren’t sure what you mean? Instead, effective leaders say something like, “I saw you go out of your way to help so-and-so yesterday in order to avert a problem. That’s a great example of our organizational value of teamwork (or customer service, or other value) in action. I appreciate what you did.” People crave recognition. According to the Gallup Organization, 65 percent of U.S. workers reported that they received no recognition in the workplace last year. The number one reason people leave their jobs is that they don’t feel appreciated. Smart leaders actively search out opportunities to catch people doing something right and thank them for doing it. Recognizing and rewarding behavior that’s in line with values is the single best way to ensure that it continues.

6. Redirect those who aren’t working with values.

This is where the rubber meets the road and where you earn your money as a leader. You must hold people accountable when they are not living the values. There will always be a few, who don’t want to get with the program, and you must be the one to deal with this problem or everyone suffers. You will lose credibility and respect of others, and the work group as a whole will suffer. Explore with people the reasons they are doing what they are doing and why they choose not to live the values. Consider these reasons:

a. They don’t know why the values are important.

b. They don’t know what they should be doing to live/work with the values.

c. They think values are for other people, not them.

d. They don’t get rewarded for living the values.

e. Nothing happens when they don’t live the values.

f. Quite simply, they don’t like the values and refuse them.

As a leader, this presents the challenging opportunity to engage them in some meaningful dialogue about what is important to them, how their personal values can align with the organization’s, and how their personal behavior is in conflict with organizational values. The hard part is when disciplinary action is in order. Similar to giving positive feedback, be specific and timely about what behaviors need to change. The key to attempting to change anyone’s behavior is respect. You must show that you respect the employee as a person while asking for conflicting behaviors to change. Redirecting people who are not living the values is one of the most important things a leader must do. To do so is to ensure your credibility and to reinforce the importance of values.

“Emotional Intelligence plays an important role in a well-balanced and productive workplace, as well as in leadership development.” Allan Schwever

To define the ideal leader, many would emphasize traits such as intelligence, toughness, determination, and vision. But the key attribute that distinguishes outstanding performers from those who are merely adequate is called “emotional intelligence.”

There are five components to emotional intelligence. All five traits sound desirable to just about everyone. But organizations too often implicitly discourage their people from developing them.

1. Self-awareness.

Emotional intelligence begins with this quality. People with a high degree of self-awareness know their weaknesses and aren’t afraid to talk about them. People who assess themselves honestly – that is, self-aware people – are well suited to do the same for the organizations they run. Self-awareness means having a deep understanding of one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs, and drives. People with strong self-awareness are neither overly critical nor unrealistically hopeful. Rather, they are honest – with themselves and with others. Thus a self-aware person who knows that tight deadlines bring out the worst in him plans his time carefully and gets his work done well in advance.

2. Self-regulation.

This attribute flows from self-awareness, but runs in a different direction. People with this trait are able to control their impulses or even channel them for good purposes. Self-regulation, which is like an ongoing inner conversation, is the component of emotional intelligence that frees us from being prisoners of our feelings. People engaged in such a conversation feel bad moods and emotional impulses just as everyone else does, but they find ways to control them and even to channel them in useful ways. The signs of emotional self-regulation, therefore, are not hard to miss: a propensity for reflection and thoughtfulness; comfort with ambiguity and change; and integrity – an ability to say no to impulsive urges.

Like self-awareness, self-regulation often does not get its due. People who can master their emotions are sometimes seen as cold fish – their considered responses are taken as a lack of passion.

3. Motivation.

A passion for achievement for its own sake—not simply the ability to respond to whatever incentives a company offers—is the kind of motivation that is essential for leadership. If there is one trait that virtually all effective leaders have, it is motivation. They are driven to achieve beyond expectations – their own and everyone else’s. The key word here is achieve. Plenty of people are motivated by external factors such as a big salary or the status that comes from having an impressive title or being part of a prestigious company. It’s not difficult to understand how and why a motivation to achieve translates into strong leadership. If you set the performance bar high for yourself, you will do the same for the organization when you are in a position to do so. And of course, optimism and organizational commitment are fundamental to leadership – just try to imagine running a company without them.

4. Empathy.

In addition to self-management skills, emotional intelligence requires a facility for dealing with others. And that starts with empathy—taking into account the feelings of others when making decisions— as opposed to taking on everyone’s troubles. Of all the dimensions of emotional intelligence, empathy is the most easily recognized. We have all felt the empathy of a sensitive teacher or friend; we have all been struck by its absence in an unfeeling coach or boss. But when it comes to business, we rarely hear people praised, let alone rewarded, for their empathy. The very word seems no businesslike, out of place amid the tough realities of the marketplace. Empathy is particularly important today as a component of leadership for at least three reasons: the increasing use of teams; the rapid pace of globalization; and the growing need to retain talent. But leaders with empathy do more than sympathize with people around them: they use their knowledge to improve their companies in subtle but important ways.

5. Social skill.

All the preceding traits culminate in this fifth one: the ability to build rapport with others, to get them to cooperate, to move them in a direction you desire. Managers who simply try to be sociable— while lacking the other components of emotional intelligence—are likely to fail. Social skill, by contrast, is friendliness with a purpose. The first three components of emotional intelligence are all self-management skills. The last two, empathy and social skill, concerns a person’s ability to manage relationships with others. As a component of emotional intelligence, social skill is not as simple as it sounds. It’s not just a matter of friendliness, although people with high levels of social skill are rarely mean-spirited. Social skill, rather, is friendliness with a purpose: moving people in the direction you desire, whether that’s agreement on a new marketing strategy or enthusiasm about a new product.

Extended practice, feedback from colleagues, and your own enthusiasm for making the change are essential to becoming an effective leader. It is fortunate, then, that emotional intelligence can be learned. The process is not easy. It takes time and, most of all, commitment. But the benefits that come from having a well-developed emotional intelligence, both for the individual and for the organization, make it worth the effort.